Crypto Hiring: Crypto hiring ‘picking up nicely’ at 2024 open

It hasn’t exactly been a happy new year in the tech job market, with Discord, Google, Amazon, Meta, Uber and several other firms announcing layoffs.

The job markets for tech and crypto can be thought of as linked to more volatile industries populated largely by programmers, but so far, crypto has dodged the tech job cuts.

Tech has seen over 5,000 layoffs so far in January, according to data compiled by layoffs.fyi. Crypto has seen just 35 layoffs this month, caused by the NEAR Foundation cutting 40% of its staff earlier this week. This is in contrast to last January, when the crypto job market was a bloodbath as firms struggled to contain the fallout from FTX’s demise.

The crypto market is in a better place now, which may explain the current lack of layoffs — and a possible pick-up in hiring.

“Anecdotal, but hiring in crypto seems to be picking up nicely ahead of the BTC spot ETF,” Rob Paone, founder of crypto recruiting firm Proof of Talent, wrote earlier this week on X.

Read more: Bitcoin ETF Tracker

“If you’ve been affected by layoffs across tech, Google, Amazon, Duolingo etc. — there are JOBS JOBS JOBS in crypto!” Jules Mossler of CoinFund said on X.

Still, not everyone is ready to open up the crypto hiring floodgates quite yet.

“PSA to new founders in the Bitcoin/crypto space. Your numbers may be looking really good at the moment. That does not mean you should start hiring a ton of people,” Alexander Leishman, CEO of custody platform River, wrote on X. “Invest in automation and build small, high-quality teams.”

StarkWare CEO steps down for personal reasons

After a yearlong leave of absence, StarkWare co-founder Uri Kolodny has stepped down from his role as CEO, Kolodny announced Thursday on X.

Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare’s president and Kolodny’s co-founder, will take over the top job.

Kolodny said he left his role at the rollup developer because of “[v]icious medical challenges at home” but would remain a board member of StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation.

StarkWare is a notable player in the zero-knowledge rollup space, a useful piece of infrastructure for scaling blockchains like Ethereum. Zk rollups submit proofs of batches of transactions for settlement on layer-1s, saving the base layer from having to process as much data.

Other notable hiring news

Decentralized AI platform Ritual brought on Arthur Hayes as an advisor. Hayes founded the crypto exchange BitMEX but received 30 months probation in 2022 after being sued by the US government.
Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis hired Omesh Agam to be its chief information security officer.
Reflexivity Research was acquired by Canada-based DeFi Technologies. Reflexivity was co-founded by crypto media personality Anthony Pompliano, who announced the deal on his personal X page. Pompliano said everyone at Reflexivity is “staying on the team.”

Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.