State Street Slashes DLT Developer Team as Bank Rethinks Blockchain Strategy

State Street, the global custodian bank, has taken a new direction with its blockchain strategy and cut scores of developer jobs in the process, people familiar with the situation said.

A former State Street engineer, who wanted to remain nameless, said the cuts numbered over 100 blockchain developers.

All told, State Street has 39,407 employees worldwide, according to its latest quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission).

"They are moving away from this giant in-house DLT initiative," the source said of State Street.

Ralph Achkar, managing director of digital products at State Street in London, acknowledged that it had "Streamlined some of the people in those teams," declining to give exact numbers of those let go.

Previously, a large DLT team at State Street had been working with the Hyperledger Fabric open-source permissioned blockchain software.

Most big banks face the same issues as State Street in grappling with how best to upgrade legacy systems.

In any case, State Street's loss has turned out to be a gain for others.

Moiz Kohari, the former global chief technology architect at State Street, who left the bank in April to co-found DLT-based data privacy startup Manetu, has been busy hiring.

According to its website, Manetu has so far hired former State Street senior vice president Greg Haskins, as chief technology officer; former SVP of enterprise data Conor Allen as head of product; and former managing director Binh Nguyen as chief scientist.