RDX Works Company Update Mar 2023

Company Update

The crypto (and wider) market sentiment so far in 2023 is uncertain at best. 

Therefore, together with the RDX executive team, I have made the difficult decision to take a new set of measures to increase our preparation for a continued crypto winter and ensure the long-term success of RDX Works. 

Unfortunately, part of these measures includes reducing the team size by about 25%, almost entirely from the business support teams rather than technical teams.

Why is this needed?

From the start of 2022, we made the strategic decision to increase our investment in all areas of the company to build on the successful launch of the Radix Olympia Network and the early-access launch of Scrypto and Radix Engine. This included increasing the RDX Works team from 36 to over 100. 

A lot of this scaling was in categories outside of core product development and DevOps - more operational support, more HR support, and much more marketing support. 

Now, 15 months later, we can clearly see the significant benefits this growth brought, and the successes the team have had. Over 9,000 developers have experienced Scrypto and the dev community has successfully created more than 100 strong examples of every major type of DeFi application, the launch of the Babylon test nets have improved our preparation to roll out the Babylon mainnet upgrade, and of course, raising awareness of Radix via events such as RadFi which have contributed to 54 consecutive weeks of positive growth in Radix accounts. 

Although our investments into the team and infrastructure were delivering great results, the wider crypto industry saw some major setbacks during this time that resulted in the total market cap of the industry dropping by over $1Tn. 

As the resulting negative market sentiment continued into Q3 & Q4 of 2022, I worked with the executive team at RDX Works to proactively build our resilience and manage our resources ahead of the Babylon upgrade to the Radix main net. Unfortunately, given the continued uncertainty in both the crypto markets and the wider economy, it has now become necessary to make additional changes to how we prioritise our resources ahead of Babylon.

What are the effects of these changes?

When making these difficult decisions about team size reduction, we had two main priorities:

1. Ensuring that we can successfully deliver the technical roadmap for the Radix Babylon upgrade and beyond.
2. Make sure we are conserving capital to have sufficient resources to grow awareness and adoption of the Radix Network with both builders and users after Babylon is successfully launched.

As a leadership team, it was important to ensure we could meet these priorities even in the event of a continued crypto/market winter.

I wish to make it clear that the core technical roles within the business will not be affected by these changes and that Babylon is still on track for Q2 this year. 

On the marketing side, we will be consolidating activity to focus on major events and supporting the Babylon Mainnet go-to-market activities, as well as continuing to grow the developer ecosystem on the Radix Network.

Moving Forward

We would not be where we are today without all the contributions of everyone in the team. Senior leadership’s immediate priority is to support those who are leaving us as best as we can during this difficult time. 

I understand that this news will be challenging and lead to some degree of uncertainty. These tough decisions have been made to make sure RDX Works is in the best position it can be moving forward, and our belief in the success of Radix is unchanged; we are delivering something truly game-changing, and all that hard work is about to be delivered to the world.