Layoffs at Swyftx and Bybit: top crypto and Web3 news for December 5 in brief

The new working week began with excitement in the crypto market. A number of tokens surprised us with price jumps. And some companies and their employees (alas, with layoffs). About this and other topics in our compilation of the top news of the day.

Swyftx is kicking people out

Australian cryptocurrency exchange Swyftx will lay off 40 percent of its staff (90 people) following the FTX collapse, which led to negative sentiment in the crypto market. This was announced by Swyftx CEO Alex Harper.

Earlier this year, Swyft laid off 74 employees in response to the market downturn.

A day earlier, the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit announced another round of layoffs. The layoffs will affect 30% of employees taken from the company’s internal messaging platform.

KuCoin x Mazars

KuCoin Exchange announced a partnership with French accounting firm Mazars to report actual third-party withdrawals. Mazars has also been hired by the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. 

Lens Protocol buys the mobile app Sonar

Lens Protocol, a blockchain-based social media project from decentralized finance lender Aave, has acquired the mobile app Sonar.

As a result of the acquisition, Sonar will integrate the Aave Lens protocol to present decentralized account profiles for its social mobile meta-universe app.

Specifics with NFTs (though locally and in China)

A court in Hangzhou, China has ruled that NFT digital collections belong to virtual property. Journalist Colin Wu wrote about it. 

According to the court’s ruling, NFT has “objective characteristics of the property.” These include certain value, rarity, manageability, and marketability. The judge also stressed that NFTs should thus be protected by PRC law. 

15% of 1INCH to be unlocked

On December 30, about 222 million 1INCH tokens (15% of the total offering) with a current value of more than $100 million will be unlocked. Tokens will be distributed among the project team (3.75%), investors: seed (3.08%) and series A (2.03%), the protocol support fund (1.81%), and consultants (0.38%). Another 3.75% of tokens will be further unlocked thanks to community incentives.