Safe Crypto Slashes 14 Jobs in Major Shake-Up After Bybit Hack

From Hack to Hack: Safe's Tough Road

Just months after the Bybit hack sent shockwaves through the crypto world, Safe, the self-custody crypto infrastructure provider, has had to make some brutal cuts. They've let go of 14 employees, pointing to the chaos of trying to keep everything together.

The Ax Falls at Safe

Safe isn't just trimming the fat; they're hacking away at their team. After a staggering $1.43 billion was swiped from Bybit, traced back to a compromised Safe developer machine, the company is now slashing 14 jobs as part of a massive overhaul.

A Heart-Wrenching Goodbye

Today was the toughest day since starting Safe:

We are restructuring the teams and parting ways with 14 teammates, people we deeply respect, who've each contributed meaningfully to our journey.

We know this is incredibly hard. There's no perfect way to do this, and no words...

Co-Founder Lukas Schor Breaks the News

In a raw X post on Wednesday, Safe's co-founder Lukas Schor spilled the beans: the firm is "restructuring the teams and parting ways with 14 teammates, people we deeply respect, who've each contributed meaningfully to our journey." Schor didn't sugarcoat it, admitting the move was driven by the company's ballooning complexity and the skyrocketing expectations from projects building on Safe.

The Complexity Conundrum

"Over the past year, complexity has grown. As the ecosystem evolved and opportunities expanded, we scaled our efforts to explore new paths. But that growth came with increased coordination challenges, and over time, it started to affect our ability to move at the pace we expect of ourselves."

Lukas Schor

Support in the Storm

Schor made it clear that Safe isn't just kicking these folks to the curb. They're rolling out the red carpet with extended garden leave, beefed-up severance, better token vesting terms, and even job placement support within the Ethereum ecosystem.

A New Dawn for Safe

The company is now pivoting hard, splitting into three new teams: a revenue-focused product company, an innovation-focused R&D lab, and an ecosystem-focused foundation. Schor's vision? Each team "will have autonomy" and be "more focused, more agile, and better aligned with what the ecosystem expects," according to the X post.

The Bybit Hack: A Catalyst for Change

This reorganization comes hot on the heels of the Bybit theft, which was directly linked to an attack on a Safe developer environment. Back in March, Safe revealed that the notorious North Korean hacking group, TraderTraitor, had compromised a Safe{Wallet} developer's laptop. They used stolen AWS session tokens to bypass multi-factor authentication like it was nothing.

The Malware Menace

The breach went down in early February when a sneaky Docker project, disguised as a "stock investment simulator," was downloaded onto a Safe developer's Mac. This wolf in sheep's clothing communicated with a shady domain, paving the way for the malware's installation.