Samantha Lee/Business Insider
- Facebook is working on a secretive blockchain project, but many Facebook employees are jumping ship to work on their own blockchain and crypto projects.
- The Facebook veterans are bringing high-level tech experience and discipline to a crypto sector famous for chaos and turmoil.
- Business Insider spoke to industry insiders to track down 15 alumni from the social network now working in the space, and interviewed many of them.
Facebook turned heads earlier this year when it announced that it was diving into blockchain.
The social media giant has yet to specify what its blockchain plans entail, but it is currently trying to hire crypto experts and build a team - a recruiting effort that news site Cheddar recently reported has proven more challenging than expected.
The irony is that many of the big players in the crypto world once worked at Facebook. Dozens of Facebook alumni have left the company in recent years to join the blockchain boom.
The engineering and management experience earned while working on a major tech product like Facebook's 2-billion member social network - along with the financial windfall many employees received in the 2012 IPO - have left the Facebook veterans well-positioned to build a new crop of crypto and blockchain startups.
The former Facebook employees - and other tech workers from established companies - will have to apply their skills not only to professionalize the sector but to convince naysayers that the volatile market, currently suffering from a sharp drop in cryptocurrency prices, is not just a flash in the pan.
Business Insider spoke to people throughout blockchain ecosystem to track down some of the key Facebook alumni who made the jump to work in crypto, and asked what this shift could mean for the industry.
So, in no particular order, here are fifteen former Facebook employees now trying their luck in the wild world of crypto and blockchain: