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Demand for Blockchain
Devs Is Soaring—But Not
Just in Crypto

Demand for Get

Blockchain $50
Devs Is Trading
Soaring—But Bonus
Not Just in at XM AD

Crypto XM

Despite recent crypto layoffs, prospects

for blockchain developers may be set to
hold strong according to some in the
hiring industry.
By Will McCurdy
Mar 6, 2023 6 min read

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Developers with blockchain skills are in high

demand. Image: Shutterstock.

Last year was one of the most

chaotic for the broader crypto
industry.

After FTX’s collapse,

 thousands of employees were
laid off, and many firms,
especially those in the mining
sector, shut shop entirely.

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After layoffs and bankruptcies,

cryptocurrencies were also hit
hard. The industry's market
cap plummeted from roughly
$2.23 trillion at the start of
2022 to just $832 million at the
start of 2023, starting in
earnest from June onwards
and intensifying following the
implosion of FTX, according to
data from CoinGecko.

Bitcoin $22,305.88
BTC -0.84%

Powered by crypto.com

Still, software industry

insiders claim there's never
been more demand for
blockchain developers.

Demand for blockchain

programming skills increased
by 552% in 2022, as per a
report by DevSkiller,
compiling over 200,000 skills
assessments. Tech firms can
use these assessments as part
of their hiring process to vet a
developer’s proficiency.

With asset prices down and

crypto firms tightening their
belts, why the jump in
developer demand?

Blockchain beyond tokens

DevSkiller CTO Tomasz

Nurkiewicz told Decrypt that
much of this demand likely
stems from non-crypto
companies looking to scoop up
developers with industry
experience.

He said that firms could be

“taking advantage of
blockchain for different
reasons, not necessarily just
for cryptocurrencies, but for
storage or for having a
decentralized proof of
something within their own
companies.”

The idea of decentralized

storage and databases has
already attracted some serious
shows of faith. In September,
Microsoft’s venture capital
fund M12 invested $20 million

into Space and Time, a startup

into Space and Time, a startup
that aims to build a
decentralized data warehouse
with SQL-like database
capabilities.

The firm says its cryptographic

protocol, dubbed “proof-of-
SQL,” will allow blockchain
applications to perform
analytics faster.

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protocolBusiness
called Proof of
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announced it has
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Andrew million in a
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by Microsoft’s M12 fund.
Other participants in the
round include crypto
investment firm
Finance firms lookingVentures,
Framework to build
HashKey, Foresight
their own blockchains could
Ventures, SevenX
Ventures,
be another key driver Polygon,
of
Avalanche, Stratos, Hash
demand for CIB,
developers,
and Coin DCX, as well
as several Web3
according tocommunities
BlockAppsand angel
investors. Launched as part
president and CEO Kieren
of Chainlink Labs’ "St...
James-Lubin. This may be due
to some private financial
markets which are, in his
words, “illiquid and weird.”

Several of the mainstays of

traditional finance, including
Blackrock, have made bold
statements supporting
tokenization, essentially
bringing stocks, bonds, and
other traditional financial
assets onto a blockchain
network.

Moves like this could mean

hiring more developers with
blockchain experience.

Mathew McDermott,
Goldman’s Head of Digital
Assets, echoed this sentiment
in an interview with CNBC,
saying that one of his key
focuses for 2023 was on
tokenization and “digitalizing
the lifecycle.”

Game Engine Unity

Adds Verified Web3
Toolbox for
MetaMask, Solana,
Dapper Labs
Unity, one of the most
popular game developer
engines for creating 3D…
game environments, has
News
added a Gaming
“decentralization”
2 min read
category in its Asset Store
to show
Kate Irwindevs
Marthe kinds of
1, 2023
Web3 tools and protocols
they can integrate into
their video games. The
page includes 13 different
Peer-to-peer“verified
gamingsolutions”
has been that
Unity says it has vetted for
another growth area in the
past few years, and firms in
this niche will likely keep
hiring blockchain devs,
according to Nurkiewicz.

He said, “the field is still

gaining popularity despite the
issues with crypto markets and
crypto exchanges.”

A report by DappRadar and the

Blockchain Game Alliance
(BGA) found that Web3
Gaming and metaverse
projects raised $7.6 billion in
2022, a 59% rise since the year
before.

