Near Foundation lays off 40% of workforce despite rosy financials

The firm says the cuts are necessary to consolidate the team and “focus on a narrower and higher-impact set of activities.”

Near Foundation, the developer of the namesake layer-1 protocol, announced that it would lay off 40% of its staff “to significantly consolidate the core Foundation team to focus on a narrower and higher-impact set of activities.”

According to the Jan. 11 announcement, the decision to let go of 35 Near employees in the marketing, business development and community teams came after feedback that the foundation “has not always been as effective as it could be, sometimes moving too slowly and trying to do too many things at once.”

Despite the layoffs, however, it appears that the Near Foundation’s financials have been robust. Currently, its treasury amounts to over $285 million in fiat currencies, 305 million NEAR tokens (worth over $1 billion), and $70 million in investments and loans.

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