Are you open to remote working engineers? In which case I would advise on reaching out to Indian software Engineers. India now probably has the largest base of Blockchain developers currently. Many of them are working on private blockchains using Hyperledger Fabric and other enterprise blockchain frameworks. 

In fact the core strength of India is in the development of public blockchain based DApps and platforms.  

In 1979, Ralph Merkle patented the concept of hash trees. It is a data structure that allows efficient mapping of large chunks of data in the form of a connected tree / linked list.

Consider it to be like an organization structure for data points. In such a linked set of hashed data structure, any small changes made to the data can be easily identified or spotted.

Cryptos are the best example of the use of Merkle trees.  

The best resources for understanding Merkle trees can be found here: 

- https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-to-merkle-tree

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle_tree 

- https://www.codementor.io/blog/merkle-trees-5h9arzd3n8 

Firstly, there are 7400+ cryptos listed on CMC. Check out the top header bar on https://coinmarketcap.com/. 

Having said that, not all of them are reliable or can be considered fully functional as of now. Many of them are dead, defunct, scams, etc. which you can find on deadcoins.com. 

On to your second question, it depends on the type of problem cryptos can solve. And there are problems aplenty in this world which I believe a cryptocurrency can solve.

If you look around on CMC (coinmarketcap) you will notice that there are different kinds of tokens and coins for different kinds of systems, industries, and markets - payment, governance, social media, storage, real estate, platforms, stablecoins, exchange utility tokens, prediction markets, insurance, trade financing, gaming, decentralized energy, moneylending, banking, supply chain - I mean you name it and we have a coin or token for that. 

So we can have a crypto token for many different industries, processes, and markets. However, I would advise you to look at them with a pinch of salt for completeness, readiness, need, and without a doubt please DYOR!! 

I think the most decentralized of all DeFi Projects / Protocols are as follows: 

1. Compound

2. Uniswap

3. Maker

4. Aave

5. Yearn Finance

6. Curve

7. Balancer

Some of the upcoming protocols from India are: 

- EasyFi

- OpenDeFi

Presently there are a number of pitfalls ranging from reputation to reliability. The issue with blockchain is the reputation through to the massive variances with what they represent. The other issues are that alot of blockchains are used to just raise money for an idea. 

The latest my team has put forward is the bio mimicry blockchain yo allow for military, finance and other uses where information encryption is relevant. 

Also our system allows for complete encryption but also looks at trusted devices so there is no one way to break the encryption. 

For the uninitiated, India has already been at the forefront of crypto innovation with companies like WazirX (now acquired by Binance), CoinDCX, BitBNS, Marlin, Matic, Persistence, EasyFi, OroPocket, Persistence, raising multi-million dollars in investments. Currently, the daily volumes in exchanges are a little less than ten million dollars, which is minuscule compared to the daily global volumes, but the interest is increasing day by day.  

India already has the world's largest software services capability which gets extended into blockchain development too. There is no doubt about India's readiness to take this industry to the stratosphere.     

But the real question is the need for an inclusive government and regulatory acceptance of some form, which will accelerate this industry and make India the most favored destination for crypto-related activities too.