Earning in Crypto

The only 30 mins guide with no-bs and candid insights — you’ll need to start earning in crypto/web3 part-time or full-time

The TCP/IP Visa is the new H1B Visa ~ Akshay BD

Enabling talent from around the world with an internet connection to earn at U.S. dollar rates has been the driving force behind Superteam, the talent layer of the Solana Ecosystem.

Crypto uniquely facilitates this by being inherently global and natively remote-first. With just a crypto wallet (eg. Phantom), one can now start earning in USDC and access all global opportunities.

Crypto goes through its own cycles, and despite the ups and downs, the total market cap of crypto projects remains above $2 trillion, reflecting the abundance of capital. With giants like Stripe, Visa, PayPal, and BlackRock now heavily focused on crypto, it reflects that this space is more than just a giant online casino — it’s the foundation for next-gen financial infra.

Why Stripe Acquired Bridge at $1.1 Billion

Personally, I’m able to earn in USDC at U.S. rates while collaborating with talent from around the world, all from one of the most remote corners of the globe — a small town on the India-Bhutan border.

Now, I want to help 1000s of talent across the globe to start earning in crypto and make their way up in crypto careers.

This essay is a guide for anyone looking to get into crypto from an earning perspective. It covers various earning opportunities and provides practical tips on how to pursue them.

Throughout, we’ll include links to real-life examples, actionable tips, and resources. This guide is the culmination of numerous interviews and insights from talent earning in crypto.

Broadly the structure of the essay is:

1. Why work in Crypto? [Things to keep in mind]
2. Different Ways to Earn [first $1k, $10k, $100k, and $500k]
3. Making a Career in Crypto [Pro tips to land and negotiate jobs]
4. Be Crypto-native [Actionable tips]

Firstly, why not just trade crypto first, instead of earning?

While crypto might seem like just another asset for trading, earning in crypto helps you see it as much more than that. Earning forces you to develop skills and be valuable to a project. While one can always invest or trade their way up or down, earning your first crypto makes a significant difference. It helps you develop the judgment; ultimately, investing is just leverage on that judgment. By contributing (to earn) in crypto, you try out new products (to earn) and realize the value of crypto beyond just trading.

It’s worth developing judgment first; because once you have it, trading or investing becomes much easier. Earn by applying your talents and contributing to the ecosystem. You’ll gain skills, earn money, and, in the process, inadvertently pick up the instincts needed to avoid losing money in obvious ways. That is the real ‘crypto onboarding.’

Why Even Work in Crypto?

Apart from high $$ (for eg. fresher developers getting paid $100k-$200k/year), crypto offers unique pros and cons:

1. Contextual — Crypto is highly contextual. While many skills overlap with non-crypto/Web2 jobs, a solid grasp of crypto concepts (e.g., AMMs) and staying updated with developments (mostly via Twitter/X) is essential.
   Companies or startups are called “projects” in crypto; “protocols” are underlying tech.
2. Portfolio > Pedigree: Pedigree matters much less in crypto. Obviously, you’ll have an advantage in most roles if you’re based in the US and studied at Harvard, but it’s not the only path to success here. The work you’ve done so far matters more.
3. Identity: While it’s possible to remain pseudonymous for part-time commitments, most full-time roles will require you to verify your identity while maintaining a pseudonym publicly. You can build a reputation by networking, building, tweeting, trading, etc. If you prove you’re capable, people will hire you without knowing your name, age, gender, race, or background.
4. Ecosystem Matters: Think of each blockchain ecosystem (e.g., Solana or Base) as a city. Just like every city has roads, hospitals, and schools, but the economic activity varies, with some being more bustling and developed, each blockchain has its own set of apps. While you can keep traveling, you need at least one city as your home base. Naturally, you’d want to live in a city with the best quality of life and the most opportunities.
   Similarly, you have to pick an ecosystem you truly believe in and a specific sector (e.g., Solana DeFi). The more specific your ecosystem and sector, the faster you become an expert in that niche — you can also pick up a specific protocol (eg. Jupiter) to focus on. Remember, concentrated bets yield higher rewards!
5. Inherently Remote and 24/7: Since crypto operates 24/7, you’ll be mentally plugged in around the clock, which can be quite stressful, especially with prices constantly fluctuating. Anecdotally, people find it hard to disconnect from crypto, even on vacations, partly because it’s highly entertaining.
   The price volatility greatly impacts the overall sentiment of the crypto community — at one moment, it feels like the ‘future of finance,’ and at another, a ‘giant online casino.’
   However, this also comes with much higher flexibility than any other industry as 80–90% is remote. Once you are ingrained well in the industry, it feels like a game you play with your friends.
6. Free range: Freelancing in crypto is easier due to the fluid nature of the work, where output is what matters most. You can work on 2–3 projects simultaneously, making it simpler to earn from multiple income streams.
   Crypto teams are typically very lean (around 7–8 people) and therefore, tend to outsource tasks like teaser videos, branding, landing page design, and other smaller projects.
7. Super-approachable Founders: It’s easy to reach out to founders in crypto since they’re active on Twitter and Telegram. A simple hack is to DM them with product feedback or suggestions for improvement — they’ll respond most of the time.
8. Types of Roles: In any skill-centric task, where you get rewarded for your skills and time while having almost no downsides. Based on skills, major roles can be:

