Nansen joins the several blockchain analytic firms that have laid off over 5% of employees in 2023.
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Nansen’s marketing and product teams bore the brunt of layoffs totaling 30% of the company’s workforce, which the blockchain analytics firm blamed on “brutal” conditions in the cryptocurrency market and expansion beyond its main business.
“This will allow us to focus on our core products with data, analytics and research,” the company said in an email to Forbes. It plans to focus on an updated Nansen information dashboard (Nansen V2), and Nansen Query, a software that gives customers access to curated and individualized blockchain reports.
While nearly all teams have been impacted by the layoffs, marketing and product divisions have been hit the hardest, according the statement. Nansen did not disclose how many employees were affected nor its overall staff count, but data from LinkedIn indicate it had about 200 workers.
Nansen follows blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, which cut about 5% of its staff, and crypto intelligence firm Messari, which slashed 15%, both in February.
All of the companies cited tough conditions in the cryptocurrency market, whose value has fallen 14% to $1.18 trillion in the past 12 months, according to data from CoinGecko. Prices are up 30% this year, however, as digital assets recover from the depths of the 2022 downturn.
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Separately, leading crypto exchange Binance told Forbes that it was reevaluating its staffing “to focus talent density across the organization to ensure we remain nimble and dynamic.” Ismael Garcia Makroum Talbi, a Binance spokesperson, was responding by email to a Forbes request for comment on a Twitter posting by journalist Colin Wu that said the company was going to lay off 20% of its workforce.
“This is not a case of rightsizing,” Talbi wrote, “but rather, reevaluating whether we have the right talent and expertise in critical roles, and therefore we will still be seeking to fill hundreds of open roles.
In announcing the Nansen layoffs on Twitter, CEO Alex Svanevik wrote, “Although we’ve seen diversification of revenues via enterprise and institutional customers in the last year, our cost base is too high relative to where the company is today.”
He took responsibility for expanding too far. “We wanted to invest and build in a tough market where others needed to scale back,” leading to “taking on surface area that’s not truly part of Nansen’s core strategy.” But he added that the company has enough funds for “several years” of operations.
Nansen most recently raised $75 million in a series B funding round in December 2021 that valued the company at $750 million, according to data from PitchBook.
