Eclipse Labs, the Layer 2 developer, shocked the crypto space on Monday with a sweeping leadership shakeup and heavy layoffs, cutting 65% of its workforce as it shifts toward building user-focused applications.
Sydney Huang, known as 0xSydney, has been promoted from product lead to CEO, while outgoing chief Vijay Chetty, also known as Litquidity, has stepped down voluntarily.
Founded in 2022, Eclipse launched its Ethereum-connected rollup in November 2024. The firm is utilizing the Solana Virtual Machine. The company describes itself as “Solana on Ethereum,” combining Solana’s speed with Ethereum’s security.
As part of the new restructuring, the firm reduced its workforce to align resources with its new strategic direction. The company also stated, “Going forward, we’ll prioritize building a breakout application on top of Eclipse’s L2 infrastructure, with more details to come.”
The announcement follows Eclipse’s token generation event (TGE) last month, which saw the deployment of its native token, ES, on Eclipse, Ethereum, and Solana. According to CoinGecko data, the ES token has declined over 65% since the TGE, with a further 13.2% drop in the past 24 hours, trading at $0.1586 as of 10:50 p.m. ET on Monday.
Eclipse Labs Pivots to In-House App Development
Eclipse, which has historically focused on infrastructure and developer support, is now pivoting to in-house application development to attract end users.
Huang emphasized this shift on X, stating, “Our mission has always been to build infrastructure that can serve real-world applications. That remains unchanged, but our focus is evolving. The next chapter is about serving end users and building those applications in-house.”
Despite the layoffs, the firm affirmed its commitment to maintaining and enhancing its Layer 2 chain while allocating more resources to application development.
Eclipse Labs’ layoffs also come after the August 25, 2025, updates about the US-based crypto exchange Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong, firing engineers who refused to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) coding tools like GitHub Copilot and Cursor. Armstrong took this initiative as the firm’s goal is to reach 50% by the end of the quarter.
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