• Development: Frontend, Backend, and Smart Contract
• Design: UI/UX or Product design, Video Editor/Motion graphics
• Marketing: Content/Research/Writing, Community Moderation, GTM/Strategy folks, Analytics, and Business Development

Getting Started: Different Ways to Earn

Just like life, crypto is a non-linear journey. However, for simplicity, we can divide this into the following stages:

For simplicity, all earning opportunities will be categorized as: First $1,000, $10,000, $100,000, and then $500,000. However, there are always exceptions and one can earn way up or below.

First $1000+:

Publicly available and competitive tasks that pay to complete certain tasks. For example, projects on Superteam Earn have been offering thread bounties, where any participant (typically 50–100 submissions) can write a thread, and the top 3 winners receive a total of $1,000-$1,500.

Tip: Superteam Earn is currently the best platform to discover Solana-focused bounties. While bounties were quite popular during the ‘21–22 bull cycle, their popularity has significantly declined, with many bounty platforms shutting down.

However, a few other platforms like BountyCaster, Bepro, Taikai, Dework, and Researchhub (for core sciences) are worth checking out. For data analysts particularly, worth checking platforms like Dune or Flipside Crypto.

2. Learn-to-Earn:

There are also learn-to-earn platforms like Layer3, Intract, and Zealy which allow you to learn about different projects through quests, sometimes incentivized by the projects themselves.

Tip: Learn-to-Earn platforms do take time, but are definitely worth to try out new projects/products and realize the value of crypto as a user.

3. Ambassador Programs:

Aka “Fellowship” or “Contributor” Programs. One of the most underrated ways to earn your way up, particularly, when you are uncertain of how exactly you can contribute in Crypto and you aren’t a developer.

Why Ambassador Programs?
Community is the foundation of any ecosystem’s growth flywheel and every crypto project wants to build an active community. When community members evangelize a project, it attracts more app developers to join the ecosystem. Ambassador programs provide an easy way to kickstart an early community.

Tips:

1. Pick 4–5 favorite protocols of the sector of your interest, which have high-quality teams or VC backing.

2. Ideally, pick pre-token launch projects as they can potentially include you in airdrop lists while launching tokens.

3. Study the protocol deeply and make sure the application is top-notch. Preferably, contribute (eg. write content or make memes to help other discord members or develop tooling) before even applying; shows your genuine interest. A clean Twitter/X with 500+ followers gives good leverage in applications.

For instance, 10–15 members from Superteam were Wormhole Fellows, helping Wormhole with content and developer tooling and each Wormhole fellow received an airdrop of 14k W ($18K at launch price). Back in 2022, Solana India fellows received $2.5k as a stipend for learning Solana development and building a project for 2 months — most fellows are now working full-time for top projects in the Solana ecosystem! There are some top-tier advanced fellowships like Turbine3 fellowships, TLDR fellowship for DeFi, and Paradigm Fellowship.

