TALENT IS MOVING DIFFERENT

For better or worse, the “believe in something” era is over, and high quality candidates are no longer willing to “take a haircut” on salary to “index for upside” in a seed-stage startup. People working in crypto are more jaded than ever, and are being more diligent with decisions, as opposed to just vibe-hiring through their careers.

Candidates are tired of listening to founders pitch the pump-and-dump playbook. We’ve been through it, cried in the casino, healed from our trauma, and left with the same bag we came in with. While it sucks to see people giving up the dream of generational wealth from their first job’s token allo, I see this as a strong signal that our industry is hitting a long-overdue maturation point. From my perspective, this cycle has been about serious people doing serious things.

“AI will be reduced to 4 major companies before you realize it. Stablecoin payments are in rapid adoption, and the hottest sector of tech, outside of AI,” said Alex Nadeau, Head of Talent at Sphere Labs. “Why would you want to be sidelined now? It's the time we have all been waiting for.” Alex is one of the core recruiters who built out the OG Solana Labs team, and recently joined Sphere – the top Solana project building payment infrastructure.

With that said, it’s been interesting to track the evolution of what kinds of projects our candidates get excited about. As we approach 4 years in business at Up Top, we’re reminded of the ghost trends of crypto past that once had bullish talent in a chokehold, from DeFi summer, followed by the NFT / Metaverse wave, to ZK, modular rollups & L2s, restaking, and of course, AI x blockchain. This year, the builders are back to focusing on fundamentals. Payments. Stabecoins. RWAs.

“Venture is pretty fucked right now,” Danish Chaudhry of Paper Ventures admits. “Most builders are feeling disenchanted because they built shit that nobody wanted.”

As a result, there’s been a shortage of creative, unique, and exciting projects that people are willing to take a risk to work on.

People have asked – why have things been slow at Up Top? Are you struggling to get good candidates? The answer is, no – we have plenty of good candidates, and our crypto-native network is still with us. The reality is that there haven't been many interesting projects that these people are motivated to move for.

The clear consolidation that’s happening in the industry this year is having a major impact in how candidates are evaluating hiring opportunities. “Crypto is too fragmented” has been one of those classic side event VC talking points for the past few cycles. This year, the market is solving for it through M&A. With 2025 being the breakout season, we’re seeing an ~85% increase in deal count YoY, with deal size trending up, and on pace to hit a record-breaking 330+ mergers and acquisitions in the space.

On top of that, we’re also finally seeing some clear winners being chosen in certain categories. Only ~9 L1/L2s have raised seed stage funding this year, as opposed to the 60+ new chains that raised seed rounds in 2024, indicating that maybe we are realizing that we should be focused on scaling and improving what we already have. The result is that people don’t want to work on new infrastructure projects anymore – the real ones are thinking about tangible ways they can apply their skills to keep pushing this thing forward and contribute in new, meaningful ways.

With institutional capital driving M&A, and mainstream adoption starting to feel more attainable, we enter an execution-focused environment that feels like a stark contrast to the scrappy and yappy we needed to get off of the ground floor. This part will require us to tap into a different skillset, a different network, and a different approach to the work.

Remember “degen scores?” Air-drops and yield-farming strategies on the resumes is no longer a flex (it never really was). If this is the whole brand you identify with today, you may be seen as a liability. That’s not to say the job can’t be done by our day ones, but it means they will be challenged to try new things. For those who have grown up in this industry, I see this phase as an incredible opportunity for professional development.

One noteworthy example is the Don of ETHBushwick, DeFi Dave, going to Cap Labs – the leading stablecoin protocol on MegaETH. “Stablecoins have proven themselves to be the practical widespread use case of blockchain technology. Cap represents a genuine innovation in that field and my experience, skill set, and network made me an excellent fit for the project and team,” he said, as he allegedly lit an American Spirit, indoors, ushering in a new era of banks in Bushwick with the TradFi Dave persona.

As we evolve internally and think about growing along with the rest of the space, it starts with reaffirming our commitment to the OG mission, which was always to be career advocates, supporters, and agents for the community members who embraced us with trust, friendship, and an abundance of business opportunities off the rip.

As our top projects evolve into more commercial organizations, we want to make sure that we at Up Top are representing and pitching them properly to the new demographics of talent they will need to get to the next level. We’ll need to be more patient ourselves, and adjust our candidate’s expectations to match a more mature corporate process. I share these observations to help inform those who want to get ahead of the curve, adjust their professional narratives, and continue to drive shareholder value.

— Dan 🤝