This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 12, 2022 - September 18, 2022

For a time when social media users were complaining about their low salaries on the popular Instagram (IG) page, Malaysian Pay Gap (MPG), one type of post stood out: those earning big bucks working in Web3 jobs.

These individuals were typically working remotely and earning in US dollars, either in a tech or non-tech role. For instance, a 20-year-old Web3 marketer shared on the MPG page earlier this year that she was earning RM7,020 a month. Even though she did not have a degree, she took certified courses, analysed case studies and networked with people in the industry.

Another 27-year-old Web3 engineer working in decentralised finance (DeFi) projects shared that he or she was earning US$9,000 a month by doing part-time jobs for US-based employers.

The good news is that there is an increasing number of such job opportunities in Web3 for Malaysians. A quick scan through local job portal Hiredly shows a few firms looking for software engineers and web developers who have a knowledge of Web3.

The web3.career website, which lists job openings in Web3 companies or jobs that require knowledge of Web3, has an even longer list of physical and remote positions available in Malaysia. This includes openings for non-tech roles like account executives and events and campaign lead.

Does this herald a new growth area for Malaysians who want to get into the tech sector? Web3, after all, is seen as the next iteration of the internet — one that is supposed to help the world break free from the monopolistic control by entities such as governments and mega corporations like Google, Facebook and Amazon.

“Today, everyone looks at non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and wonders if they’re hype. But if you look at the technology itself, for the first time, we can identify the owner of digital pictures because of NFTs. In Web2, if you put a meme you created online and it goes viral, you are unable to claim it as your own. Where is your proof? But this is possible with Web3,” says Chan Kin Meng, founder and CEO of Gameconomy.

The Malaysian company specialises in Web3 game development. It was recently acquired by iCandy Interactive Ltd, a large game developer that is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

“When everyone goes into Web3, you cannot simply share images. Everything can be tracked back to the owner. The creators, who put up their work as NFTs, can benefit. Web3 really democratises the internet. It will make a lot of difference.”

Chan started the company in 2019 to create an NFT marketplace for game items to be traded. But Web3 was not popular then, so he pivoted to provide back-end gaming services in Web2. Last year, the firm was hired to use blockchain to track transactions of an in-game currency, which put Gameconomy back into the Web3 realm.

“iCandy is going into Web3 aggressively, which is why we were acquired. We provide the back-end support for any kind of NFT token, smart contract development and other things [that are related to Web3],” says Chan.

Earlier this year, Gameconomy was looking for a web developer familiar with the usual programming languages and a quality assurance engineer. For the former, knowledge in Web3 and decentralised applications (dApps) is a big plus, Chan says.

In general, Web1 emerged because of the internet search engine, through which access to information became commonplace. Web2, meanwhile, allowed internet users to publish content on social media and interact with each other for the first time. But users could not monetise the content they created. This changed with Web3, which uses blockchain, cryptocurrency and NFTs to give internet users ownership of digital assets.

“Web3 is the democratisation of ownership. With the metaverse, the ownership of digital assets will become even more attractive,” says Wong Chun Weng, a popular Malaysian YouTuber (with 18,700 subscribers) who creates content on cryptocurrencies. His most viewed video is the one where he shares how he earned RM3,000 a month through the play-to-earn NFT-based game Axie Infinity.

Wong used to be an investment banker. He quit his job in 2021 and became a full-time YouTuber. He has now started on another venture called TavernDAO, where he matches guilds that own gaming items in the form of NFTs with players who lease it from them. The games it supports include Axie Infinity, Pegaxy and WonderHero.

“Another way of understanding Web3 is that it’s a new form of communication. I don’t need to trust you, but we can do a transaction because everything is recorded in the blockchain,” says Wong.

Web3 applications cut across sectors. Web3 games, for instance, are different from traditional games in that they have decentralised ownership of game items and currencies. In a traditional game, every item resides in the company’s servers. The company can shut down the server at any time, and all the assets and information will be gone, says Wong. Fraudulent deals where one player scams another by failing to deliver a purchased game item after a payment has been made are also common.

