Argentina Ethereum Ecosystem Overview

This month, let's explore Argentina's thriving Ethereum ecosystem.

April 23, 2025

Special thanks to Eugenia, Romina, Candu for feedback and review.

Tl;dr

  • Since 2018, the Argentine Ethereum community has continued to grow through grassroots events, strong developer talent, and an established startup landscape.

  • By 2025, crypto is widely used as a tool for savings and payments.

  • Regulatory progress is accelerating, with new laws defining virtual assets and overseeing service providers.

  • Let's bring Argentines onchain!

❝

🗣️ Do you know how to say Ethereum in Spanish?

Just say it at sayethereum.fun!

Ethereum in Argentina: The Early Days

  • Early crypto history in Argentina can be traced back to 2011–2012 when some Bitcoiners started Bitcoin Argentina on Facebook, which later led to the founding of the Bitcoin Argentina NGO in 2013.

  • Casa Voltaire followed in 2014-2015. Functioning as both a hacker house and hangout spot, Casa Voltaire served as an innovation hub that spawned companies including Decentraland, Muun, and OpenZeppelin.

  • The first ETHGlobal hackathon in LATAM was the ETHBuenosAires back in May 2018, thanks to the organizers Martín and Ornella.

  • For years after ETHBuenosAires, the community came together to talk and learn at EthereumBA meetups, thanks to Martín, Sebastián, Emilio and Mateo.

  • Communities like DeFi Para Principiantes provided educational onboarding while wallets like Argent were subsidizing gas fees at the time, allowing Argentines who initially adopted DAI as a hedge against inflation to later explore broader DeFi opportunities during strict currency controls.

  • ETHLatam @ Buenos Aires 2022 Recap: ETHLatam origins. How it started, how it’s going. From a ~300 people hackathon to a 4,000+ people conference.

Inflation, Public Trust

  • In 2001, a measure known as “El Corralito” limited Argentines’ access to their bank deposits, restricting their withdrawals. This event eroded public trust in the government, banks and the economy.

  • High inflation has made Argentines acutely aware of multiple exchange rates and the need to save in alternative currencies.

  • Since the 2010s, Argentina's strict currency controls, transaction restrictions, and foreign exchange limitations have driven widespread adoption of alternative financial solutions, with citizens increasingly relying on foreign bank accounts, physical US dollars, and more recently, stablecoins for payments, remittances, and wealth preservation.

  • In February 2024, President Milei promoted the launch of the '$LIBRA' cryptocurrency, which crashed by more than 90% after an initial spike. This collapse wiped out over $280 million in value and damaged Milei's image. Lawmakers continue to investigate the government's involvement.

Policy

Local Grassroots Communities

Argentina's vibrant crypto ecosystem thrives through diverse grassroots communities focused on education, events, advocacy and more, with orgs like Ethereum Argentina, Crecimiento, SEED Org, and ETHKipu collaboratively building toward making the country LATAM‘s Ethereum hub.

  • Ethereum Argentina: An initiative to grow the local Ethereum ecosystem through annual conferences and hackathons since 2023. Past editions in Buenos Aires drew 4,000 (2023) and 3,000 (2024) attendees, with recent expansions to Mendoza and Córdoba. The core team includes ETHLatam contributors and other longstanding members of the Ethereum community.

  • Crecimiento: A movement born in 2024 to transform Argentina into Latam’s crypto capital. It hosts Aleph pop-up cities in Buenos Aires with 3,000+ attendees, a Founders School, Rayuela startups program, promoting regulatory reform and community-led initiatives. Crecimiento emerged from contributors at The Mu, Solow, POAP, Beefy, ETHLatam 2022. The core team includes Milagros Santamaria, Santiago Cristobal, Simon Puebla, Pablo Lewin, Mecha Racconto, Francisco Mendez.

  • SEED Org: A collective driving decentralized solutions across: governance (via SEED Gov dedicated delegate platform), community and education (SEED Latam), and infrastructure support (SEED Nodes).

