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Episode 90 · Deep tech · 23 min

The other 28 million developers

Everyone in Web3 is fighting over the same 300,000 contributors; Lumos Labs recruits from the other pool — the 28 million Web2 developers who could build decentralised apps after the day job ends. Prasad's inversion of edtech economics, argued mid-downturn from her own Build Summit: stop charging engineers to learn, and get the chains to pay them — in grants — for every project shipped to a testnet.

Education & skilling Hiring & talent Deep tech & hardware

Kaavya Prasad

Founder, Lumos Labs · with Vishal Krishna

22:58

Said in this episode

▶ 8:33

28M

Web2 developers who could contribute to Web3

The larger piece of the pie nobody is chasing, in Prasad's framing — and they don't have to work full-time to contribute.

▶ 17:55

~300K

Developers who've contributed to blockchain, globally

Per the Electric Capital report she cites — people who have contributed on GitHub; India's own number, she says, 'isn't too high'.

▶ 2:38

$120K

The remote Web3 salary drawing the crowd

Sit in India, work for a company abroad, and make that salary — her explanation of why the job fair overflowed.

▶ 2:23

Average age at the Build Summit

Vishal's eyeball estimate of the attendees — 'everyone's here for employment', and the job fair was the only one run all week.

▶ 19:24

Accelerator programs run with the Telangana government

Both described as successes, incubating real-world use cases — supply chain, healthcare, land registry on the blockchain — with some 2019-cohort startups still running.

The brief

The argument in sixty seconds

Prasad's claim is that Web3's talent war is being fought over the wrong pool. Everyone chases the developers already contributing to blockchain — roughly 300,000 people globally, by the Electric Capital count she cites — while the 28 million Web2 developers who could contribute, many of them in the evenings once US and European workdays end, go unrecruited. Lumos Labs spent five years as a service business running developer programs for chains before concluding services don't scale, and rebuilt itself as a product suite: an academy where engineers unlearn the centralised stack and ship real things — a decentralised voting app on Polygon, smart contracts deployed to a testnet — and a grants pipeline that inverts edtech economics by paying learners instead of charging them. The same programs kept surfacing startups 'way before they were startups', which is why her partner Raghu's Builder's Tribe spun out: supporting a startup and supporting a developer are different DNA, though the layers are meant to stack — learn, build, found, get funded. Around the thesis sit the downturn's symptoms she is working against: exchanges and protocols with no real USP, hackathon nomads who take the prize money and move to next week's contest, enterprises hiding on permissioned chains, and a government bullish on the technology while silent on tokens. The stakes: whether India's job-fair-hungry 21-year-olds convert the country's quantity of engineers into the quality Web3 actually lacks — before the next cycle decides without them.

Worth your time if you are

Web2 engineers curious about evening-and-weekend Web3 work

Students and 21-year-olds who came for the job fair

DevRel and ecosystem leads chasing the same small talent pool

Community builders deciding what to spin out and when

Old-school businesses curious about decentralisation but wary of tokens

Episode map

Where the conversation travels

Every block is a chapter, coloured by what it's about. Click any of it to jump straight to that minute on YouTube.

Education & skillingHiring & talentDeep tech & hardwareFounder journeyProduct strategyMarketing & brand

