Local Ethereum #4

🌍 April 2025 Roundup

Artist: Liam Cobb(opens in a new tab)

The story of Ethereum is a story of geography. Ethereum is a global network and a global movement. It is local nodes spread around the world that give rise to the phenomenon that is Ethereum. As such Ethereum is deeply rooted in geography.

From local ETH communities and meetups to universities, from developers to startups, from policy to user adoption and more, Local Ethereum is a newsletter to cover the geo-story of Ethereum. Let's start!

🗣️ Before we begin, we'd like to highlight two interesting initiatives recently launched by different EF teams.

Celebrate Ethereum's 10th anniversary since genesis!

Host a "10 Years of Ethereum" Meetup in your city on July 30th! Bring together your local Ethereum community to celebrate this milestone. Apply now(opens in a new tab) for up to $500 in funding from the Ethereum Foundation. 🎉

To celebrate, ethereum.org(opens in a new tab) is collecting personal stories and examples from people around the world. Ethereum Impact Stories, Call for participation(opens in a new tab)! 📮

Let's start!

Asia 🌊

India

• Anon Aadhaar, a team working on a privacy layer for the Aadhaar system, which is supported by Ethereum Foundation's Privacy & Scaling Explorations (PSE(opens in a new tab)) team, has begun mapping(opens in a new tab) national ID systems and the signing algorithms that power them. If you know how your country's national ID works, please open an issue here(opens in a new tab).

Malaysia

• ETHKL April Meetup(opens in a new tab): Special guest Ethereum core dev Jared Wasinger(opens in a new tab) from the Geth team gave a talk about Scaling Cryptography in the EVM. This high-level presentation included some low-level EVM details on April 23, 2025. We'd love to see more builders sharing their work at local community meetups. ❤️
• Scroll cofounder Yezhang(opens in a new tab) is bullish on Malaysian builders, especially with the strong and organic local Ethereum community there, including ETHKL, Etherscan, CoinGecko and more.

China Mainland

• April zkVM Hacker House(opens in a new tab)@Suzhou organized by Coset(opens in a new tab) and supported by Secbit(opens in a new tab). If you are a PhD student from China with a background in math, CS, and cryptography, and are looking for research opportunities in the ZK + Ethereum space, please ping Dr. Guo(opens in a new tab).
• Dapp Learning(opens in a new tab) is actively onboarding web2 developers to become web3 developers by building an open-source 'university'. Github 5.5k stars.

Taiwan

• Impressed with the talented Taiwanese student developers who participated in the recent ETHTaipei hackathon. Below is a list of projects they built over the past 3 years(opens in a new tab), thanks to the great mentorship provided by Martinet and Changwu.
• DeFiHackLabs Community Monthly Recap(opens in a new tab) - April 2025: The community won first prize at this year's ETHTaipei hackathon and delivered talks at CyberSec 2025(opens in a new tab). We'd love to see more ETH security communities bridge the gap between traditional cybersecurity and blockchain security communities.

Hong Kong

• Pop-X HK(opens in a new tab): Interop & UX Day that happened on April 8th was cool! Kudos to Dapp-Learning(opens in a new tab), Panta Rhei(opens in a new tab) and deUETH(opens in a new tab) team.
  • Find Dapp Learning founder Yan's conversation with Vitalik(opens in a new tab) here.
  • Interop(opens in a new tab) is an important focus in the Ethereum space, and we're eager to see more Asian builders getting involved, especially Asian wallets and L2s.

Japan

• Tomasz K. Stańczak's post(opens in a new tab) on Japanese Ethereum community: "Great communities building in Japan at @tanelabs(opens in a new tab) and @fractonresearch(opens in a new tab). Build on Ethereum in Japan. What other teams are building on Ethereum in Japan?"
  • Our grantees Titania Research(opens in a new tab) and zkTokyo(opens in a new tab) community are building a great Ethereum Research House in Tokyo called Uzumaki(opens in a new tab).

South Korea

• The Bank of Korea said it will actively participate in stablecoin legislation(opens in a new tab) development.

Singapore

• Soneium(opens in a new tab) partnered with AltLayer, Astar, and Eigenlayer to launch a fast finality layer(opens in a new tab) for Soneium.

Europe 🏰

Germany

• Protocol Berg v2(opens in a new tab) is coming June 12-13, 2025! The Department of Decentralization is revealing speakers bit by bit. Keep an eye out!
• ZuBerlin 2025 returns June 14-22! Join this co-living pop-up(opens in a new tab) featuring talks on L2 Interop, Cryptography, Protocol Architecture, Data, MEV & PBS, Future Society and more.
• ZKHACK Berlin(opens in a new tab) from June 20 to June 22 is confirmed. Builders will hack on zk-tools, use zk-DSLs, and build new products that showcase zk technology's capabilities.

France

• EthCC8(opens in a new tab), Ethereum Community Conference: The largest annual European Ethereum gathering, organized by Ethereum France, will be held in Cannes, France, from June 30 - July 3, 2025. Stay tuned!

Switzerland & Global

• Announcing Ethproofs(opens in a new tab) to boost Ethereum SNARKification! Ethproofs is the L2Beat of zkVMs—launching with @SuccinctLabs(opens in a new tab), @ProjectZKM(opens in a new tab), @Snarkify_ZKP(opens in a new tab).
• Vitalik suggested replacing the EVM with RISC-V, or another VM(opens in a new tab) that Ethereum ZK-provers will be written in to scale Ethereum.