4. DePIN — Earn tokens to contribute:

With a market cap of $30 billion+, DePIN (Decentralised Physical Infra Network) is one of the hottest sectors, where there are two sides:

1. Supply Side: Incentivised by tokens, contributors contribute to the network. For Helium, this means contributors adding more hotspots.
2. Demand Side: can be either individuals or companies. For Helium, this is adding more consumers buying mobile data.

I have previously written a comprehensive deep dive on DePIN; read this for a market overview, particularly for DePIN on Solana.

There are two major ways of earning in DePIN:

1. Non-Device Dependent (Passive): Anyone with a mobile phone or laptop can start earning this. For instance, you can start earning passive grass points by simply downloading the web extension and connecting your browser. The Grass network uses the device’s unused internet bandwidth for web data scraping, offering rewards in return. These points might be converted to tokens, earning you $$ if you truly believe in the project.
   Another example is Superteam’s DePIN project, Proto, where users can map via mobile devices. It has enabled users to earn points in return for data collected ($1.2 million in value), which will be potentially converted into tokens. Besides, users have also earned via reward drops and for conducting mapathons ($200 on average). Holding Solana Mobile Pass also keeps giving various ecosystem airdrops (eg. SEND airdrop)
   More examples: Synesis, Uprock, Ambient, Roam, Brave
2. Hardware/Device Dependent (Active): These require specialized hardware devices and are generally more rewarding as they involve higher friction/cost to set up. Examples:

• Hivemapper is a global mapping network that collects up-to-date, high-resolution data (4K street-level imagery) using vehicle dashcam. Hivemapper offers dashcams priced between $300 and $650, which reward contributors with $HONEY tokens for sharing footage and metadata with the network (can be also on-demand via bounties, also called bursts). This model allows contributors to earn a share of the value generated by the demand for mapping data.
• GPU-based networks like Render, Ionet, Akash, Aethir, and Nosana, where you supply your idle GPU computing resource and earn their native tokens.

You can discover more DePIN projects via DePIN Hub.

5. X to Earn Apps — Earn for fun tasks:

Similar to DePIN, here also you get rewarded for engaging — Low effort. Low reward. This can range from tap-to-earn (eg. Hamster Kombat) to vape-to-earn (eg. puffpaw).

Further, there are content monetization protocols as well like DRiP and Access Protocol which allow creators to earn. Referrals are another great way to earn, especially if you have strong distribution — almost every popular crypto app has a referral program. Due to the high transaction values in crypto, referrals can generate a sizable side income.

Next $10,000+:

1. Freelancing:

This is one of the best ways for anyone to earn their first $1,000, $10,000, and beyond. Typically, the process looks like this: build a strong portfolio (you can initially include your non-crypto credentials) → find opportunities → strengthen your portfolio and referral network → earn more.

You can find freelancing opportunities via:

1. Open gigs at platforms like Superteam Earn
2. Twitter — Build your personal distribution by sharing your work publicly and engaging with potential clients’ posts. For example, 0xdesigner shares design prototypes/mockups of various dApps, making him one of the top designers in the space and leading to a lot of inbound work.
3. Referrals — Major source to acquire and convert maximum clients.

Tip: It’s essential to let a few very well-connected folks (eg. your friends who work as BD on a project) that you are open to freelancing and share a portfolio with them. This way, they can refer you whenever they come across a good opportunity.

Getting paid in crypto is much easier than fiat. If you want a 2–5x premium in pay, you can also get paid in tokens (locked or liquid) as these projects always have surplus tokens in their foundation/treasury and want to distribute to the most aligned folks.

Creating an agency
Agencies are a natural extension of freelancing, where you essentially play the arbitrage game by leveraging your brand, distribution, and connections — for example, charging $50/hour while paying sub-talent $25/hour.

For instance, Superteam India members Tushar and Aditya each freelanced on 10+ projects before joining forces to form Little Unusual, a media production house that has now become the go-to agency for launching videos and events on Solana. Content researchers/creators like Ignas (Pink Brains) and Gumshoe (Dotpivot) began by posting insightful threads and posts and later started their own agencies.