That same year, blockchain

gaming accounted for almost
50% of the on-chain activity.

More than just

speculation

More broadly, James-Lubin

from BlockApps said job
opportunities will gradually
move away from “speculative”
use cases.

“From a credit perspective,

we’re seeing a flight from
really speculative use cases,”
explained James-Lubin. “One
of the effects of the current
market sentiment and of high-
interest rates is that interest in
interest rates is that interest in

more speculative returns

farther in the future just
collapses.”

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He said that investors are also

much more cautious following
the November meltdown of
FTX and will generally want to
invest in real-world use cases,
as opposed to crypto-native
opportunities.

“It's a good or bad thing,

depending on your
perspective,” said James-
Lubin. “All of tech suddenly
now has to think about
profitability in a way that
hasn't been the case in the last
almost decade or so.”

Who’s Firing—And
Still Hiring—During
the Bitcoin Bear
Market
Editor's note: This article
was first
2022 Crypto Crash
 2022 published
Bitcoin on June
16, 2022, and last update…
on August 19.
Deep Dives Long
Cryptocurrencies andReads
the
15 min read
stock market have been
hammered
Sander by deteriorating
Lutz, André Beganski
 Sander Lutz, André Beganski
Aug 19, 2022

Due to trends like this, future

demand for blockchain
developers won’t necessarily
correlate neatly with crypto
prices.

“Crypto companies will

hopefully learn to do sensible
financial planning, in which
the asset prices are less
directly affecting their ability
to employ people, such as
keeping some of their funds in
fiat currency,” explained
James-Lubin.

Still, Nurkiewicz had

reservations that some
investors might not
understand the difference
between “the technology and
the market,” and be put off
blockchain projects anyway.

“We might see some kind of

psychological moves here,
which are not entirely
justifiable by the underlying
tech,” Nurkiewicz explained.

What's a dev to learn?

According to both Nurkiewicz

and James-Lubin, they are
seeing a large increase in
demand for people with
experience using the
programming languages
Solidity and Aetherium, as
well as people who have
experience using supporting
tools within the Ethereum
development environment
such as Hard Hat.

Though both execs told

Decrypt that it’s a great time to
be starting out as a blockchain
developer, Nurkiewicz thinks
that aspiring developers
should try to get a strong
traditional computer science
background alongside any
blockchain skills.

This could include

demonstrating practical
knowledge of key aspects of
blockchain infrastructure. This
could be having examples of
smart contracts that they
can display on their GitHub
page, or understanding how
Merkle trees work.

In terms of pay developers can

expect, DevSkiller reports that
the average salary for
blockchain-focused devs
worldwide was around
$79,983. This figure ballooned
to $177,500 for those based in
the U.S., making it one of the
best-compensated specialties
among developers.

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Crypto Labor
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Hiring Experts Say
The crypto and tech labor
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Jerome Powell, you’d think
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thriving across the board.
In an interview at the
Economic Club of
Washington, D.C. earlier
Though demand for he said, “The
this month,
labor market is
blockchain skills exploded
extraordinarily in At
strong.”
a glance, U.S. federal data
2022, the overall demand for
appears to back that up.
The Department
these skills pales in of Labor
said that total payroll
significanceemployment,
to the old guard of
not including
agricultural workers, is up
programming languages such
by 5...

as JavaScript, Java, SQL, and

Python.

According to the 2022 Stack

Overflow Survey, Solidity was
only in use by 1.45% of
developers, compared to over
65% using JavaScript or 55%
using HTML.

Additionally, blockchain
Additionally, blockchain

development is still niche. Out

of all the areas surveyed, only
2.5% of those surveyed
described themselves as pure-
play blockchain developers.

Being a “blockchain
developer” isn’t nearly as
synonymous with being an
employee at a crypto firm as in
2017. Opportunities are also
cropping up in lucrative fields
like traditional finance and
gaming.

As a result, blockchain
development could be a great
career path regardless of
market sentiment, says James-
Lubin.

But even if crypto-related jobs

dislocate from the price of
Bitcoin, he said it’s foolish for
young people to base their
entire careers on what's “hot
right now.”

Instead, the CEO said people

should focus on their true
interest as trends, be it
blockchain, AI, or delivery
apps, come and go.

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