Qredo cuts staff, saves around 35% on annual expenses

Crypto infrastructure provider Qredo has significantly reduced its workforce, three sources with direct knowledge of the matter told The Block.

Qredo let go about 50 people, including some senior executives, two of the sources said. The senior executives include Qredo's Chief Product Officer Gabriele Farei and its Chief Information Security Officer Asen Taskov, one of the sources said. The job cuts have resulted in about 35% savings on the company's annual expenses, they added. Qredo's revised headcount stands at around 130, two of the sources said.

Farei declined to comment and Taskov couldn't be immediately reached. A Qredo spokesperson confirmed the layoffs, declining to comment on the specifics.

"Due to the prolonged cryptowinter, Qredo will be rightsizing to focus on its core protocol and its web3 custody business," the spokesperson told The Block.

The Qredo protocol acts as an asset registry, recording the ownership of Layer 1 assets on Qredo's Layer 2 blockchain Qredochain, with all signatures secured by a distributed multi-party computation (dMPC) network, according to information on Qredo's website. Qredo generates revenue through transaction fees, which are denominated in its QRDO token, per the website.

As for Qredo's dMPC network, it offers "decentralized custody for decentralized assets," according to its website. The company uses MPC to split and scatter customers' private keys but claims to take the concept further than the first wave of crypto security firms — like Fireblocks and Copper — by distributing these fragments across watertight data centers, with control in the hands of the Qredochain, as The Block has reported previously.

Qredo layoffs

Qredo's layoffs come amid prevailing bearish crypto market conditions. A number of crypto firms have reduced staff in the past year following high-profile collapses and bankruptcies in the industry, including Terra, Three Arrows Capital and FTX. As for Qredo, it has cut jobs through the year, two of the sources said.

Qredo was valued at $460 million in February 2022, when it raised $80 million in Series A funding. The firm was founded in 2018 and has raised about $94 million in total venture capital funding to date. In July 2021, Qredo also raised $35 million in a QRDO token sale.