What is the RootData People Database? How to Use Career Updates, X Rankings, and University-Company Maps to Understand Web3 Talent Flows?

What is the RootData People Database? How to Use Career Updates, X Rankings, and University-Company Maps to Understand Web3 Talent Flows?

The RootData People Database includes over 11,000 individuals holding important management positions or having significant influence in crypto projects and VCs, recording their work and educational experiences. The section consists of five parts: popular figures, recent hiring/leaving dynamics, Top figures on X (sorted by popularity, influence, and number of followers, totaling 1,000 entries), Top universities (100 in total), and Top companies (100 in total) talent supply rankings. This article introduces what this section covers, how to use it, and its limitations.

Who is the People Database suitable for?

• Investors: Treat changes in core members as early signals of project risks and opportunities;
• Job seekers and headhunters: Track the hiring directions of executives and investors to determine which institutions are expanding;
• Industry researchers: Study which universities and companies Web3 talent is flowing from and to which projects;
• BD and media: Quickly verify the true identity and employment background behind a certain X account.

Background: Why is 'person' the most underestimated data dimension?

Web3 project due diligence usually first looks at financing and code, but this industry heavily relies on the personal credibility and execution ability of founders and core teams. In practice, the departure of core developers or the joining of star investors often signals project direction earlier than financing announcements. RootData Research conducted a tracking study based on the people database: among the 28 projects that launched on Binance spot in the past two years, 18 times core members left, and 15 of those saw a drop in coin prices three months later. However, data about people is precisely the most fragmented and difficult to verify in the industry: anonymous founders, multi-account matrices, and resume fraud are common. The value of the people database lies in structuring these fragmented pieces of information into queryable and traceable dynamic data.

What do the five modules provide?

1. Popular figures and search. The homepage carousel displays current popular figures and their positions, such as Matthew Graham, founder and CEO of Ryze Labs, Sun Yuchen, founder of Tron, and Ren Yunan, founder of OKX Ventures. The top search box supports searches by person, university, and company, and entering an X account handle can also locate the corresponding individual entity.

2. Recent hiring / recent leaving. Two dynamic tables each include 100 records, displaying the names, companies, and positions of individuals. For example, based on the page snapshot from October 16, 2026: on the recent hiring side, Brian Foster became the head of Morpho GTM, Mason Nystrom joined Multicoin Capital as an investment partner, and Edward Lee became the head of product at Polymarket exchange; on the recent leaving side, Bruno Martins stepped down as CTO of the Algorand Foundation, Brian Foster left his position as Vice President of Infrastructure at Coinbase, and Mason Nystrom stepped down as a partner at Pantera Capital. The same person appearing on both sides (such as Brian Foster, Mason Nystrom, Bruno Martins) represents the complete trajectory of career changes—the "outflow-inflow" path of top talent is clear at a glance.

3. Top figures on X. A total of 1,000 records, supporting sorting by X popularity, X influence, and number of followers. For example, based on the snapshot from October 16, 2026 (sorted by popularity): Lonis Hamaili, founder of Dework (302), Brian Foster, head of Morpho GTM (187), and Affaan Mustafa, co-founder of Itô (142) are in the top three; by the number of followers, Elon Musk (241.7 million), Donald Trump Jr. (16.18 million), and Zhao Changpeng (12.82 million) still rank high. The differences between the two metrics illustrate that having many fans does not equate to having influence in the industry.

4. Top universities. Displays the 100 universities that supply the most talent to the industry, sorted by the number of individuals. Based on the snapshot from October 16, 2026: Stanford University ranks first with 355 individuals, followed by Harvard University (276), University of California, Berkeley (255), Columbia University (240), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (237); New York University (194) rises to sixth; Tsinghua University (118) rises to eleventh, along with Peking University (96) as the only two Chinese universities in the top 20.

5. Top companies. Displays the 100 companies that supply the most talent to the industry. Based on the snapshot from October 16, 2026: Coinbase ranks first with 326 individuals, followed by Google (276), ConsenSys (255), Binance (231), and Goldman Sachs (202); Microsoft (159) and Meta (154) remain at the forefront; IBM (90) newly enters the list, along with Deutsche Bank (92), JPMorgan Chase (87), and other traditional financial institutions, confirming the trend of TradFi talent continuously flowing to Crypto.

Three typical use cases

Change alerts: Use the recent leaving table as a risk check list for held projects—when core members appear on the leaving list, check whether the project's fundamentals are deteriorating simultaneously.

Reverse due diligence institutions: When seeing a new investment project from a certain institution, first check whether the project's founder comes from the 'talent mine' on the Top universities/companies list to cross-verify the team's quality.

Tracking network connections: Search for a target individual (such as a VC partner), view their complete resume and educational background, locate common alumni or former colleague relationships, and improve the efficiency of financing or job matching.

Usage restrictions

• The rankings and dynamic data are sourced from the page snapshot on October 16, 2026, and the hiring/leaving information is based on publicly disclosed boundaries, which may have delays or omissions;
• X popularity and influence are relative indicators based on the platform's own metrics, with algorithms not disclosed, suitable for horizontal comparisons but not absolute judgments;
• The people database includes individuals with 'important management positions or significant influence' as the threshold (page metric 11,000+, API full people data 22,000+), with limited coverage of long-tail practitioners;
• Anonymous or pseudonymous individuals are difficult to associate with entities, and the correspondence between X accounts and real people is subject to platform verification;
• Career updates are only an objective data presentation and do not constitute investment advice or evaluations of individuals.

View people associations

Visit RootData People Database, search for individuals, universities, or companies, and view career dynamics and talent flow maps.