Crypto Hiring: Monad is using its $225M haul to load up on talent

Blockworks2024/05/11 23:40

By:Blockworks

Elsewhere, a recruiter weighs in on what crypto companies want, and the head of Circle Ventures departs

A month ago, Monad raised $225 million on the promise of a high-throughput Ethereum-compatible layer-1 blockchain. It’s now putting those funds to use on the hiring front.

Kevin Canlas announced he joined the protocol as a senior designer. Canlas has previous experience in similar roles at the NFT collection Isekai Meta and smart contract security firm Cyfrin.

At Monad, Canlas will be “leading internal designs and helping startups build on the Monad ecosystem,” he said on X.

Read more: Paradigm leads $225M round for high-throughput blockchain Monad

Also this week, SungMo Park joined Monad as its APAC lead and head of Korea. Park previously served as head of business for Asia Pacific and for Korea during a nearly two year stint at Polygon Labs.

Park also becomes Monad’s first hire in the APAC region, he said on X.

Hear more: Monad: Unleashing parallel execution on the EVM

Monad isn’t done hiring yet either. Charlie Noyes, of lead Monad investor Paradigm, advertised an open role for a senior crypto economics researcher at the protocol. Monad currently lists twelve job openings in total, mostly in its engineering department.

Mini-QA: What crypto firms are looking for

Blockworks spoke with Stephen Moskowitz, founder and managing partner of Web3 recruiting firm Pyxis, about his recent observations on the crypto labor market.

Keep reading for excerpts from Blockworks’ interview with Moskowitz, edited for brevity and clarity.

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Blockworks: What sorts of roles are most in-demand at the moment?

Moskowitz: Almost every single company in crypto right now is trying to hire either a head of marketing or a [chief marketing officer], and there’s a huge supply-demand imbalance there. There’s just a lack of crypto-native marketing talent.

What I am seeing happen is that there’s a lot of title inflation in crypto, so people can go out with a head of marketing title, and they end up hiring someone that is coming from maybe a marketing manager or marketing lead type of role, or maybe they’ve got a couple of years of experience, and those people also might be more crypto-native, like someone coming out of school who spent a couple years in marketing.

I think that those people are gonna be the next crop that kind of rises up as opposed to very senior Web2 people moving into Web3. Maybe at the CMO level that might happen if they don’t need someone quite as native, but if they want somebody who’s tweeting and more like an [individual contributor]-level role, I think that it’s gonna have to be the junior talent that steps up into these more senior titles because there just aren’t enough of these people that exist.