How Metaintro Evolved from Web3 Credentials to AI Career Intelligence

TL;DR:

• Metaintro launched in 2022 as a blockchain-based credential wallet, raised $5.6M in seed funding, then pivoted to AI career intelligence after the team recognized that the real problem was job matching at scale, not credential storage on-chain.
• The core mission never changed: connect every professional with every real opportunity using verified data. The technology layer evolved from blockchain to AI because the market demanded it.
• Today Metaintro processes hundreds of millions of job postings across 120+ countries, serving nearly 2 million users with AI-powered career matching that goes far beyond what a credential wallet could deliver.

At Metaintro, we track how the labor market is shifting in real time. But the most important shift we have been through was our own.

In 2022, we raised a $5.6M seed round to build what we called a "professional resume wallet." The idea was rooted in Web3: a blockchain-based, multi-chain custodial wallet that held verified proof of employment, education, and skills. Workers would own their career data. Employers would verify credentials instantly. No more resume fraud. No more black-box hiring.

It was a real thesis backed by real investors, including NEAR, Aave, Druid Ventures, and Untapped Ventures. And at the time, it made sense. The Web3 ecosystem was growing. Credential verification was a genuine pain point. The technology was promising.

Then we started building, and the market taught us something we did not expect.

What Did the Web3 Credential Market Actually Look Like?

The first thing we learned was that credential verification, while valuable, was not the bottleneck for job seekers. The bottleneck was discovery. Workers were not struggling to prove their qualifications. They were struggling to find the right opportunities in the first place.

Our early user research showed a consistent pattern. Job seekers did not wake up thinking "I need a better way to verify my resume." They woke up thinking "I need a better way to find jobs that actually match what I can do." The verification layer was useful, but it was solving a secondary problem.

The second lesson came from the market itself. Through 2023, the Web3 hiring ecosystem contracted sharply. Crypto-native companies that had been hiring aggressively began laying off in waves. The total addressable market for a blockchain-based credential wallet shrank faster than anyone predicted.

We had a choice: double down on a shrinking market because that is what we raised money to build, or follow the data to where the real opportunity was.

Why Did Metaintro Pivot to AI Career Intelligence?

The decision was not impulsive. It came from months of watching our own data and talking to our users.

Three things became clear:

First, the underlying mission had not changed. We still believed every professional deserved access to every real opportunity. The blockchain was a means to that end, not the end itself. When a better path to the same mission appeared, the right move was to take it.

Second, generative AI had fundamentally changed what was possible in job matching. In 2022, matching a resume to a job posting meant keyword overlap. By 2023, large language models could understand context, skills transferability, and career trajectory in ways that traditional matching never could. The technology we needed to fulfill our original mission finally existed, and it was not blockchain. It was AI.

Third, our data asset was already massive. Through our newsletter and community, Metaintro had built a subscriber base of over 500,000 professionals and was processing job postings at a scale that gave us a real-time view of the labor market. That data was far more valuable as the foundation for an AI matching engine than as entries in a credential wallet.

Lacey Kaelani, CEO of Metaintro, told Fortune: "In combination with layoffs over the recent years plus the rise of required AI skills, experience is no longer enough." That insight did not come from theory. It came from watching the data shift in real time and building the platform to match.

What Changed and What Stayed the Same?

The technology changed completely. The mission did not.

What changed:

• From blockchain credential storage to AI-powered career matching
• From a Web3-native user base to professionals across every industry and 120+ countries
• From credential verification to real-time labor market intelligence
• From a narrow Web3 use case to a platform processing hundreds of millions of job postings

What stayed the same:

• The belief that every job seeker deserves access to every real opportunity
• The commitment to matching based on skills and qualifications, not paid placements
• The founding team: Lacey Kaelani-Dahan (CEO) and Brad Larson (CTO) have led the company from day one
• The investor base that believed in the team and the mission, not just the technology

This is not an unusual path for a startup. Slack started as a video game. YouTube started as a dating site. Instagram started as a check-in app called Burbn. The best companies are built by teams that follow the market signal, not teams that cling to a thesis after the data says otherwise.

Where Is Metaintro Today?

Today Metaintro is an AI career intelligence platform serving nearly 2 million active users across 120+ countries. We process hundreds of millions of job postings in real time. Our AI matches professionals with opportunities based on skills, experience, and career trajectory, not keywords and paid rankings.

The labor market is changing faster than most platforms can keep up with. As Lacey told Investopedia: "The switching premium has evaporated. In 2021-2022, job switchers saw 20% to 30% salary bumps. Now it's 3% to 5%. The job market has normalized, and employers have the negotiating power back."

That is the kind of shift you can only see when you are tracking the data at scale. And it is exactly why we built Metaintro the way we did. Not as a static job board, but as a career intelligence engine that adapts as fast as the market does.

We also see it in the rise of healthcare hiring driven by what experts call the "silver tsunami" of an aging population. As Lacey told the Daily Mail: "These jobs aren't being replaced by AI but instead requiring an upskilling." The workers who understand where demand is going are the ones who get ahead.

What Does This Mean for Your Career?

If you are a job seeker, career changer, or someone trying to figure out your next move, here is what the data tells us:

• The labor market is not rewarding movement anymore. It is rewarding precision. The right skill, in the right industry, at the right time.
• Going back to school only works when it is strategic and targeted. A specific technical certification in a high-demand field pays off. A vague degree does not.
• AI is not replacing most jobs. It is changing what employers expect you to know. The gap between "experienced" and "qualified" is widening.
• Side hustles built on skill-based work, such as skilled trades, creative services, and hands-on services, are outperforming digital gig work. As Lacey told Yahoo Finance: "Don't hedge your bets on what used to be lucrative like content creation and data entry. You won't be able to compete."

The world has changed since 2022. Metaintro changed with it. That is not a weakness. That is exactly what a company built to navigate the labor market should do.

People Also Asked

Did Metaintro start as a Web3 company?

Yes. Metaintro launched in 2022 as a blockchain-based professional credential wallet, raising $5.6M in seed funding from investors including NEAR, Aave, and Druid Ventures. The company pivoted to AI career intelligence after recognizing that job discovery, not credential storage, was the primary pain point for professionals.

Why did Metaintro pivot away from blockchain?

The Web3 hiring market contracted significantly through 2023, and user research showed that job seekers needed better matching, not better credential verification. Generative AI offered a more effective path to Metaintro's core mission of connecting every professional with every real opportunity.

What does Metaintro do now?

Metaintro is an AI career intelligence platform that processes hundreds of millions of job postings in real time across 120+ countries. It matches nearly 2 million users with opportunities based on skills, experience, and career trajectory.

Who founded Metaintro?

Metaintro was co-founded by Lacey Kaelani-Dahan (CEO) and Brad Larson (CTO) in 2022. Both founders have remained with the company through its evolution from Web3 to AI.

Ready to find opportunities that match your actual skills, not just your keywords? Start your search on Metaintro and see what the labor market looks like when AI is working for you, not against you.