Blockchain job market moves into top gear

The blockchain job market has been witnessing a flurry of activity with a significant increase in the number of opportunities which has not been matched by an equivalent increase in talent, according to a report by business networking site LinkedIn.

As a growing number of companies seek to gain a foothold in the emerging blockchain sector, the global demand for talent has been increasing since 2015 and the last two years have seen explosive growth, said the report that was released last month.

In the past three years, candidates who had listed blockchain skills as a talent on the LinkedIn platform rose by nearly 19 times. However, the total supply of blockchain talents still remained small, equivalent to just 2 percent of the total number of global artificial intelligence talents on the LinkedIn platform.

Chinese blockchain professionals account for less than 4 percent of the total global talent in the sector, far less than the number in countries such as the United States, India, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Combining the application of distributed data storage, encryption algorithms and other advanced technologies, blockchains offer an open and decentralized database of any transaction involving money, goods, property and several others. It provides a high level of security by creating a record whose authenticity could be verified by the whole community.

Wang Di, vice-president of technology at LinkedIn China, said: "The major hindrance to blockchain's further development is the shortage of related talent.

"For companies trying to grasp opportunities in the emerging blockchain sector, they need to not only hire related talents, but also to outline long-term strategic goals to cultivate more young talent."

According to Wang, Chinese firms can cooperate with countries like the US, the UK and India, as those countries attain more experienced blockchain professionals.

Currently, Shanghai tops all other cities in China in terms of the number of blockchain talents, according to LinkedIn. Shanghai accounted for 38 percent of the national blockchain professionals, followed by Beijing with 37 percent and Shenzhen in Guangdong province with 12 percent.

In recent years, the biggest demand for blockchain talent came from computer and software industry, followed by the financial services and the insurance sector, the report said.