01A summit against the downturn 0:00 Vishal meets Prasad at the Build Summit 2023, which exists because a year of bear market bred repetitive exchanges and protocols with no real USP — and builders, she insists, never stop building. 02Average age 21, all here for jobs 2:08 The week's only job fair pulled a crowd Vishal pegs at an average age of 21 — drawn by remote Web3 work that lets you sit in India, work for a company abroad and make a $120K salary — while hackathon developers take prize money and move on. 03Grants, not equity 3:48 A roll-call of the stage — Celestia Labs' Mustafa, the Nethermind folks, Rohit of JediSwap — plus sponsor Bitget's blockchain-for-youth fund that gives grants rather than taking equity, and a community meant for content, networking and maybe a co-founder. 04From service shop to product suite 5:34 Five years ago Lumos was a service business running developer programs to get chains tech adoption; services proved human-intensive and hard to scale, so the ethos — money, opportunities and network in developers' hands — was rebuilt as a product suite. 05The academy: unlearn the centralised stack 7:20 Web2 developers must first unlearn centralised tech and learn how decentralised networks and distributed systems work, so the Lumos academy teaches by building — write the smart contracts, deploy a decentralised voting app on Polygon. 0628 million developers, paid to learn 8:33 Everyone targets the Web3 developers already contributing — the smaller piece of the pie — while 28 million Web2 developers could contribute part-time in the evenings; Lumos arranges chain grants so learners are paid to learn, not the reverse. 07Research grants, hand-walked for now 10:00 After the academy comes application — jobs, hackathons, contests, or research proposals pitched to a chain's grants team, which Lumos currently walks through personally while the automated grants portal is still to come. 08MNC engineers yes, C-suite no 11:11 Corporate bureaucracy blocks workshops but MNC engineers come in a personal capacity — their fundamentals make them better engineers — while the C-suite stays on permissioned enterprise chains for security and privacy, with hybrids like Hedera and R3 Corda as the bridge. 09Invisible adoption, volatile ride 13:30 Mass adoption arrives when the end consumer doesn't know the app is decentralised — her dad will never create a MetaMask wallet — and young, tech-savvy India is the hope, even as entrepreneurship on a volatile asset stays a roller coaster. 10Builder's Tribe: two DNAs, one stack 15:47 Lumos programs kept finding startups 'way before they were startups' but couldn't serve them — developer DNA and startup DNA differ — so Raghu spun out Builder's Tribe, layering one stack from learning to funding; globally only about 300K developers have contributed to blockchain, per Electric Capital. 11Bullish government, silent on tokens 18:24 Her pitch to old-school businesses is 'come talk to me first'; she won't comment on Indian regulation but calls the government very bullish on the technology, citing two Telangana accelerator programs incubating supply-chain, healthcare and land-registry use cases. 12Fundamentals first, apes optional 19:53 An architect by degree who learned to code, Prasad tells 20-year-olds to start slow — mathematics, how the internet began, web1 to web3 — before a closing riff on feminist satire, Bored Apes as a Rolex club, and lumoslabs.co.

Takeaways

Ideas to carry out of this hour

The real market is the 28 million developers outside Web3

Every chain and every ecosystem budget targets the developers already contributing to Web3 — the smaller piece of the pie, roughly 300,000 people globally by the Electric Capital count cited on air. The larger piece is the 28 million Web2 developers who could contribute without ever going full-time: Vishal has met engineers who build decentralised apps in the evenings, after US and European workdays end. Her corollary is that college is the best time to cross over, while you are already learning your Reacts and your Pythons.

▶ 8:33 ▶ 8:49 ▶ 9:04

Flip edtech: pay the learner

The old portals charged you to learn; Lumos works with chains to arrange grants so learners who complete a program and deploy a project on a testnet are remunerated for their time instead. A full learn-to-earn model is in the plan but deliberately unlaunched. The academy's method is proof-of-work over textbooks — write the smart contracts, ship a decentralised voting app on Polygon, keep the evidence.

▶ 9:18 ▶ 9:47 ▶ 7:51

A job fair beats a fifth hackathon

With EthIndia anchoring a week already saturated with hackathons, Lumos skipped its own and ran the week's only job fair — which is why a crowd averaging 21 showed up. Prasad's critique of hackathon culture: developers take the prize money and move on to next week's contest, and nobody asks how many of them become companies. The draw is real — sit in India, work for a company abroad, and make that $120K salary.

▶ 3:05 ▶ 3:19 ▶ 2:38

Developers and startups are different DNA

Lumos tried supporting the startups its own programs kept surfacing — teams it was finding 'way before they were startups' — and couldn't get them to the end goal, because what a developer needs and what a startup needs are structurally different. So her partner Raghu spun the startup work out into Builder's Tribe, and the two now cater to one stack in layers: learn, build, found, get funded. The synergy is generational — today's academy learners are expected to graduate into tomorrow's founders.

▶ 16:01 ▶ 16:46 ▶ 17:28

Mass adoption arrives incognito

Prasad's test for the future: an end consumer uses an application and never learns it is decentralised. She does not expect her dad to create a MetaMask wallet, install a Chrome extension and sign smart contracts — but a country whose average age is about 27 is savvy enough to grow into these rails. Until the plumbing disappears, the maze of chains, layer-2s and tokens stays a rabbit hole even for the business decision-maker.

▶ 14:16 ▶ 14:30 ▶ 14:45

Enterprises are on a different blockchain entirely

The C-suite is not coming to summits like this, and Prasad does not expect it to: enterprises run permissioned blockchains where they control their own nodes, for security and privacy, and the open permissionless ecosystem doesn't reflect that world. The bridge cases are hybrids — Hedera, which runs permissioned and permissionless modes, and R3 Corda. Her workaround is to skip the bureaucracy and reach MNC engineers in a personal capacity, where she finds the ones with strong fundamentals make better blockchain engineers anyway.

