Former Meta chief engineer joins Web3 chat network

Sabir Alizada leaves WhatsApp to become engineering leader at Trust Machines. The company is developing an application called Console, which is presented as a decentralized solution to Discord.

Alizada worked as a Senior Software Engineer at WhatsApp, owned by Meta, for over three years. According to his LinkedIn, while there, Alizada was responsible for business functions for the messaging app, including WhatsApp Flows, WhatsApp Pay to Merchant, and WhatsApp Commerce.

At Console, Alizada will be joining a team building a Web3 chat app that’s being marketed as a reason to “ditch Discord.” The app comes with features like wallet linking and token gating.

Read more: Former Meta cryptocurrency executive plans Bitcoin’s transition to global payment network

This isn’t the first time a former Meta employee has jumped into Web3. Engineers working on the company’s Libra stablecoin went on to discover Layer 1: Aptos and Sui.

“I think decentralization of messaging is the future, not a trend,” Alizada said in a recruiting release seen by Blockworks.

Cryptocurrency reported no layoffs in December

According to data from TrueUp, there were layoffs at 20 cryptocurrency companies in January, including Coinbase, DCG, and Gemini. There were no cryptocurrency layoffs reported in December.

Read more: Coinbase laid off 950 employees and cut operating costs by 25%.

TrueUp shows Genesis was experiencing layoffs in December, but the cited report mentions layoffs that occurred earlier.

Another cryptocurrency layoff aggregation site shows a surge in layoffs in the months following the collapse of Terra and FTX in May and November 2022. This year, layoffs spiked in October when Chainalytic, Ledger, and Yuga Labs all announced cuts, but slowed in November. And December.

Other notable hiring news

• You Jie Goh, head of portfolio growth at DeFiance Capital, will leave the investment firm for blockchain platform Chromia to become head of the Asia Pacific region. DeFiance Capital was incubated by the now-defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital and has been a source of tension with Three Arrows’ liquidators.

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