dYdX, Consensys layoffs shake up the space

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.

Both dYdX and Consensys announced hefty layoffs yesterday.

dYdX CEO Antonio Juliano said that 35% of the core team was let go, while Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin said his firm had cut 20% of staff.

For Consensys, that‘s 162 positions. According to dYdX’s site, the company had around 50 employees and is still hiring new positions.

The two have very different stories about how they got to this point. Lubin was quick to cast some of the blame on the SEC. Consensys, a powerhouse in the Ethereum space, has notably been locked in multiple legal battles with the regulator and — if we‘re going off the timelines we’re seeing for Ripple, Coinbase and Binance — then this might be a multi-year court case.

“Such attacks from the US government will end up costing many companies that have been investigated, sued, or sent Wells Notices, many millions of dollars,” Consensys said in a blog post.

Loading Tweet..

But the blame isn‘t all on the SEC, and that’s where the similarities between the dYdX layoffs and what happened with Consensys come into play.

“Looking ahead, I see a next generation economy not dominated by large monolithic companies; instead, smaller, agile, AI-supercharged companies with web3-based coordination tools will operate more efficiently. To stay competitive in this fast-growing space, we need to reshape ourselves and be more agile, more effective, and even higher-performing,” Lubin said.

For Juliano, the decision was made after he rejoined the perps DEX firm earlier this month — he previously stepped down months ago after seven years at the helm — and realized that “the company weve built is different from the company dYdX must be.”

This wasnt, Juliano clarified on X, a financial decision for the company. He also teased an “explanation” sometime today.

Loading Tweet..

Lubin said the decision at Consensys focuses the organization on the “core revenue drivers,” while Juliano told Empire just last week that he planned to go full “founder mode.”

Consensys and dYdX aren‘t the first crypto companies to cut jobs this cycle — Helium Mobile’s parent company cut 40% of its staff, while Matter Labs cut 16% — it shows that some firms are starting to get lean as we head into what many think will be a bull run at the beginning of next year.