The interest around, and opportunities for, blockchain experts are at an all-time high. The average annual salary for US blockchain developers is at $147,104, according to ZipRecruiter.
These salaries are driven by demand. As of nine months ago, the number of blockchain jobs had risen 300% from the year before. The 2018 LinkedIn Emerging Jobs Report lists "blockchain developer" as the most in-demand job for 2019.
Developers who want to pursue blockchain jobs this year, or who just want to keep up with the latest developments, will want to follow these experts on Twitter.
Company or project founders
Muneeb Ali
Muneeb Ali@muneeb
Followers: 37,300
As CEO and co-founder of Blockstack, a decentralized computing network and app ecosystem that puts users in control of their identity and data, Ali is "enabling apps that can’t be evil," according to his Twitter profile. He has a PhD in distributed systems from Princeton.
Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik Buterin@VitalikButerin
Followers: 28,800
This 25-year-old Russian moved to Canada in 2000 and discovered bitcoin 11 years later. Buterin is best known for creating Ethereum in 2013.
Brendan Eich
@BrendanEich
Followers: 121,000
Eich is best known as the creator of JavaScript. He co-founded Mozilla and served as CTO of Mozilla Corp. In 2016, he launched the Brave browser as Brave Software's CEO, and in 2017 he co-created the Basic Attention Token, a digital advertising token on the Ethereum blockchain.
Charles Hoskinson
Charles Hoskinson@IOHK_Charles
Followers: 112,000
Hoskinson co-founded Ethereum. With a degree in mathematics, he's the genius behind Cardano, a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project. Today, he’s founder and CEO of IOHK, using cryptography to engineer peer-to-peer financial services.
Charlie Lee
@SatoshiLite
Followers: 827,000
Lee has a master's degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While working at Google, Lee took an interest in bitcoin mining before developing his own cryptocurrency. His first attempt was a cryptocurrency called fairbix, which was plagued with technical bugs and failed, but he bounced back with the creation of litecoin.
Clément Lesaege
@clesaege
Followers: 872
Lesaege is co-founder and CTO of Kleros, a blockchain-based dispute resolution layer. It features tokenized incentives for jurors as a peer-to-peer justice ecosystem.
Joseph Lubin
@ethereumJoseph
Followers: 107,000
Lubin, another Ethereum co-founder, went on to start ConsenSys, which develops blockchain infrastructure and developer tools. He studied electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton.
Justin Sun
@justinsuntron
Followers: 1.36 million
Sun graduated from Jack Ma's Hupan University in China. Born in Singapore, he lives in San Francisco. In 2017, he created the TRON protocol, which claims to be one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world. In June 2019, he won a $4.57 million bid to have lunch with Warren Buffet.
Sajida Zouarhi
@Saj_JZ
Followers: 2,416
Zouarhi is a French blockchain architect for ConsenSys and co-founder of LeBlockFest, a conference and resource about blockchain events. She's among the many looking for Satoshi Nakamoto (the pseudonym of the reputed inventor of bitcoin).
Pioneers in cryptographic technology
Gavin Andresen
@gavinandresen
Followers: 155,000
Nakamoto named Andresen lead developer of Bitcoin's reference implementation before disappearing from public life. Andresen founded the Bitcoin Foundation and created the first bitcoin faucet, a program that gave away bitcoin to promote its use. He later became lead developer of Bitcoin Core.
Andreas M. Antonopoulos
@aantonop
Followers: 492,000
Antonopoulos became a bitcoin advocate in 2012. An author and coder, he served as chief security officer of Blockchain.info, but now hosts a podcast called Let's Talk Bitcoin. He is a major influence on the cryptocurrency community.
Adam Back
@adam3us
Followers: 175,000
Back is an early cryptographer who invented Hashcash, a proof-of-work protocol cited by Nakamoto in his 2008 bitcoin whitepaper, in 1997. Back has become one of bitcoin's most vocal proponents, and is currently CEO of Blockstream, a software company focused on developing products for the bitcoin network.
