The market crash has really rattled people all across the
The market crash has really rattled people all across the industry. Many startups had to close their doors and many had to downsize just to remain in the game. Similarly, the smart contract based company Hosho had to cut down majorly on their staff population.
With an aim to audit ICOs and smart contracts, the company was founded in July 2017 and headquartered in Las Vegas. The company made a name for themselves pretty fast and quickly rose through the ranks. They claim to be the company which has done the highest number of audits in the market.
Unfortunately, after the market came crashing, business slowed down for the group, and it went from 37 employees to 7 employees at the end of 2018.
It was obviously really difficult for Hartej Sawhney, co-founder and president of the company, to lay off so many people at once. But he said that it was becoming a matter of survival and this step was crucial for him.
“It was painful personally. I’ve never had to let go of that many people,” said Sawhney .
According to Sawhney, the slow death of the ICO market and the roadblock in terms of new smart contracts being developed was primarily responsible for Hosho’s shutting down.
Once everything around them came to a standstill, they were no longer needed and hence their organization became redundant.
Sawhney believes that the red flags regarding the imminent market crash were already there. He says
“The level of immaturity in this space in the first half of 2018 was very high.”
Hosho is a U.S.-based company overseen by U.S. regulators, which is why they tried till the end, to maintain integrity in the way they handled business. There were companies who were copying another team’s smart contract without changing muchof it, and that was seriously problematic.
Hosho also received bribes to offer some of these companies a clean bill of health for their smart contracts, but they obviously refused.
This setback obviously hurts the team, but let’s hope they can bounce back from this.