A few popular agencies for inspiration include:

1. Content/Marketing: Scrib3, Myosin, Fortyiq
2. Development: Builderz, Hoodies, Humandone, Solana Turbine
3. GTM: Renaud Partners, Dotpivot
4. Design and Branding: Dacoit Design, Invisible North
5. Events, production, and video: Goatfish, Little Unusual
6. General Consulting: Blast Ctrl

If you’re looking to freelance or eventually build your own agency, working for an existing agency is a great entry point to hone your skills, build your network, and learn the inner workings of the business.

2. Grants:

Grants are a critical component of crypto, where the grant provider wants to encourage and support talented people to build things that benefit the ecosystem. The major source of grants can be:

1. Blockchain i.e L1 or L2 foundations (eg. Solana Foundation Grants) — if you are a project building on a blockchain, particularly, public goods (like critical infra/app or research content) that benefit the ecosystem.
2. Protocol DAOs or foundations (eg. Jupiter Grants) — building tooling or making content, which helps the protocol.

These can be divided into:

1. Short-term grants ($1K to $100K), which include non-protocol grants, like writing content or building open-source tooling.
   For example, Superteam has been running instagrants for almost 2 years now, where anyone can apply for grants up to $10k and get the results in 48–72 hours.
2. Long-term grants ($100K to $10 Million), which are typically given out by blockchains (L1/L2s) or protocols with huge treasury — ideally funded by foundations with > $100 million treasuries. These are generally given out for long-term research grants (eg. Tinydancer), where you have to dedicate 6 to 24 months, and are often milestone-based. Blockchains often also give out huge BD grants to attract protocols or big brands to adopt them (sometimes in millions; non-equity — eg. zksync x lens grants).

Tips:

Just like with jobs, always seek referrals, especially for above $10K grants.

Don’t hesitate to request grants for public goods (e.g., content or tools that benefit the ecosystem positively without clear paths to monetization).

Newer blockchains or ecosystems often offer larger grants to projects building on them, but at the end of the day, you should genuinely believe in the ecosystem.

If you’re serious about scaling your project 100x, don’t rely solely on grants. Grants do put constraints on your projects. Think of grants as salary equivalents, particularly when you have a set grants milestone. You’re essentially getting paid (let’s say, $50k in 6 months) to complete those milestones.

Check out all Superteam Earn Grants or just go to the respective project’s site and you will find the grants section, particularly, if they have set up a foundation or DAO (eg. drift.foundation/grants). Here’s another story of a contributor getting a grant from JUP DAO.

3. Hackathons:

Hackathons are another great way to earn your first $$, particularly, if you’re someone who loves building products. Almost every ecosystem keeps conducting hackathons and they typically have a total prize pool, ranging from $5k to $5 Million. You can think of hackathons as competitive alternatives to grants, where teams compete to build products/protocols. Particularly for Solana Hackathons, hackathon.superteam.fun is a great resource to get started.

Tip: If you’re a developer or looking to start your own project, hackathons are one of the best places to build your side project or MVP, with the added motivation to compete and win prizes.

4. Open-source or Permissionless Contribution:

Some projects are very good at rewarding open-source or permissionless contributions (e.g., solving open issues on GitHub or writing a thread/blog about the project without being asked). In addition to landing jobs or gigs with these projects, such contributions can also lead to inclusion in airdrop lists. For instance, BONK airdropped 25 Billion BONK (~$500k at current prices) to Superteam/LamportDAO members who were actively contributing to the Solana ecosystem (though, unfortunately, almost everyone sold it at around $1k :/). Jupiter also had goodcats, where they airdropped JUP tokens to top permissionless contributors (e.g., writing threads or integrating Jupiter SDKs).

Next $100,000+:

1. Jobs — Joining Projects Full Time:

The endgame for anyone to work in crypto full-time. While one can be independent and freelance for/take grants from multiple projects and across range of functions (like design and content), many might still prefer to work for a project full-time as it offers:

1. Stability and more sense of ownership
2. Token upside (10x opportunity)
3. Learn from hugely talented founders and teammates.

Tips:

1. Kirat, another Superteam member has a great video on his journey to get a job of $400k+ annual salary in less than 1 year and freelance for multiple clients.

