The $3B Blockchain Bottleneck

$5 billion. That’s the private investment in new blockchain projects in the past twelve months. ICOs alone raised over 3 billion dollars in 2017, up 3000 percent from $96 million in 2016.

But…while everyone’s talking about the promises of blockchain, no one is talking about the blockchain bottleneck: the dollars are there, but the people aren’t.

With over ICO-funded 200 projects on the books in 2017, excitement about the promises of blockchain is at a fever pitch. Organizations offering ICOs run the gamut:

CanYa, a decentralized marketplace where service providers and clients can interact directly (raised $1.5 million in 24 hours via ICO)

BitClave, a decentralized search engine that lets consumers and businesses determine who has access to their data and how they can use it (raised $16.5 million in pre-sale via ICO)

• MobileGo, which unites the worlds of cryptocurrency and mobile gaming (raised $53 million via ICO)

TenX, a cryptocurrency debit card (raised $64 million via ICO)

Projects of all shapes and sizes are getting funded, based on the unilateral appeal and playing field-leveling potential of blockchain. From carefully architected plans with global impact to app-specific concepts more limited in scope, these projects all have one thing in common: A need for skilled blockchain developers to turn the vision into reality.

Just one of these projects could call for dozens of blockchain experts. IBM, for instance, reported on the IBM Blockchain Blog that as of October 2017, it has more than 400 blockchain projects in progress, employs more than 1,600 employees and has more than 150 job openings related to blockchain.

That’s just a drop in the bucket.

CoinDesk reports that the number of blockchain jobs has increased 631 percent since November 2015, and is only expected to rise to an expected 16x current levels by 2024, according to Grand View Research. Some 93 percent of advertised blockchain jobs are left unfilled.

A recent survey of 200 Fortune-500 financial service and technology executives showed that almost 90 percent had budgets to implement a blockchain-based project…but the vast majority believed their existing teams didn’t have the skills to get the job done.

It’s easy to see what this means.

Unless companies start thinking strategically about where they’re going to source their talent, the billions invested in blockchain projects? It’s not going anywhere. That’s what we call the $3 billion blockchain bottleneck.

There are few options when it comes to breaking through the bottleneck:

  • Put your blockchain-based projects on hold until the supply of blockchain developers evens out, somewhere around 2025
  • Enter a blockchain bidding war and be prepared to pay top dollar — $250,000 and up, according to the Wall Street Journal — for your talent (only to see them jump ship for the next highest bidder)
  • Take your chances with “coding bootcamp” courses. These programs are popping up around the world, but because there are no standards for training blockchain developers, your results will be a mixed bag
  • Invest in an accredited educational institution with a standardized curriculum

This bottleneck is exactly why my partners and I have made it a priority to create, Kingsland University — School of Blockchain. Kingsland is the world’s first university-accredited blockchain program and gives developers, executives, and governments tailored options for blockchain education.

We’re starting by retraining existing software developers, who have already proven their proficiency in related languages, and we’re introducing them to the blockchain ecosystem in a systematic manner.

As the only accredited provider of blockchain education, Kingsland is poised to become the force to break the $3 billion bottleneck and help companies and organizations around the world fulfill the promise of blockchain projects.

Jason King is a Humanitarian Hacker, feeding the hungry as the Executive Director of Unsung.org. Known for running across the country to raise bitcoin for the homeless in 2014, King is a long-standing member of the crypto community and continues to solve to the sector’s most pressing problems as Co-Founder of Kingsland University — School of Blockchain, the world’s first university-accredited blockchain training program. Find out more about Kingsland’s leading-edge education at KingslandUniversity.com

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Kingsland University

School of Blockchain

Kingsland - School of Blockchain

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The world's first accredited school for blockchain development - Learn more at www.kingslanduniversity.com

Kingsland University

School of Blockchain

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