Nick Szabo
@NickSzabo4
Followers: 237,000
Szabo, another early cryptographer, invented smart contracts and bit gold, a bitcoin precursor, in 1998. He's also been suspected of being the "real" Nakamoto, which he denies.
Prominent bitcoin and Ethereum developers
Jimmy Song
@jimmysong
Followers: 154,000
In the bitcoin world, Song is one of the more colorful personalities. His public shouting match with Bitcoin Cash evangelist Roger Ver is legendary. Song also teaches other programmers.
Udi Wertheimer
@udiWertheimer
Followers: 25,900
As host of the Reckless Review podcast, Wertheimer is unafraid to challenge the status quo. He started as a bitcoin coder, and today works as an independent software developer and consultant.
Gavin Wood
@gavinofyork
Followers: 49,000
Wood is a co-founder of Ethereum. He’s also active on the Polkadot project, an open-source project focused on blockchain interoperability. He's the founder and CTO of Parity Technologies, a blockchain infrastructure-development company whose products are based on Ethereum.
Vlad Zamfir
@VladZamfir
Followers: 59,000
Zamfir is known as an Ethereum developer. His Twitter followers see his "ETH is not money" tagline every day, as well as his opinions about blockchain governance in general and other related matters.
Other cryptocurrency project developers
Tron Black
@tronblack
Followers: 4,014
Black is lead developer at Ravencoin, an open-source blockchain that facilitates the tokenization of digital and real-world assets.
Bartek Nowotarski
@bartn_
Followers: 2,069
Nowotarski is a software engineer at Stellar, which produces a decentralized blockchain protocol that allows digital currency transfers across country borders.
Marco Peereboom
@marco_peereboom
Followers: 3,402
Peereboom is an open-source developer and CTO at Company Zero, LLC, currently working on the Decred cryptocurrency. He calls himself a hacker and security nut.
Riccardo Spagni
@fluffypony
Followers: 80,100
Can you take someone who calls himself "fluffypony" seriously? In Spagni's case, you should. That includes being lead developer for monero, the leading cryptocurrency with built-in privacy features.
David Wong
@cryptodavidw
Followers: 4,165
Wong is a security engineer at Facebook and works on its Libra cryptocurrency project. He wrote a book called Real-World Cryptography.
Jenna Zenk
@jennaszenk
Followers: 1,976
Zenk is a full stack engineer with a hedge fund background, and is the CTO of Melonport, an open-source protocol for digital asset management.
More notables
Austin Griffith
@austingriffith
Followers: 5,305
Griffith refers to himself as a "hacker, breaker, builder." His GitHub account showcases some interesting projects, including one called Burner Wallet for speedy browser-based cryptocurrency transfers, and another that facilitates token subscriptions on the Ethereum blockchain.
Michael Perklin
@mperklin
Followers: 4,246
Chief information security officer at ShapeShift.io, a crypto trading platform.
Alex Petrov
@sysmannet
Followers: 10,400
CIO of Bitfury, a blockchain development company.
David Schwartz
@JoelKatz
Followers: 129,000
Schwarz is CTO at Ripple, a real-time settlement and remittance network for legacy financial institutions, and one of the original architects of the XRP digital payments network.
Luke Stokes
@lukestokes
Followers: 4,405
Stokes is a top-20 witness, responsible for managing the nodes that validate transactions, on the Steem blockchain. Last year, he sold his stake in a company he co-founded, called Foxycart, to focus entirely on blockchain projects.
Sota Watanabe
@WatanabeSota
Followers: 2,879
Watanabe is a developer and founder of Staked Technologies, which operates block production nodes for decentralized proof-of-stake blockchains for institutional investors. He was formerly associated with Chronicled, which builds blockchain-powered supply chain systems.
Kevin Weil
@kevinweil
Followers: 72,700
Weil is co-creator of Libra, Facebook's cryptocurrency project, and vice president of product at Calibra, the libra wallet.
Are there any other Twitter handles you would add to this list? Share them below.
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