Sirin Labs Lays off 25% of its Staff – Details
Founders of the Finney blockchain phone, Sirin Labs, are laying off 15 of their 60-person team.
Sirin Labs, founded by Israeli businessman Moshe Hogeg, first announced the $1,000 smartphone back in July. They claimed it was the world’s first ‘blockchain-powered’ handset, with one of its main selling points being it featured an embedded cold storage wallet.
The aim was for people to use the phone’s internal exchange to swap tokens without having the hassle of switching tokens from wallet to exchange and back to another wallet, but despite the hype no-one was buying it and the company had to cut costs.
Embarassingly, Sirin Labs was forced to deny media reports it had failed to pay its employees’ salaries, with Hogeg telling Globes:
:The global market is not in the best state. The company gives some of its work to outsourcing, and plans to focus on development and distribution of the software … Sales are not what we expected.”