2. Apart from job aggregator portals, almost every company, VCs (eg. jobs.multicoin.capital/jobs), and Ecosystem (eg. jobs.solana.com) have a job portal — applying directly on this will rarely lead to any conversion. Like traditional jobs, it’s always better to directly reach out to founders (via Twitter) or via referrals (via Telegram) — typically crypto founders are much easier to reach out to.

We’ll have a dedicated section on making a career in crypto/web3 later in the essay.

2. Content Creator aka KOL:

KOL (Key Opinion Leader), is a term widely used to describe anyone who has sufficient followers, generally 10k+ on Twitter/YouTube. Generally, they have good reach, influence, and respect and projects use them as a marketing strategy to acquire users or build a narrative. If you’re a KOL, you typically get paid per post or receive advisory token allocations to shill (promote) a particular project.

3. Airdrop/Yield Farming:

Airdrops essentially involve giving tokens to early users or the community for FREE! (Though, not entirely free.) For projects, airdrops are a cost of user acquisition (CAC), where they spend tokens (typically 10% of the allocation) on early users who help the project achieve a specific KPI, like TVL or volumes.

With the prospect of fat airdrops, industrial-level airdrop farmers have emerged, creating thousands of wallets to simulate real users. This practice is known as a Sybil attack — Sybil meaning fake users. If you see an airdrop being farmed by Sybils, it’s best to stay away!

Tips:

1. Be early to a new ecosystem with a novel mechanism. For example, Jito, Celestia, and Arbitrum were category leaders who launched their tokens unexpectedly, resulting in sizable airdrops. Farming the 69th L2 will likely disappoint you, as millions of Sybil wallets and market saturation often lead to lower valuations. For example, holding $500 worth of JitoSOL for one month resulted in a $15K+ airdrop at launch, as there were fewer than 10k wallet addresses, while Jito was a $3 billion+ protocol. Surprise airdrops are always the best.
2. Think of airdrop farming or yield farming as a bet on the project (and its ecosystem) with your time and money. The earlier you participate, the riskier it is, and therefore the rewards are higher — typical risk-reward ratio. The larger your capital, the greater the potential reward. You don’t need to farm hundreds of protocols; just keep using new ones you like organically, as a user. Build your on-chain footprint, and you’ll receive airdrops sooner or later. The meta keeps changing — airdrop farming has been the trend for the last few months, and the next method of community token distribution may be different. But the basic principle remains the same: make concentrated early bets on underrated projects.

4. Running a Validator/Node:

Most blockchains are inherently Proof-of-stake (eg. Ethereum or Solana) and hence, require validators for running the blockchain. Solana validators, for instance, are earning high profits due to Solana Network generating huge fees. In return, they get rewards. Running testnet validators also give good rewards in the form of airdrops as soon as these networks launch their mainnet and native token (for eg. Celestia or Avail).

Next $500K+:

While not very relevant to this piece, this typically involves angel investing/advisory token allocation, Yield Farming, Market Making, VC investing, or taking CXO roles at the projects. In crypto (or in life), to earn a bigger amount, you have to take higher risks. The rule of thumb here is: that if you genuinely believe in a project’s potential and that it’s underrated, it’s worth taking the risk. The ROI here can be insane sometimes i.e you earn a huge amount for the effort you put in.

To summarise, we can also divide the earning opportunities into two major categories (or opposite sides of the spectrum):

1. Structured and Non-Speculative (skill-centric) — Jobs, Bounties, Grants, Fellowships, and Open-source/Permissionless contribution.
2. Unstructured and Speculative (more riskier) — DePIN, Airdrop Farming, and Yield Farming.

Making Career in Crypto/Web3:

Here are some practical tips to help you get started in your crypto career:

How Much Can I Make in Crypto?

Highly subjective, but it pays well and since it’s denominated in USD, you get global rates. It’s simply a good proxy for working for a Silicon Valley startup while working from anywhere in the world. The 2023 Crypto Compensation Report gives a rough idea about compensation ranges (once you’re skilled enough) i.e typically you will get between $80k to $300k, depending on role, experience, credibility, and location.