“In Web3 games, all these items and currencies are recorded on the blockchain and it’s decentralised. The game players own the items because they own the wallet and private key, so they can do anything they want with it,” says Gameconomy’s Chan.

While most games are still in Web2, Chan is confident that Web3 is the direction of growth. iCandy counts Animoca Brands as one of its investors. Animoca is known as the developer of The Sandbox, which is one of the most popular metaverses currently. 

Financial institutions, governments and cybersecurity companies have also found use cases in Web3, especially in blockchain technology.

Chainalysis, a global blockchain data platform, has been providing this service to government agencies and companies in over 70 countries. Its technology is used in investigation, compliance and risk management tools to solve cyber-criminal cases, says Joshua Foo, regional director for Asean, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“We are seeing an increased demand from law enforcement and regulators in Asean for advanced capabilities in cryptocurrency investigations and transaction monitoring,” says Foo.

Adoption of cryptocurrency in Southeast Asia is growing. Governments, meanwhile, are looking at how they can protect consumers while creating a conducive environment for digital assets. Blockchain analysis can help them interpret the public blockchain ledgers and understand the transactions.

“For example, our customers can comprehend that a transaction took place between two different cryptocurrency exchanges or between a cryptocurrency exchange and an illicit entity. With blockchain analysis tools and know-your-customer information, law enforcement officials can gain transparency in blockchain activity in ways that aren’t possible in traditional finance,” says Foo.

He believes that there are many opportunities for Web3 talent now. “There are companies that are building the Web3 technology itself and there are companies like Chainalysis that have a good mix of Web2 and Web3 technologies,” says Foo.

“One trend that we see is many large, traditional Web2 companies diving into Web3 with specific products or teams. It’s definitely an area that will continue to grow in the coming years. This space is still being built and there is a real opportunity to get in right now and make an impact.”

There is potential for Malaysia to get into Web3. Wong believes in this because two influential companies in this space were founded by Malaysians: CoinGecko and Etherscan. CoinGecko is one of the biggest independent cryptocurrency data aggregators, while Etherscan is one of the most popular Ethereum blockchain explorers.

“We believe that anything that can be tokenised will be tokenised in the future. This means that as cryptocurrency goes mainstream, there will be millions of tokens. People may get confused and they will need a place to make sense of all the tokens listed,” says Bobby Ong, co-founder and chief operating officer of CoinGecko.

“We aim to empower the decentralised future by being the foundational infrastructure to help people get the information they need on the millions of tokens that will be listed in the future.”

CoinGecko also has an NFT tracker to follow the floor price of NFTs, which Ong expects will grow exponentially in the coming years.

The most mature advanced applications of Web3, in his view, are in DeFi now. “Some examples include decentralised exchanges like Uniswap and Balancer, and decentralised lending protocols like Compound and Aave. Gaming and NFT applications are [also] used by many, such as Axie Infinity and StepN,” says Ong. However, most are still at the experimental stage.

CoinGecko is looking to hire a site reliability engineer, senior business development associate and software engineer lead, among others. No prior Web3 experience is needed for the roles, Ong says, but they are looking for candidates who are keen to learn in this industry.

One of its job openings that explicitly mentions Web3 skills is an internship for software engineers, where the candidate will have a chance to learn Solidity — a programming language for building smart contracts.

“There are increasingly more roles available in Web3 these days. We have also observed many tech talents moving from big tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon and Google to Web3 start-ups and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs),” says Ong.

“Software developers aren’t the only type of tech talent required in Web3 companies or DAOs. Other roles that are high in demand include marketers, community managers and research analysts. With the high growth of Web3, I’m sure many more jobs will be created in the coming years and there will be a persistent lack of talent for companies to recruit from.”

Etherscan’s job openings include a .NET web developer, customer support specialist, front-end web developer and content writer.

While more companies are venturing into Web3, the demand for such talent is still relatively low in Malaysia, say the interviewees. Individuals who have the requisite skills and sufficient experience will stand out. Competition, however, is fierce.

