Alibaba-affiliated fintech giant Ant Financial has recently set up an X plan to expand its talent pool in blockchain.

The plan is intended to grow its reserve of blockchain talents for the next 20 years by cooperating with colleges and universities all over the world.

It is learned that the name of the plan “X” implies infinite possibilities. The program, targeting global university graduates, aims to establish a new force to reshape production relations by technological means and focuses on the research and development around the core technologies of blockchain, such as distributed ledger, asymmetric encryption, consensus mechanism, etc.

The company has not disclosed the exact number of recruits. People familiar with the plan say there is currently no ceiling.

So far, a line of prestigious universities including Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, East China Normal University and Sun Yat-sen University has joined the program.

Reports point out that after the scramble for AI talent, the market is waging another fierce war for blockchain talents. The imbalance between supply and demand in the blockchain labor market is still going on, with the talent shortage continuing to intensify.

Not long ago, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) released nine new occupations, of which two are blockchain-related, namely blockchain engineering technicians and blockchain application operators, which also reflects the market need and future trend.

Gartner, a leading research and advisory company, has previously predicted that with the development of blockchain technology, the talent shortage in the blockchain sector will reach more than 750,000 people in China, and the global gap will be as high as 5 million.

As the country pushes for the big tech companies to “definancialize” their operations and focus on providing tech services to traditional financial institutions, Ant Financial has recently rebranded itself to Ant Technology. It is the world’s highest valued fintech company and operated the Alipay mobile payment network.

Since its foray into blockchain in 2015, Ant Technology claims to have built the largest business-oriented blockchain platform in China, which is capable of supporting 1 billion accounts and processing 1 billion transactions every day.

The conglomerate is the most active filer in terms of blockchain patent applications and has the most authorized blockchain-related patents in the world. According to public data, at present, R&D personnel account for more than 63 percent of the total employees at Ant Technology, surpassing established technology companies like Google and Amazon.