Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Eclipse Labs cuts 65% of staff as part of its restructuring plan.
- Sydney Huang named new CEO, succeeding Vijay Chetty.
- Company pivots to building in-house user-facing applications post-TGE.
Layer 2 blockchain developer Eclipse Labs has announced a major company rebuilding that involves a large number of layoffs as well as changes to the management. In the light of its recent token generation event (TGE), the company disclosed it was making the turn to user-facing app development domestically.
Sydney Huang appointed as new CEO
On Monday, Eclipse made the announcement that Sydney Huang, also known as 0xSydney in the blockchain community, is the new Chief Executive Officer. Huang was originally the Product Lead7 at the company and will be taking over the position from Vijay Chetty, also known as Litquidity, who resigned voluntarily.
Huang says that though the company will still prioritize the delivery of practical blockchain solutions to the public, their new plan will revolve around constructing groundbreaking applications in line with the L2 infrastructure.
“The original motive in our infrastructure was to provide solutions in the real world. This has not changed; however, we are shifting our perspective. The next story is about providing end users with the services they require and creating software for them internally,” Huang said in his speech on X.
Staff cut and change of direction
As part of a move, the company is set to lay off 65 percent of its present employees. The company stated that the reduction was mandatory in order to have the available resources well-aligned with the new strategy that mainly focuses on the engagement of the end-users rather than only supporting external developers.
Besides the continued Ethereum Layer 2 rollup operations and upgrades, most of the efforts will be reallocated to their applications on top of the infrastructure.
The transition of this pivot is related to last month’s TGE in which ES, the native token of the project, was released on Eclipse, Ethereum, and Solana. The price of ES has declined significantly since its debut, with a drop of more than 65% overall. On Monday night, the latest, the price of the token went down by 13.2% in the past 24 hours and was at $0.1586, as per the information provided by CoinGecko.
Eclipse’s Post-TGE Challenges
First of all, in 2022 Eclipse Labs attracted attention to its rollup linked to Ethereum that runs the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), thus, basically, implementing the speed of execution of Solana on Ethereum’s more secure ecosystem. The company positioned itself as “Solana on Ethereum”, hence, it was able to connect the two most prominent blockchain ecosystems.
Although the market reaction to ES was not very enthusiastic and Eclipse is now undergoing a leadership change and layoffs. These events denote a company that seeks to move toward a new direction of sustainable growth by trying to create applications with real users that will not only help the revival of the token performance but will also positively impact the adoption of the ecosystem.
Hence, Eclipse Labs is not wavering from its initial concept but rather making a strong case to the community that such an eternal future could be the one that combines infrastructure solutions with consumer-facing products.
What This Means for the Layer 2 Ecosystem
The move made by Eclipse is an example of a widespread pattern in the Layer 2 and Web3 development area, where more and more projects are aware of the fact that infrastructure is only part of the story. To gain mass adoption, there is a necessity for applications that are attractive to the general public rather than supporters and developers only.
Through focusing on a particular subject and consolidating resources, Eclipse may in fact be setting the stage for giving such an application, thus, the company could very well be placing itself among the leading figures of the Layer 2 competition that have made their moves in this way.
Summary
Eclipse Labs has become a new chapter of metamorphosis with 65% workforce decreases and the selection of Sydney Huang as CEO. The change seals its token generation event repercussions that have driven the ES token to the struggle market. The company’s plan to develop its own user-facing applications has led Eclipse Labs to abandon the developer-first approach, thus, they are now directly targeting the end-user adoption. Whereas the restructuring conveys that the company is still facing difficulties such as the Layer 2 ecosystem shift, the change of management personnel, and layoffs indicate a company that intends to change direction and transform itself so that it can thrive in the ever-changing ecosystem.
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