▶ 12:46 ▶ 13:01 ▶ 11:43

The downturn's casualty is imagination, not building

A year of bear market left the industry with repetitive companies — exchanges whose USP amounts to their funding round and their chain, protocols multiplying ahead of an unresolved consolidation — because newcomers see what made money and rebuild it rather than seeing problems. The Build Summit exists to push technical knowledge back in so developers explore further use cases. Builders, she insists, never stop building, whatever the market looks like.

▶ 0:38 ▶ 1:07 ▶ 1:54

The numbers, drawn

What the episode measures

Every figure below was said on air — timestamps included, caveats kept.

Conversation share

portion of the hour spent on each theme

Education & skilling20%

Hiring & talent18%

Deep tech & hardware15%

Founder journey14%

Product strategy11%

Marketing & brand8%

Computed from the chapter map of this episode.

The smaller and larger pieces of the pie

developers

Already contributing to Web3, globally1%

Web2 developers who could contribute99%

As stated in conversation: about 300K people globally have contributed to blockchain code on GitHub per the Electric Capital report Prasad cites, against the 28 million developers she calls the larger, unchased piece of the pie.▶ 8:33

Worth keeping

Lines that stay

Builders never stop building, no matter what the market looks like — innovation is always at an all-time high.

— Kaavya Prasad ▶ 0:52

Everyone's going after the Web3 developers who are already contributing — that's the smaller piece of the pie. Nobody's looking at the larger piece: the 28 million developers who can essentially contribute here.

— Kaavya Prasad ▶ 8:33

It always used to be that you pay for the learning with the portals out there. Right now, we want to pay them to learn instead.

— Kaavya Prasad ▶ 9:47

The future is when an end consumer is using an application and they don't know it's decentralised — that's when we're going to have mass adoption. I don't expect my dad to create a MetaMask wallet and sign smart contracts.

— Kaavya Prasad ▶ 14:16

Developers come in, they take their prize money, and then they move on to the next week's contest. How many of them can become companies is something we want to look at.

— Kaavya Prasad ▶ 3:19

Clips that travel

Short on time? Start here

Hackathon organisers and DevRel leads

Prize money is not a company

Why Lumos ran the week's only job fair instead of another hackathon — prize-money nomads, the how-many-become-companies question, and Bitget's grant-not-equity youth fund.

3:05 → 4:51 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Web2 engineers curious about Web3

The 28 million nobody is chasing

The episode's core claim in one stretch — the small pie everyone fights over, the moonlighters building after US hours, and grants that pay you to learn.

8:18 → 10:00 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Consumer founders chasing mass adoption

Your dad will never sign a smart contract

Invisible decentralisation as the adoption test, MetaMask as the counter-example, young India's odds — and the roller coaster of building on a volatile asset.

14:02 → 15:33 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Community builders weighing a spin-off

Why Builder's Tribe had to leave Lumos

Finding startups before they are startups, why developer DNA and startup DNA cannot share one program, and the layered stack from learning to funding.

15:47 → 17:55 · 2 min ▶ Watch clip

Old-school businesses and policy watchers

Bullish on the tech, silent on tokens

Her pitch to non-crypto businesses, the pointed no-comment on regulation, and Telangana's two accelerators putting supply chain, healthcare and land registry on chain.

18:24 → 19:53 · 1 min ▶ Watch clip

Glossary

The jargon, unpacked

Web3

The blockchain-based, decentralised generation of internet applications — the ecosystem of chains, tokens and apps this summit serves, as against the centralised 'Web2' most engineers work in.

Smart contract

Code deployed on a blockchain that executes automatically — what Lumos academy learners are taught to write and deploy, for instance in a decentralised voting app on Polygon.

Testnet

A blockchain's rehearsal network where apps run without real money at stake — where learners deploy their grant-funded projects as proof of work.

Permissioned vs permissionless blockchain

Permissioned chains restrict who can run nodes — the enterprise choice, for security and privacy — while permissionless ones are open to anyone; Hedera runs a hybrid of both, and R3 Corda serves the enterprise side.

Learn-to-earn

A model where learners are paid — via grants or tokens — for completing courses and shipping projects, inverting pay-to-learn edtech; Lumos does this today through chain grants, with a fuller version planned.

EthIndia

The flagship Ethereum hackathon anchoring the Bengaluru week of Web3 events around which the Build Summit 2023 ran.

Bored Ape (BAYC)

A famously expensive NFT collection whose ownership Prasad likens to a Rolex-club membership — exclusive events and access to celebrity fellow-holders, more than the artwork itself.

Connections

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EP 52 · Consumer

Full transcript

The whole conversation, searchable

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