Netherland

• Hack Archives(opens in a new tab) by Alina Latinina(opens in a new tab): A digital handbook for Ethereum hackathon organizers in Europe, providing essential resources to create inclusive, community-driven events.
• Dutch bank ING is reportedly(opens in a new tab) working on a new stablecoin with other TradFi and crypto firms.

Greece

• Join Interopolis(opens in a new tab) May 22-23, 2025 in Athens for a hands-on interop summit. No talks or panels—just collaborative whiteboarding, cohacking, and practical workshops for builders passionate about cross-chain solutions.

Italy

• SpaghettETH Al Dente newsletter(opens in a new tab), a newsletter covering Ethereum grassroots activities in Italy, powered by the SpaghettETH team.

The Czech Republic

• Ethereum's next major upgrade, Pectra, is named after Prague + Electra. As core researchers finalize L1 improvements, builders will meet on the ground during Czech Blockchain Week and EthPrague(opens in a new tab) (May 27-29, 2025), with ETHPragueConf topics ranging from Sustainable Futures to Societal Challenges & Opportunities, Ethereum Core & EVM, Dev Ecosystem, Tooling, UX, and Impact DeFi.
• ETHGlobal Prague(opens in a new tab) happens right as a new chapter for Ethereum begins.

Ukraine

• ETHKyiv 2025(opens in a new tab) (June 13–15, Kyiv) hackathon and conference is back. Builder registration here(opens in a new tab).

Serbia

• ETH Belgrade 2025, Applications for Volunteers are Open(opens in a new tab). Conference & Hackathon June 3rd - 5th, 2025.

Poland

• ETHWarsaw, September 4–7, 2025, one of the largest Ethereum conferences and hackathons in CEE, Applications are now open for speakers and hackers(opens in a new tab)!

Romania

• ETHCluj 2025 Conference: Ethereum for Everyone. June 26-28, 2025. Apply as a speaker or get your tickets here(opens in a new tab)!

North America 🗽

United States

• DeFi Education Fund(opens in a new tab) urges Trump to end 'lawless campaign' criminalizing software developers, including Roman Storm.
• US SEC Chair Paul Atkins who was sworn in as the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission at the White House, said his top priority will be to have a firm foundation for digital assets(opens in a new tab) and keep politics out of securities laws.
• Bridge, a stablecoin orchestration platform and a Stripe company is preparing to start testing a new stablecoin card issuing product(opens in a new tab) with clients outside the US, starting with Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Chile.
• Circle introduces the Circle Payments Network(opens in a new tab), which will allow global financial institutions to move money instantly 24/7 using stablecoins.
• Visa's role in stablecoins(opens in a new tab): 1) Modernizing settlement infrastructure; 2) Enhancing cross border money movement; 3) Enabling programmable digital money; 4) Creating on and off ramps for cards.
  • Visa believes that every institution that moves money will need a stablecoin strategy.
• Cool and new things: R0VM 2.0(opens in a new tab) and Steel 2.0(opens in a new tab) by RISC Zero.

Latam 💃

Argentina

• Dive into the most comprehensive mapping of Argentina's thriving Ethereum landscape. Crafted by the Geodework team with great community support. Please feel free to check out the Argentina Ethereum Ecosystem Overview(opens in a new tab). Let's bring Argentina onchain!
• The Devconnect team is kicking off the road to Devconnect Argentina with "Destino Devconnect," a grants program supporting local initiatives to accelerate Ethereum adoption across Argentina and Latin America. Projects can receive up to $1K in funding, plus additional non-financial support. Apply now(opens in a new tab)!

Brazil

• ERC55 April meetup(opens in a new tab): Ethereum Consensus Layer - Ricardo Santos.
• Ethereum has good opportunities in Brazil, but we must move fast(opens in a new tab)! One of LatAm's biggest Ethereum events, ETH Latam(opens in a new tab) (November 6–9), will be hosted in São Paulo this year. Romina(opens in a new tab) (one of the ETH LatAm organizers) is ready to build crucial connections(opens in a new tab) with Brazil's Ethereum ecosystem players ahead of the event.

Honduras

• If you are based in Tegucigalpa and interested in Ethereum & zk, come and join at Ethereum TGU(opens in a new tab)'s regular meetups and workshops sessions.

Africa 🦁

Nigeria

• Nigerian gov passes law recognizing Bitcoin as a security(opens in a new tab).
• Nigeria Web3 Landscape report 2024 is live(opens in a new tab). Nigeria leads Africa and ranks second globally in crypto adoption for the second consecutive year according to @chainalysis(opens in a new tab).
• Web3Bridge(opens in a new tab) and Blockfuse(opens in a new tab) have formed a joint initiative to build a new Ethereum Beam chain client team.

Oceania 🏄

Australia

• Sydney based crypto gaming firm Immutable will be merging its Immutable X into Immutable zkEVM(opens in a new tab) to form one unified "Immutable" chain as the true home of web3 gaming.
• If you are based in Melbourne and are interested in solving DeFi puzzles, join Ethereum Melbourne's May meetup(opens in a new tab) on Wednesday, May 14, 2025.

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day! 🌸

Best regards,

Riely and the Geodework team.

❤️❤️❤️

Love Local Ethereum? Share(opens in a new tab).

Have any comments or feedback? DM(opens in a new tab).

Want to advertise on Local Ethereum? DM(opens in a new tab) or Email(opens in a new tab).

If your company is interested in reaching an audiences of regional community and ecosystem builders, developer communities, universities, startup partners, or policymakers, you may want to advertise with us.