Source: Dragonfly 2023 Crypto Compensation Report

Few observations:

1. US-based companies tend to offer higher compensations across all roles, but they have a preference for US-based employees.
2. Avoid “cost of living bias” i.e adjusting salaries based on the geography, particularly if you are from non-US/Europe geographies to bag maximum compensation — generally quality early-stage companies don’t have cost of living bias.
3. Most companies are comfortable paying in fiat (your local currency) via Deel or Gusto, if you are employed full-time — i.e technically, you will be getting paid and paying taxes just like any other job.

Tweet Link

Role-specific Insights:

A brief overview of key insights you’ll need to land roles in specific functions:

1. Marketing:

In crypto, marketing is primarily Twitter/X marketing. Twitter is the town hall for Crypto and the primary communication channel for crypto projects.
An important caveat: Attention is very scarce, with fewer than a million active on-chain users. The consumer target audience can be divided into the following groups:

• Whales: Individuals with a net worth of more than $1 million.
• Degens: Power users of DeFi, typically making transactions in the $5–10k range.
• Retail: Users who take small memecoin trades or are mostly here for airdrop farming (<$1k average transaction size).
• Normies: Newcomers to crypto.

While normies and retail traders are important for protocols like pump.fun (memecoin-focussed), whales and degens help pump your TVL/volume figures, hence, if you nail marketing for whales and degens, you would be a huge asset to the project. For 25–30% of crypto projects like Infra or dev tooling (eg. Helius), developers are also major target users.

Key tasks for a marketer are:

a. Twitter Content: Typically involves writing threads or posts on:

• Product launches
• Educational content
• Reply guy’ing (replying and shilling to popular accounts to get attention — doing this effectively without being perceived as spammy is an art).

A few favorite project accounts to take inspiration from: Jumper, Phantom, and Solana.

b. KOL Campaigns: Key Opinion Leader (KOL), a fancy term for influencers (eg. Ansem or Gumshoe) is a critical way of marketing. One has to: identify relevant KOLs -> talk to them: strategize the way of marketing and decide on the incentives -> engage and help them put out content.

c. Blogs and Documentation: Particularly, for DeFi and Infra-based projects, maintaining documentation (eg: docs.jup.ag) is critical as this is the primary source of truth for any power users/developers.

Marketing Presentation by a16z Crypto is a good resource to get started.

• Product Management: Unfortunately, very few projects hire product managers in crypto. Only a few consumer products (eg. Phantom) hire product managers. Old but this guide by Lenny on Web3 PM is a good read.
  However, with a focus on consumers rising in crypto, I genuinely believe Crypto PMs will be in high demand in the coming months.
• Business Development: Apart from conventional BD functions, BD in Crypto is mostly coordinating with different teams on Telegram to figure out integration and representing your projects in conferences. Having a strong market understanding and connections is a huge plus for any BD role.
  Do watch Seraphim’s candid talk for BD tips.

In lean teams (7–8 members), BD and Marketing is handled by a single team member and sometimes the combo is also called “growth” role.

There are also other non-development roles, such as VC analysts, researchers, and more.

2. Development:

Unsurprisingly, developers are the most in-demand and highest-paying roles and are the lifeblood, especially in a space where everything is driven by code. Broadly, there are three major components:

1. Frontend — Quite similar to Web2.
2. Backend — Similar to Web2, but requires an understanding of how various on-chain components and integrations with different protocols/smart contracts work.
3. Smart Contracts — While the language of smart contracts depends on the blockchain (e.g., Rust for Solana, Move for Aptos/Sui, Solidity for Ethereum), having a solid grasp of smart contract logic and developing that acumen goes a long way in the hiring process.

Every chain offers plenty of resources to start learning development (for example, Solana has Intro to Solana Development and there’s a curated Solana development guide along with a Backend/Frontend curated guide as well). Once you’ve mastered the basics, reviewing open-source protocol codebases and contributing to OSS is the best next step.

Tip: Crypto inherently sets a higher bar for quality developers but is equally rewarding. If you’re a strong developer with solid math skills, becoming a DeFi/infra smart contract developer is your best shot at maximizing your earnings. A research-oriented approach can further boost your salary to $150k+/year. That said, frontend and backend developers with basic crypto knowledge are also in high demand ($50–150k/year).

