Blockchain: The Hottest Skill In A Growing Freelance Market

Upwork, which is the largest global freelancing website, recently showed that the fastest growing skill in the United States during the second quarter was blockchain.

According to the Upwork Skills Index for Q2 of 2018, blockchain beats over 5,000 other skills listed on the largest freelancing platforms in the world.

The demand for talent with blockchain-related skills doesn’t show any signs of stopping. According to the latest Upwork Skills Index, #blockchain is the fastest-growing skill in the U.S. #freelance #job market for the second quarter in a row. https://t.co/oeGV3ZXcol pic.twitter.com/6pRldangX7

— Upwork (@Upwork) August 1, 2018

Go, which is a programming language developed by Google and used to create blockchain applications also appeared in the top 20 list and underscored the increasing relevance of blockchain.

According to Upwork’s Skills Index:

“Blockchain’s year-over-year growth has exceeded 2,000 percent for the past four quarters, and it experienced more than 3,500 percent year-over-year growth in Q2.”

The current blockchain-related jobs on Upwork include distributed system engineers and developers in many languages and frameworks. One of them is Solidity which is a contract-oriented programming language used for writing Ethereum smart contracts and Node.js.

The report also stated:

“Blockchain continued to draw a significant amount of attention from investors in Q1 and Q2’18, although investments typically focused on more experienced companies and consortia looking to obtain additional rounds of funding rather than on new market entrants … The US was particularly active on the blockchain front, with total investment in the first half of the year already exceeding the total seen in 2017.”

At the end of the day, the key takeway that we can all get from this is that blockchain is one of the most desired skills out there – and this trend is likely to continue in the coming years.