Near Foundation to cut staff by 40%, says treasury 'remains strong'

The Near Foundation, the non-profit organization that supports the Near ecosystem, said it will reduce its team by approximately 40%. The cuts are set to impact 35 employees, primarily across its marketing, business development and community teams, Near Protocol co-founder and Near Foundation CEO Illia Polosukhin said in a statement today.

The Near Protocol engineering team at Near contributor Pagoda will continue to operate unaffected, and the Near Foundation will help impacted staff to find new opportunities in the Near ecosystem or the broader crypto industry, Polosukhin added.

The team’s reduction comes after a recent review, with feedback suggesting the foundation’s activities were not as effective as they could be, moving too slowly or trying to do too many things at once, according to Polosukhin. “Following this review, we have decided to significantly consolidate the core Foundation team to focus on a narrower and higher-impact set of activities,” he said.

Near Foundation treasury 'remains strong' amid ecosystem growth

Despite the cuts, the Near Foundation treasury “remains strong and well-managed,” Polosukhin said — encompassing $285 million in cash, 305 million Near tokens ($1.1 billion) and $70 million of investments and loans.

“The Foundation is well-placed to continue to support the ongoing growth, development, and further decentralization of the Near Protocol and ecosystem,” Polosukhin added.

The cuts also come despite a strong year for the Near ecosystem, with the Near Protocol now home to some of the top apps in web3 and a record number of daily users, according to the Near Foundation CEO. In a previous post on Dec. 20, Polosukhin noted that four of DappRadar’s top ten apps in web3 are built on the Near Protocol, with its daily active users often exceeding one million per day. "With 7 million monthly active accounts, 35 million total accounts overall, and an average of over 2 million transactions per day, the Near ecosystem has seen substantial growth in usage this year," Polosukhin said at the time.

Data from The Block’s dashboard shows that daily average transactions on Near rose around 15 times throughout 2023, from 312,000 to 4.9 million.

The number of daily average new addresses on Near witnessed a similar increase over the same period, though the biggest proportion of this spike occurred in December — largely attributed to a surge in the popularity of inscriptions, as BRC-20-style tokens began spreading to other chains beyond Bitcoin.

However, Polosukhin suggested that the staff reductions were part of a longer-term decentralization plan. “Over time, Foundation’s footprint will continue to contract as the ecosystem further decentralizes and various nodes drive more activity in the network and across the ecosystem,” he said.