Cryptocurrency Recruitment Winter: Where Have the Money and People Gone Behind the 80% Job Vanishing?

This year, the cryptocurrency industry’s job market at the start of the year is freezing cold.

Data shows that in the first two weeks of January, the number of new independent positions added on major vertical job sites was only 85 to 90. In comparison, the total number of positions posted throughout January last year was 1,192. Calculated, the recruitment activity at the beginning of this year has plummeted by about 80% compared to the same period last year.

This cold data confirms the market speculation: the industry’s start-up enthusiasm is far less than last year.

If we look closely at these positions, we can identify some characteristics. Technical or engineering roles account for 60%, while marketing or business roles make up 40%. About 65% of the positions are at the level of specialists, managers, or department heads, indicating that companies prefer to recruit experienced individuals to lead core projects and drive business growth.

Most positions require more than five years of relevant experience, with management roles demanding over seven years.

When talking to candidates, I ask what currently attracts them to this industry. The answers are concentrated: market prediction and stablecoins. Therefore, approximately 60% of the recruitment demand comes from infrastructure teams, stablecoin projects, and payment or fintech startups, which is not surprising.

The competition for talent among prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket is expected to continue.

Currently, the most active recruiters are those growth-stage companies that have completed Series A or later funding rounds. A quick look at several companies’ career pages confirms this: Series A Lifi Protocol has 13 positions, Privy IO (acquired before) has 10, Crossmint has 10, Coinflow Labs has 14. Series B TurnkeyHQ has 12, Series C Raincards has 49, and Series D Anchorage has even opened 66 positions.

But even more intriguing than the number of job openings is the profound shift in talent flow.

Having worked full-time in crypto recruitment for five years, I can’t help but wonder: has any public blockchain ecosystem ever been able to challenge $ETH (Ethereum) in terms of recruitment and developer growth like $SOL (Solana) does today?

The answer is no, at least not on such a scale. In history, Polkadot and Cosmos experienced phases of rapid developer growth, but neither could make an impact on market share and sustained recruitment comparable to $ETH.

$SOL is the first ecosystem with real strength to compete.

In 2024, it set a historic record: for the first time since 2016, it surpassed $ETH in the proportion of new contributing developers. $SOL attracted over 22% of new developers in the industry, while $ETH’s share was about 16%. This was unimaginable in the past, as $ETH has almost monopolized the majority of new talent.

In just the third quarter of 2025, 23 $SOL ecosystem projects completed funding totaling $211 million, a 70% year-over-year increase in ecosystem funding.

For example, after a project completes a $13.5 million funding round—like Raikucom did in Q3 2025—its primary task is to recruit 5 to 10 senior engineers to build the core team. These roles are usually not publicly posted but are filled through investor networks, hackathons, or targeted headhunting.

As the industry evolves, the landscape of the recruitment market will inevitably change.

Through token issuance, crypto technology has driven significant growth in internet capital markets. But the reality is that most tokens issued in the past two years have seen their prices decline. I believe that by 2026, the chain reaction of this phenomenon will gradually become apparent, affecting companies’ fundraising methods, market strategies, and of course, talent strategies.

Projects that can stand out this year will be those with solid business fundamentals, genuine users, solutions to real needs, and most importantly, the ability to generate revenue.

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