Vancouver-based Dapper Labs, the NFT startup behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, lays off ~134 staff, or ~22% of its workforce; Dapper Labs has raised $600M+
Dapper Labs has laid off around 22 percent of its staff, BetaKit has learned. — The company confirmed the layoffs to BetaKit …
Context & Ripple Effects
Dapper Labs is cutting about 134 people, roughly 22% of its staff, despite having raised more than $600M — a retrenchment the company ties to a prolonged NFT market downturn, allegations about CEO conduct, and a $4M class-action settlement over unregistered-securities claims tied to NBA Top Shot Moments.
The move lands on top of a rough stretch for Vancouver tech: Hootsuite announced plans weeks earlier to cut an estimated 400 people, about 30% of its workforce, making this the city's second major consumer-tech layoff in one quarter.
First-order effects
- About 134 Dapper Labs employees lose their jobs immediately, shrinking the team behind CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot even though the company has raised over $600M.
Second-order effects
- Marketplace peer OpenSea, which had already cut 20% in July 2022, is pushed further down the same path toward deeper cuts and a rebuilt product, showing the downturn compressing every layer of the NFT stack rather than one company.
- Sports-IP-driven NFT products like NBA Top Shot face pressure to prove revenue durability, since headcount reductions signal the collectibles business can no longer fund its prior operating scale.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds — Dapper following up with another 20% cut in February 2023 — heavily funded consumer-crypto startups shift from single correction rounds to serial retrenchment, resetting what burn rate investors will underwrite for NFT platforms.
- Vancouver's consumer-tech cluster, hit by both Hootsuite and Dapper within months, faces a structural thinning of senior product and engineering talent that later rounds like Crypto.com's AI-driven restructuring draw from.
The trend: Consumer NFT and crypto platforms are moving from growth-era hiring to repeated, deepening layoff cycles as trading activity stays depressed.