Local companies that want to hire Web3 talent cannot offer as competitive a salary as foreign companies; local tech talent who want to go into Web3 have to compete with global talent.

“You are instantly competing globally for talent. Because of the pandemic, working from home is now the norm. Anyone from anywhere can hire. Like us, we are also looking for talent from abroad, like Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines, because we are used to working remotely,” says Chan.

“It’s difficult [to compete for talent] because our currency is weak. Imagine, you’re a fresh graduate with six months of experience and you want to get a RM6,000 starting salary. A company in the US can easily pay that.”

Local talent in Web3 who have sufficient experience is hard to come by, he adds. At most, they learnt Solidity through web tutorials but have no experience in actually creating a Web3 project.

“The NFT and crypto space moves extremely fast. If a local talent says they need one month to do [a project], and if an overseas talent says they can do it in three days because they’ve done it before, which one would you choose?” says Chan.

Regardless, the interest in Web3 talent is heating up. It is not just Web3 start-ups looking for talent but also traditional companies, says CoinGecko’s Ong. “Banks and fintech companies, such as Visa, Square, Stripe and Robinhood, have been actively hiring to be more involved in Web3. Traditional consumer brands like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Adidas and Nike have also launched NFTs. They will most likely be expanding further into the metaverse by hiring more talent.”

Derek Toh, founder and CEO of Hiredly, observes that in its headhunting services, around 2% of the software developer roles advertised are in the Web3 area. 

“On a personal level, I think it’s still not [a] very significant portion of the market. But I do see people talking about it in the market. I have companies from China coming to us and asking if we can find people who can build blockchain. That’s a growing trend,” says Toh.

It is important to note, however, that not every Web3 job requires those technical skills. Front-end, back-end and full-stack developers are still needed. Non-tech roles such as community managers and sales executives are also in demand.

“Some standard Web2 tech stack is usually required in Web3 development, as a website front-end still needs to be deployed on top of a smart contract for users to interact with the blockchain,” says Ong.

What sets a job candidate apart from others is their experience in using Web3 or their familiarity with the community.

“If you don’t know what a MetaMask or a wallet is, and you’ve never bought cryptocurrency or NFTs, you will lose out compared with other candidates. Web3 communities are very demanding. They want things to work in a certain way that is natural to them. If you are creating something different, they will ask why your user experience is so bad. It’s important to have the domain knowledge as a user,” says Chan.

The community manager, obviously, will need to understand the technology and be able to “speak the language” of the users, he adds.

“Smart contract is not very difficult to pick up. But the domain knowledge is harder to learn. If you don’t know what is staking or a liquidity pool, it’s hard for you to have a conversation with people on the team.”

It is interesting to note that the Web3 space is borderless and has strong communities. To get a job in this area, the interviewees encourage candidates to be on social media platforms like Twitter and Discord, get to know the key players and engage with communities.

“Some people find jobs just by sending a direct message to people on Twitter. It’s the place to go,” says Wong.

Hiredly’s Toh adds that the online communities are very eager to share knowledge and Malaysians should tap global networks. “I see people posting about Web3-related meet-ups on LinkedIn and Twitter. If you are very curious, you should start meeting people and sharing ideas.”

Meanwhile, Chan advises people who are interested in Web3 jobs in the gaming industry to play NFT games and understand how people use it. “I have found that some people are good at coding but not good at being a user.”

Similarly, Ong encourages interested individuals to pick projects that they are interested in and go deep into it. “Utilise and play with the decentralised application, hang out with the community on the Discord server and volunteer your time to show how you can be a valuable contributor to the DAO. If you are sufficiently good, eventually, someone might notice and you might have a better chance of landing a role in a Web3 company or DAO.”

Given how new and fast-moving this space is, people should be open to learning and collaborating with others, adds Foo. “It’s important to be able to lean on your colleagues, trust them and be open to learning from them. This collaboration enables the diversity of thought that will make Web3 grow.”

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