Matter Labs trims workforce by 16% as demand for ZKsync Era falls

Matter Labs, the German-based company that developed the Ethereum Layer 2 protocol ZKsync, has cut about 16% of its workforce. 

"From day 1, Matter Labs embraced the philosophy of being a lean and focused team committed to a singular mission — accelerating the mass adoption of crypto for personal sovereignty," Cofounder and CEO Alex Gluchowski said in a post on X . "Staying small and focused enabled us to keep a steady pace of impactful innovation, continuously adapting to changes."

"Our market environment and business needs have changed significantly over the course of this year. We see that many teams building on ZKsync Era now require a different type of technology and support than they had previously. At the same time, we see a big increase in demand for ZK Chains." 

Founded in 2018, Matter Labs has raised $458 million over four rounds, according to Tracxn.

ZKsync has had the highest seven-day moving average of transactions out of all ZK-powered Layer 2 Ethereum networks for much of this year but has fallen off over the past few months. It has about 92,620 active addresses as of Monday, down from a peak north of 455,000 in April, according to The Block's data dashboards .

Gluchowski said the launch of the Elastic Chain and ZK Nation was the right moment to re-evaluate Matter Labs' strategy, goals, and team composition.

"We went through a large org planning exercise, and it became clear that the talent and roles we have today do not perfectly match our needs," he wrote on X. "We then reviewed every single role in the company to make sure that we have the right roles and people in the right place, to remain agile and effective."