Snapchat’s parent company shutters Web3 division amid layoffs

Snap Inc’s CEO Evan Speigel announced in a note on Friday that the company had made the difficult decision to reduce the size of its workforce by approximately 20%. 

The note said that this round of layoffs comes after the company experienced slow revenue growth, a slump in stock prices, and a general lag behind its financial targets. Speigel shared:

“Our forward-looking revenue visibility remains limited, and our current year-over-year QTD revenue growth of 8% is well below what we were expecting earlier this year.”

Snap Inc. will now undertake the task of restructuring in an attempt to ensure the company’s success in a highly competitive space where Instagram and TikTok are currently dominating. As part of its restructuring process, the company has axed its entire Web3 team. Jake Sheinman, head of Snap’s Web3 team, announced his exit from the company on Wednesday in a series of posts on Twitter stating:

“As a result of the company restructure, decisions were made to sunset our web 3 team.”

I’m humbled to have partnered with the smartest builders, most creative artists, and kindest humans. Today was tough and I’ll miss this place dearly but I’m grateful for all of it. Will be taking some personal time in the coming weeks but open to discuss new opportunities

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— Jake Sheinman (@jakeryanshein) August 31, 2022

CEO Speigel shared that the restructuring is a part of an effort to focus on three strategic priorities; namely, community growth, revenue growth and augmented reality (AR). Projects that are not in alignment with these areas will be discontinued or have their budgets slashed significantly.

At the moment, it appears that Snap will not be prioritizing the budding Web3 and Metaverse space as much as its competition, such as Meta. Although many tech innovators seem to share the opinion that Web3 is going to be the next iteration of the internet, Snap does not appear interested in positioning itself within the blockchain industry.

Snap’s layoffs come after other tech companies like Coinbase, LinkedIn, Meta, Apple, Google and Netflix have had to cut down their workforce due to rising interest rates in an inflationary economy.