Written by: willthetrill
Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News
Is the recruitment market in the cryptocurrency industry saturated? The answer is both yes and no. Although there have been sporadic layoffs in December, overall, the recruitment momentum in the fourth quarter remains strong.
To uncover the truth, I specifically retrieved data from major vertical recruitment websites in the crypto industry for the first two weeks of January 2026 (this data does not include official company recruitment pages), and the results show that only 85-90 new independent positions were added during this period.
The start of this year has been quite quiet. In contrast, the data from January 2025 was impressive, with the number of job postings in a single month reaching 1,192, making it the month with the highest recruitment volume for the entire year of 2025.
Data as of January 12, 2026
In the first two weeks of January 2025, the average daily job posting volume was about 38; whereas in the same period in 2026, the average daily job posting volume was only about 6.5.
The recruitment activity at the beginning of January has declined by about 80% compared to the same period last year. This data confirms the market's general speculation: the industry's start this year is far less heated than last year.
Based on the detailed analysis of the above job data, the main characteristics of the current recruitment market are as follows:
- Job type distribution: Technical/engineering positions account for 60%, while non-technical/market expansion positions account for 40%.
- Level distribution: Mid to senior-level positions such as specialists/senior specialists/managers/department heads account for about 65%. This signals that companies are prioritizing the recruitment of experienced talent to lead key projects related to core product development and business growth.
- Experience requirements: Most positions require candidates to have over 5 years of relevant experience; management positions require over 7 years of experience.
When screening candidates during interviews, I often ask them: What attracts you to the cryptocurrency industry right now? The answers usually boil down to two: predicting the market and stablecoins. Therefore, it is not surprising that about 60% of recruitment demand is concentrated in infrastructure teams, stablecoin projects, and payment/fintech infrastructure startups. Additionally, the talent competition between the platforms Kalshi and Polymarket continues, and this battle is expected to persist.
The most aggressive recruitment actions are currently being taken by companies in their growth phase (i.e., those that have completed Series A funding or above). A quick glance at several companies' recruitment pages and information from the Ashby platform can confirm this conclusion.
- Series A funded companies: Lifi Protocol has 13 open positions, Privy IO (acquired) has 10 open positions, Crossmint has 10 open positions, Coinflow Labs has 14 open positions;
- Series B funded companies: TurnkeyHQ has 12 open positions;
- Series C funded companies: Raincards has 49 open positions;
- Series D funded companies: Anchorage has 66 open positions.
However, what is perhaps more intriguing is the change in talent flow.
I have been working full-time in cryptocurrency recruitment for 5 years and can't help but reflect: "Has there ever been a public chain ecosystem that could challenge Ethereum's dominance in recruitment and developer growth like Solana?" The answer is no, at least not to this scale.
Looking back in history, other public chains like Polkadot and Cosmos have experienced phases of rapid developer growth, but they have never been able to exert an equivalent impact on market share and sustained recruitment scale as Ethereum.
Solana is the first ecosystem with real strength to compete with Ethereum. In 2024, it set a historic record, achieving for the first time since 2016 that the proportion of new contributing developers exceeded that of Ethereum. Solana attracted over 22% of new developers in the cryptocurrency industry, while Ethereum's proportion was about 16%. This phenomenon is rare, considering that in the past, Ethereum almost monopolized the vast majority of new talent.
Data source: Electric Capital "Developer Report," as of January 14, 2026
In just the third quarter of 2025, 23 Solana ecosystem projects completed financing, raising a total of $211 million, with ecosystem financing scale growing by 70% year-on-year.
For example, when a project completes $13.5 million in financing (like Raikucom in the third quarter of 2025), its primary task is to recruit 5-10 senior engineers to build the core engineering and market expansion teams. Such positions often do not appear on public recruitment websites but are filled through investor/angel investor networks, hackathon events, and targeted headhunting.
The cryptocurrency industry is continuously evolving, and the landscape of the recruitment market will also change accordingly. Through token issuance, cryptocurrency technology can drive the maximum development of internet capital markets, but the reality is that the prices of the vast majority of tokens issued in the past two years have been in a downward trend.
I believe that in 2026, the chain reaction of this phenomenon will gradually become apparent, affecting companies' risk financing methods, market expansion strategies, and of course, talent recruitment strategies.
Projects that can stand out this year will undoubtedly be those with solid business fundamentals, a real user base, solutions to actual needs, and most importantly, the ability to generate revenue.
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