DevRel: Another important role in Crypto, particularly for Infra and dev tooling projects, whose target audience is developers. As a DevRel, your job is to attract developers to build on top of your protocol or use your tooling. You’ll be responsible for maintaining documentation, conducting technical workshops, and serving as the interface between the protocol and external developers.

Proof of Work — How to Bag Roles

Proof of Work is essentially your pitch or portfolio. It refers to anything you do that:

1. Is created or displayed in public
2. Demonstrates your knowledge of crypto

This includes writing, recording, or tweeting about your work. Superteam Earn Profile

Proof of work can be:

1. For developers — Build side projects and share a demo (eg. Blinks or Aryan’s Telegram Mini Apps projects).
2. For marketers — writing blogs/threads or growing a Twitter/X account.
3. For BD — your twitter/X feed or how connected you are.

Figuring out how to build Proof of Work can be tricky — it can simply be a Notion file that includes all your work, as well as links to your Medium/Behance profiles, portfolio website, and more. The best advice is to keep working and sharing publicly. For example, promote your work by replying to popular accounts or permissionlessly completing a task (e.g., creating designs for a project).

On Tokens vs Traditional Equity:

Firstly, there are differences in allocation. For eg:

1. Traditional startup equity — 20% founders, 20% ESOPs, and 60% investors.
2. Crypto tokens — 20% team (founders+employees), 30% investors. 50% treasury/community

While the team and investor allocation are way less in a crypto project, higher valuation multiples (FDV) make it a lucrative deal for all early backers. Tokens do have some inherent benefits as compared to traditional equity:

1. Faster time-to-market and liquidity (Token launch is typically done in 12–36 months, as opposed to typical 8–10 years for IPO). Typically, the cliff is 6 months as opposed to 1 year for startup equity.
2. More globally accessible.
3. Liquid unlocked tokens come with benefits like — lending, staking, yield farming, etc in DeFi. The infamous Curve founder using their tokens as collateral for borrowing is an example.
4. No dilution — for fixed supply tokens i.e your 0.1% of the total token allocation remains 0.1%, whereas, for traditional startups, equity keeps getting diluted with each new round.
5. At the time of token launch, most good projects are lean teams (~10–15 folks), which gives better token allocation. For instance, tensor was just 7–8 folks when they launched their token at $1 billion FDV! While the token allocation hugely varies, on average an employee is given 0.1 to 0.3% of the total token allocation.

While it’s easier for DeFi and Infra projects (eg. blockchain or DEXs or Lending/Borrowing projects) to offer tokens, for projects like Wallets (eg. Phantom), offering tokens can be tricky and as an employee, you will be offered equity (with an option to convert tokens if they launch one).

Tips: Before negotiating for token allocation vs base salary, just put yourself in the shoes of an investor and think if you would genuinely bet on this project or not.

How to Decide on Joining a Project (company)?

Pre-token launch:

It’s quite similar to vetting any company i.e you check the founder’s background and the quality of VCs and angels. However, for crypto-specific projects, here’s how you can evaluate whether it’s worth joining a project or not — as Kash notes previously:

• Community — Community is the ultimate moat in Web3. However, building a community is difficult, so some founders take ill-advised shortcuts. If the company’s Twitter page has 30,000 followers but only gets 5–10 “likes” per Tweet, they’ve likely purchased fake followers. Similarly, if Discord has 20,000 members but only a few messages a day, they’ve likely purchased bots to add to their numbers. Both are red flags.
  Also, how engaged is the community? Most Web3 projects have communities in Telegram or Discord. As you vet projects, make sure to spend some time on those servers. Are the founding team members active? Is the community supportive of the project’s mission, or are they just saying “wen airdrop”? How are the vibes? Projects that make their communities a priority tend to beat those that don’t, so it’s worthwhile to invest time into understanding how engaged the community actually is.
• What is the token unlock/vesting schedule? One easy way to spot get-rich-quick schemes is to look at the rate at which investors and founders will receive their tokens. Ideally, early supporters should have long horizons (e.g. their tokens vest over 3–5 years). This aligns the founders and investors to the long-term viability of the project. On the other hand, if investors and the founding team have many tokens unlocked in the first 12–18 months, it’s a red flag.
• Who are the project’s investors? Good Tier-1 VCs (e.g. a16z crypto, Electric Capital, Placeholder, Multicoin, Dragonfly, AllianceDAO, etc.) are always a green flag. Of course, there have been amazing projects like Jupiter or Flash Trade, which haven’t raised any VC funding and are tier-1 projects.

