Yuga Labs cuts jobs as part of restructuring, CEO Greg Solano says the company “lost its way”

Yuga Labs, the NFT studio behind the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) collection, has initiated another round of layoffs as part of a broader restructuring, with returning CEO and co-founder Greg “Garga” Solano saying the company had “lost its way.” In a Slack message later posted publicly, Solano said Yuga would become a smaller, more agile, crypto‑native team, doing fewer things but with greater focus, and acknowledged that the firm’s rapid growth and complex corporate structure had diluted the creative culture that defined its early success. The latest cuts come less than a year after a previous restructuring under then‑CEO Daniel Alegre, which had already eliminated a significant number of primarily U.S.-based roles as Yuga sought to concentrate on core initiatives such as its Otherside metaverse and flagship NFT communities BAYC and CryptoPunks. Reports indicate that Yuga had around 150 employees prior to this new round and that up to that number could be affected in total across recent waves of layoffs, though the company has not disclosed exact figures for the newest cuts. The move reflects broader pressure on NFT and Web3 gaming businesses amid falling trading volumes and shifting market attention, and signals that Yuga is pivoting back to a leaner structure, divesting non-core gaming IP such as HV‑MTL and Legends of the Mara, and prioritizing speed and execution over large, experimental bets. This restructuring matters because Yuga Labs has been one of the most prominent NFT and metaverse players, having raised a $450 million round at a $4 billion valuation in 2022 and becoming a bellwether for the sector’s trajectory. Its decision to shrink, simplify, and refocus—paired with explicit acknowledgment from the CEO that the company “lost its way”—illustrates the recalibration happening across high-profile Web3 projects, where teams are moving away from sprawling product roadmaps and toward smaller, more focused, crypto‑native experiments in response to both internal execution challenges and a more cautious market environment.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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