Tech talent migrates to Web3 as large companies face layoffs

As inflation continues to grow, coupled with a looming recession, many tech firms are having to cut portions of their staff. To put this in perspective, data from Layoffs.fyi found that over 700 tech startups have experienced layoffs this year, impacting at least 93,519 employees globally. It has also been reported that tech giants like Google, Netflix and Apple are undergoing massive job cuts. 

While many of these layoffs are likely due to an economic downturn, this has resulted in an overwhelming amount of talent flocking to early-stage Web3 companies. For example, Andrew Masanto, a serial entrepreneur who has founded a number of startups, told Cointelegraph that he recently launched Nillion, a startup specializing in decentralized computation, to help ensure privacy and confidentiality for Web3 platforms.

Although Nillion is still in its early stages, the technological innovation behind the company has already proven to be appealing. Since the company’s inception in October this year, leading talent from companies like Nike, Indiegogo and Coinbase have joined the growing startup.

For instance, Slava Rubin, founder of the crowdfunding website Indiegogo, told Cointelegraph that he had recently joined Nillion as the company’s chief business officer based on the opportunity to join a startup with an innovative business model.

“The tech behind Nillion is massively innovative, as it focuses on advancing secure multiparty computation (MPC). MPC is known for being slow and unable to work for certain use cases. The risk of failure doesn’t concern me here since it’s such a huge opportunity to solve this problem,” he said.

The notion of building technology to advance MPC also attracted Lindsay Danas Cohen to Nillion. Cohen previously served as associate general counsel at Coinbase before joining Nillion this year as the company’s general counsel.

Although Coinbase announced in June that it was cutting its staff by 18%, Cohen explained in a recent blog post that she left Coinbase to join Nillion due to the opportunity to help advance privacy and data sharing through MPC. “This would be a true zero-to-one innovation,” she wrote.

While the crypto industry continues to face a bear market, it’s clear that the projects being built during this period are seen as an exciting opportunity. “I built Indiegogo during the 2008 bear market, and I think we will see the same thing in this market. In about three to five years, we will see some very strong…