Post-token launch:

• Look for the market cap and FDV at Coingecko; prices typically reflect the future potential and the community sentiment. Sometimes, a simple chart tells you the whole story.
• Most post-token projects have two entities setup:
  1. Foundation or DAO setup (eg. JupDAO) — more focussed on community and ecosystem development.
  2. Labs — more focussed on innovation and product developed

It’s important to note which entity you are getting employed at and it aligns with your vision.

A typical job duration in crypto is typically 6–12 months, which is generally shorter compared to traditional startups — which makes it a bit unstable, while at the same time, there is higher room for role promotion/salary increment due to faster iteration cycles.

Getting Started on Solana — The best ecosystem for Crypto Startups

While choosing an ecosystem can be tricky, Solana is the San Francisco of crypto — home to the most ambitious, product-oriented founders and a vibrant creative community. And everyone knows SF is one of the best places to be for startups!

Here are a few stories to help you get inspired on how to get started on Solana:

1. Scroll through the replies on this post.
2. Some of our members and friend’s stories — Mert, Solandy, Akshat, Aditya Mallick, and Brian Friel
3. Watch stories of people who earned their first crypto (Youtube)

Tweet Link

If you’re new to crypto or Solana, I would highly recommend downloading Phantom wallet or just follow Welcome to Solana by Jupiter — it’s the first step.

Go Earn Your First Dollars — Be a Crypto Native:

Pick your strength (eg. design) and focus on earning your first $$ — it helps you be crypto-native. Here’s how to be crypto-native faster:

1. Identity hottest narratives — follow the right people on Twitter and see what they are talking about or just listen to popular podcasts like Lightspeed, Bankless, Bellcurve, and Unchained/Chopping Block.
2. Crypto Twitter/X — Spend time, and understand the main characters (follow project founders), and the ongoing lore/culture.
3. Network — Join communities (eg. Superteam), make friends, and go to quality conferences (eg. token2049).
4. Favorite Projects and Sectors — Pick 4–5 projects to admire; you should be able to say why they’re awesome. Have a good sense of what different verticals are:

• Consumer — DRiP (Social), Pump (Memecoins), Code (Payments)
• NFTs — Tensor
• DePIN — Helium
• DeFi — Jupiter
• Infra — Jito (MEV), Sonic (Layer-2s), Helius (Dev tooling)

5. Subject Interest: Read the state of the ecosystem deep dives of the sector of your interest (eg. Solana DeFi) or read docs and code of the protocols you are interested in. Start writing threads/essays, make open-source contributions, and ship small projects.

6. Time in Market — Use apps and start making an on-chain footprint; the more time you spend using the apps and being part of a community, the more crypto-native you become.

Always be shilling — Make sure you keep posting your work on Twitter/X, and especially keep replying to popular accounts. The more surface area your work has, the greater the opportunities.

That’s it! If you’ve followed me through this entire guide, it’s now your turn to go out and earn.

This piece was hugely inspired by the “How to Start Earning in Web3” article Kash Dhanda wrote 2 years ago; consider it an updated version of that article. Check out the YouTube version of How to Get a Job in web3 as well.

Feel free to contact me at Yash Agarwal (@yashhsm on Twitter) or Yash (Linkedin); if you’re someone who needs genuine help. Go share it with your friends — who knows it might help earn their first $$ and transform their lives.

Special thanks to Kash (Superteam), Aryan (Superteam), Pratik (Superteam Earn), Akshay (Superteam), Sitesh (Shoal Research), Ruchil, and Geoff (Renaud Partners) who reviewed and provided insights at different stages of the draft.