Solidity and Rust developers are drawing higher wages and richer token rewards

Crypto developers who can code in programming languages Solidity and Rust have seen salaries and token rewards rise rapidly over the last year, thanks to increasing demand and a small talent pool.

Shaun Potts, the founder of crypto-focused hiring agency Plexus Resource Solutions, says that through the bear market in 2018, 2019, it was possible to find a decent developer who could work with Solidity, the language used by Ethereum, for salaries between $100,000 to $120,000. But since the beginning of Q3, 2020, it has been a totally different story.

“We’ve seen demand for Solidity developers go through the roof. We’re placing junior developers on $140-150,000, senior anything from $150-250,000 but with really decent token upsides as well,” says Potts.

Rob Paone, the founder of crypto-focused hiring agency Proof of Talent, concurs. Base salary can range from $150-225,000 before token incentives, he says.

Beyond Solidity, there has been a big increase in demand for Rust developers, largely due to the rise in popularity of Rust-based upstart Solana over the last year. Polkadot and Substrate — which have increased in popularity this year but not to the same degree — are also built on Rust.

“If I was advising somebody getting into crypto, 1-2 years ago I would have said learn Solidity,” says Potts. “Now I might say, well actually look at Rust, there’s a lot of interest in that space.” 

Growing demand for developers means they are drawing bigger salaries. But these days, competing for crypto developer talent calls for much more than offering a big salary.

Boosting token incentives

Tokens give recruiters at crypto companies a new tool to entice prospective employees.

In fact, this can cut both ways. The biggest problem for recruiters right now is that many good developers are sticking to their current roles because they are waiting for token incentives to unlock. Potts says that, particularly in the last six months, it has been very hard to poach developers from existing projects because of their token vesting schedules. 

Typically, these vesting schedules replicate the traditional equity shares model, with a one-year cliff and a four-year vesting period. Now companies have started experimenting with both the reward and the timeline.

“Base salaries don’t rise sometimes as much as the token compensation or equity does. We’ve seen pretty aggressive moves on that front,” says Paone. 

Paone says he’s seen engineers get more than 1% of early-stage start-ups in equity. He’s also seen token incentives shoot up, sometimes through a bidding war — into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. While he hasn’t seen much in the way of shortening vesting periods, he occasionally hears about crazy scenarios where they are indeed much shorter.

Potts says he has seen six-month cliffs with two-or-three year vesting periods and occasionally large, lump sums of tokens with no lock-up period whatsoever.

In the case of larger, more established protocols, Potts says tokens are usually given out at a fixed dollar amount. If a developer has a $150,000 salary, they will probably get a token reward at a 1:1 rate. That means a further $150,000 per year in the project’s native tokens, usually released over the following years through a vesting schedule.

At earlier stage companies, it’s more common to talk about percentages of the token’s total supply, says Potts. “If the startup hasn’t raised and you’re going in as a founder, but not the founder, from 5-10% is not impossible,” he says. “If they have raised and got [venture capital], if you’re going at that stage, we’re seeing maybe 1%, maybe 2% tokens.” Beyond that, early staff will be looking at potentially 25-50 basis points. 

Still, there is no formula for landing top talent. Sometimes job hunters have different priorities besides salary and token rewards. For instance, Potts, who says most jobs he deals with are remote, highlights one candidate who really wanted an office. 

According to Potts, that person ultimately turned down a role as a founding engineer, where the token rewards — at the valuation targeted by the firm— would have been worth $1.5 million.