Huobi employees revolt, GameFi lives, Antminer on steroids : Asia Express

Our weekly East Asian news roundup features the most important developments in the industry.

Huobi's disgruntled employees

According to local media, cryptocurrency exchange Huobi Global has terminated all year-end employee bonuses and benefits, as well as the layoff of all of its senior development staff located in Mainland China. The laid-off staff will instead be transferred to “consulting contracts” which do not enjoy the protection of Chinese labor laws. The employees also claim that their remaining paid vacation and sick leave for 2022 was zeroed out without prior notification.

In addition, executives reportedly imposed a messaging ban on all major Huobi employee chat groups. In response, employees said they formed a 400-member "rights maintenance group" and have since sought legal advice in the labor dispute. An employee reportedly wrote:

"I love my company and my work; at the same time, I support all decisions that benefit the company, and I know that with economies in recession all over the world, Huobi leaders must tighten the belt, and I can understand the lack of end-of-year bonuses. That said, I cannot accept the unreasonable exchange of employment contracts. I will fight until the end."

However, it seems that the employees still got the short end of the stick. On January 6, Cointelegraph reported that Huobi has laid off 20% of its workforce while denying insolvency rumors. But at the time of publication, sources say the exchange is operating with a loss of $10 million per month.

Founded by Chinese entrepreneurs Leon Li and Du Jun in 2013, Huobi moved its registrar to the Seychelles following the Bitcoin ban in China. Last October, its founders reportedly sold 100% of their stake to Chinese blockchain personality Justin Sun, who also founded the Tron network and is the CEO of BitTorrent. Sun merely claims to be an "advisor" to Huobi, currently the world's 17th largest cryptocurrency exchange by 24-hour trading volume.

The 100,000 downloads of the MOBA game

About a month after launch, SuperpowerSquad (SPS) has been downloaded more than 100,000 times from Google and Apple app stores, a spokesperson for online multiplayer game Battle Arena tells Cointelegraph (MOBA).

The spokesperson said that the BNB Chain-based game, which has been in development for more than two years, is looking to become a "complete GameFi blockchain ecosystem", and the next steps include cross integrations and the expanding the native SQUAD token. utility to its second and third blockchain games in development.

Superpower Squad is a multiplayer battle arena blockchain game. Source: Superpower Squad

The company has already completed the launch of its mainnet and tokens and has developed an in-game wallet address that allows users to collect hero rewards NFT and digitized objects. SPS currently has around 3,000 daily active users. The company is registered in the British Virgin Islands and its core development staff are based in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Bitmain Unveils 122 TH/s Bitcoin Miner

On January 11, Bitmain, an application-specific IC manufacturer based in Beijing, launched the new Antminer S19j Pro+. The company claims that the new Bitcoin miner is 10% more powerful than the S19j Pro, with a hash rate of 122 terrahash per second. The company states that it is now a truly global Antminer:

"In addition to its excellent performance, it fits in most global data centers...