OP Labs, the main development company supporting the Optimism ecosystem, has laid off 20 employees as part of an internal restructuring aimed at sharpening the organization’s strategic focus, according to a message shared by the group’s management.
In a post on X, OP Labs CEO Jing Wang said the decision came after internal conversations with affected staff and was communicated to employees before being publicly disclosed. The company said the layoffs were driven by the need to “narrow our focus,” rather than financial constraints.
“It’s not about finances,” he said in a Slack message he shared alongside his post. “OP Labs is well capitalized with years of track record.”
Instead, he suggested the move was aimed at streamlining decision-making and “doing fewer things…exceptionally well.”
The OP token is down about 3% in the last 24 hours.
OP Labs plays a central role in the development of Optimism, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling network designed to make transactions faster and cheaper by processing activity off the main Ethereum chain. Optimism’s broader ecosystem now includes several high-profile chains based on its technology stack, including Coinbase’s Base, Uniswap’s Unichain, and Sony’s Soneium.
CoinDesk has reached out to OP Labs for comment and clarification on the percentage of staff that was laid off.
Read more: Optimism’s OP token drops after Base moves away from network’s ‘OP stack’ in major tech shift
