Trying to get a job as a Solidity developer — if you don’t already have experience — is… tough. There’s a big chicken and egg problem of nobody will trust you with TVL if you haven’t managed TVL before. That’s why there’s all these job boards with hundreds of applicants for Solidity jobs, but companies say they have a hard time finding talent. So I’m going to share a hack to get TVL on your resume. First — if you want to be paid to build Solidity protocols, you need to prove you can do it. So build a *real* project and stop applying for jobs with an NFT lottery or Uniswap V2 arbitrage or AAVE liquidator bot as your top showcase. Build a real protocol that does something non-trivial. In fact, build a few of them so you build up muscle memory. Stop expecting people to train you on the job, it’s not going to happen. “I’ll learn how to build a protocol after someone pay’s me to learn how” is a loser’s attitude. Stop being so entitled and show you are passionate about what you want to get paid for. Second — You need funding. Build the protocol AND THEN get a grant from an ecosystem that wants you to build on their chain (honestly this is EASY as chains need to show builder activity, you just need to pick the right chain). Then, use that grant to 1) get private audits for very cheap 2) attract users to the protocol, which I get to next… Third — Use the grant to create an incentive program for people to use your protocol. You don’t need to do a fancy airdrop program (you’ll never beat Monad at it, so don’t bother). Mint your new token right away, and create an Uniswap V2 pool of “real money” (from the grant) and your token. You don’t want to give the grant money away directly because you’ll run out too fast. But when you have a market for the token, it has a certain value, as long as most people don’t sell… (that’s what a “staking program” is for). Don’t be greedy with the token. Your job is to get users, not to try to get rich quick. Fourth — Show that your protocol gets farmers good yield when combined with your incentive program. Mercenaries and degens will flock to your protocol like flies to honey. Boom. Now you have users and TVL on your resume. The mercenaries will eventually leave and you will eventually run out of the grant money and your project will fade into irrelevance. Or, maybe you’ll get lucky, build a cool community, raise a VC round, and go on to great things. Either way now you have experience running a real protocol with real users and TVL. The best part is, if you actually follow through on this, there’s no need to embellish your story about how you managed TVL. You showed you actually know how to run a protocol, and you’ll be part of the few. The rest is easy after that. Now for the hard part: actually doing it. This is the part where 99.9% of you go back to scrolling social media after bookmarking this post. But for the three of you who just began an epic journey to protocol engineer, best of luck! (If you have experience managing TVL or pull of the plan I just outlined, apply to @RareTalent_xyz and we’ll get your a job pretty quick and seamlessly).