Devin Finzer, the CEO of OpenSea, announced Thursday on social media that the NFT marketplace is laying off 20 percent of its employees.

“We made the incredibly sad and difficult decision to reduce the size of our team,” Finzer wrote in a Discord message that he then published on social media. “Today we are going to say goodbye to many of our friends and team members across OpenSea.”

Prior to the layoff, OpenSea had around 275 employees. After the layoff of just over 40 employees, they remain with 230.

In January, OpenSea announced a valuation of $13 billion following a successful round of series C funding totaling $300 million. At that time, the company was operating with 90 employees. After the funding came in, Finzer said at the time that he planned to use the money to “grow the team” of customer service employees from 60 to 120, to help quality of responses to customer support requests from their users. The marketplace has been plagued with technical difficulties and plagiarism complaints, along with a steady drip of hacks and scams, which has led to legal trouble.

Finzer, and co-founder Alex Atallah were recently named NFT’s first billionares, each valued at $2.2 billion, according to Forbes.

Some of the trouble users faced came from internal issues. A former OpenSea employee, Nate Chastain, was arrested in early June in connection with an alleged insider trading scheme while at the marketplace, a first. A decision to limit the amount of NFTs one could create in a day temporarily caused mayhem on the site before executives backtracked their decision and Iranian OpenSea users were unceremoniously kicked off the platform after the company said it had to comply with US sanctions against Iran.

Finzer wrote in his announcement that he appreciated the work of all those emplyees who were being let go and that he would “treat them with great care,” which would include a “generous” severance and healthcare coverage through to 2023.

In the announcement, Finzer wrote that while OpenSea had been built to weather an inevitable slump in the value of cryptocurrencies, “the combination of a crypto winter and broader microeconomic instability” necessitated a new strategy.

“The changes we’re making today put us in a position to maintain multiple years of runway under various crypto winter scenarios (5 years at current volume) and give us high confidence that we’ll only have to go through this process once,” Finzer wrote.

The NFT platform isn’t the only one feeling the burn of crypto winter. This past June, crypto startups like Coinbase, crypto.com, and Gemini all announced layoffs, while crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital is currently being liquidated despite its founders having recently disappeared. Crypto isn’t the only sector suffering. Internet service businesses like GoPuff and Stripe have also announced mass firings.

Like many in the crypto world, Finzer is toeing the current party line: that despite massive losses, the downturn is an ultimately positive moment that will allow creators in the NFT space and across Web3 to “build”.

“We have a huge opportunity in front of us,” Finzer wrote. “With the hard (but important) changes we made today, we’re in an even better position to capture what will soon become the largest market on the planet.”

Nollywood actor Olanrewaju Omiyinka, popularly known as Baba Ijesha has been sentenced to sixteen years in prison.

Justice Oluwatoyin Taiwo of the Ikeja Domestic Violence and Sexual Offences Court on Thursday, July 14, 2022, sentenced the actor to prison.

Delivering the judgement, Justice Taiwo said that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty of all the charges against him.

However, she found the defendant guilty of two of the six counts against him.

Baba Ijesha was detained on April 22, 2021, after the Lagos State Police Command announced his arrest for allegedly sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in the care of Princess.

Described as one of the most talked about celebrity court cases ever in Nigeria, several pieces of evidence were laid before the court on how the actor sexually assaulted the young child.

A forensic report was presented by a child forensic expert, Olabisi Ajayi-Kayode at the Special Offenses Court in Ikeja.

The Lagos State Directorate of Public Prosecutions, which proffered the charges against the actor, argued that the offences contravene Section 135, 137, 261, 202, 262 and 263 of the Lagos State Criminal Law 2015, which stipulates life imprisonment for offenders.

Baba Ijesha pleaded not guilty to all the counts.

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has assured that the state has concluded plans to host the most colourful edition of the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFEST) scheduled for November.

Sanwo-Olu gave the assurance on Thursday when he received a delegation from the National Council for Arts and Culture (NCAC) led by the Director-General, Chief Segun Runsewe, main organisers of the festival.

According to a statement issued by Runsewe, the delegation was in the governor’s office to formally present a blueprint of the festival and ascertain the level of preparedness of the state in hosting the 2022 edition of the festival.

NAFEST is an annual cultural festival which brings together contingents from the 36 states of the federation and the FCT to a host state to showcase the nation’s diverse cultural heritage in arts, crafts and all.

Sanwo-Olu said that a delegation from the state had visited NCAC for a Pre-NAFEST maiden meeting to interact and obtain details of hosting the festival.

He said based on the report, the state government had to improve on their facilities to meet all criteria set by the NCAC.

He noted that this was done to enable the state not only to host the biggest and most colourful festival, but also emerge the overall winner of the fiesta.

He revealed that as a prelude to the festival, Lagos state would hold a Pre-NAFEST event for seven days.

He said this was aimed at showcasing the rich cultural heritage of all the local government areas in the state which would therefore herald the EkoNAFEST 2022.

In his response, Runsewe congratulated the Lagos State Government for winning the hosting right for NAFEST 2022, which was keenly contested by three other states.

He said that the festival which is the foremost cultural event in Nigeria had been a platform to unite the nation through arts and culture.

He reiterated that the festival which grows richer, bigger and better with every edition would provide a strong platform for the state which is the centre of excellence to bring its well-known finesse to bear in making the EKO NAFEST 2022 the best of its kind in the history of the festival given its track record.

“The essence of the visit is for us to interact and brief you on details of hosting the festival which will bring together contingents from the 36 states of the federation and the FCT to Lagos State for seven days,” he said.

He explained that the festival would have far reaching benefits to Lagos residents with a positive impact on the economy of the state in the areas of hotel accommodation, transportation, small scale businesses and vendors.

Runsewe expressed the need for the state Local Organising Committee (LOC) to work in close partnership with the National Organising Committee (NOC) for effective coordination.

According to him, the wife of the governor, Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu will be crowned the mother of NAFEST, “Mama NAFEST 22”, during the National Technical Stakeholders meeting coming up later in the month.

“This will also afford her the platform to host the children during the Eko NAFEST 2022,” he said.

Highlight of the meeting was the exchange of cultural gifts between the governor and the director-general of NCAC.