Decentralized Social Media Platform Steemit Lays Off 70% of Staff Following Market Crash

Social networking platform Steemit is laying off more than 70 percent of its staff due to the cryptocurrency market crash, and is beginning a structural reorganization, according to a Nov. 28 video post by Steemit CEO Ned Scott.

Steemit runs a decentralized application on the Steem blockchain, while its system is built around community-driven posting, evaluation, and administering of content. Steemit rewards participants and content in the so-called “attention economy” with the native token STEEM.

Per the announcement, the recent drop in cryptocurrency markets has resulted in a decrease in fiat currency returns from the company’s automated STEEM sales. Additionally, the cost of running Steem’s nodes has increased.

The cryptocurrency market experienced a massive decline on Nov. 14, with Bitcoin (BTC) dropping from its average trading price of around $6,400 to as low as $5,506. Last week, its sunk even further, below $4,000. The dive has marked a new volatility record for markets this year.

Following the layoffs, Steemit is purportedly prioritizing cost reduction strategies such as “replacing steemd plugins with hivemind, pitchforking Steem to prune the chain state size from 160gb to 0gb, AWS usage projections, DevOps solutions, reduction of Staging and Testing nodes, and eliminating redundancies.”

After its establishment, the STEEM token enjoyed great success. In July 2016, it rose by more than 2,000 percent to reach more than $400 million in market cap within two weeks. At the same time, its price also grew from $0.24 to $4.63.

As of press time, STEEM is trading around $0.382, up almost 19 percent on the day, according to CoinMarketCap. The coin’s market capitalization is around $115 million, and its daily trading volume is over $1.8 million.