  • ETHKipu: A collective that promotes Ethereum-focused educational initiatives across LATAM. ETHKipu supports local communities through multiple programs: Kipu Impact for community building, Kipu Stakers for staking education, and the Ethereum Developer Pack for technical training. The organization also coordinates events through ETHLatam and has successfully integrated Ethereum and Solidity into high school education programs in Buenos Aires.

  • APRENDO by Proof of Integrity: An organization brings blockchain education to underserved communities.

  • Geers: An educational initiative training technology professionals in Tandil, Argentina, supported by the Technological Cluster of Tandil, the local Municipality and UNICEN. One of their educational pillars is blockchain, featuring workshops on fundamentals and Solidity.

  • zkCity: A cryptography and zero-knowledge bootcamp that ran twice in 2024.

  • Mujeres En Crypto: A professional network dedicated to advancing female representation and leadership in Web3 through targeted development opportunities and strategic networking. Led by industry professionals Mery Fiorentini and Constanza Bianchi.

  • Other general Web3 communities: Cultura C3, Cripto La Plata.

  • DeFi

    • Mimic: A decentralized automation protocol combining AI and intent infrastructure to manage swapping, bridging, and liquidity.

    • Kpk (f.k.a. Karpatkey): A DeFi, asset and treasury management service provider.

    • Balmy: A decentralized banking platform and DEX aggregator.

    • Exactly Protocol: A decentralized lending protocol, with a mobile credit and debit card and payments app to use onchain assets.

    • Mountain Protocol: A yield-bearing stablecoin protocol.

    • Pol Finance: A company providing DeFi solutions including token engineering and financial auditing.

    • DAMM Capital: A company providing DeFi as a service solutions.

  • Wallets & Payments

    • Lemon Cash: A custodial wallet and exchange allowing users to buy, sell, and pay bills with crypto or fiat.

    • Belo: A custodial wallet and exchange, allowing users to buy, sell, and pay bills with crypto or fiat.

    • Ripio: A custodial wallet, infrastructure provider and exchange, allowing users to buy, and sell crypto and fiat. Ripio launched LaChain, an L2 as part of ZKsync’s Elastic Chain.

    • Buenbit: A custodial wallet and exchange, allowing users to buy, sell, and invest crypto and fiat.

    • SimpleFi: A payments platform facilitating integration of crypto payments with a business's existing systems.

    • Satoshi Tango: A CEX, allowing users to buy and sell crypto and fiat.

    • Berry: An investing platform offering access to US stocks and ETFs.

    • Other non-Argentine wallets with significant presence are Bitso (custodial), MetaMask, Safe Wallet and Rabby.

  • Security

    • OpenZeppelin: A security company that offers security audits, smart contract libraries and developer tooling.

    • CoinFabrik: A security and development firm providing smart contract auditing and blockchain architecture design.

    • The Red Guild: A guild of researchers providing education on crypto security.

    • Opsek: A Web3 audit company that provides security audits and training services.

  • Infrastructure and R&D

    • Nomic Foundation: A non-profit providing open-source engineering software for Ethereum. Projects include Hardhat and Hardhat related developer tooling, Slang compilers and EDR.

    • Lambda Class: A software factory, venture studio and an investment firm. Projects include ETHRex, an Ethereum client written in Rust; Aligned Layer, a decentralized network of verifiers.

    • Wonderland: A core development group and a Core Dev of The Graph, Everclear and Optimism. Projects include the SuperchainERC20 standard and opUSDC architecture for Optimism, public goods such as the Wonderland Governor Contract, among others.

    • BootNode: A software development studio offering smart contract and product development across DeFi, RWA, Web3 social and more.

    • Eryx: A dev shop that provides software solutions, including implementing cryptography protocols with ZK proofs and FHE.

    • Protofire: A development studio offering smart contract, app and software development services.

    • Wake Up Labs: A development studio providing software services and developing applications and infrastructure.

    • Sensei Node: A company that provides staking and node infrastructure services.

    • Cobuilders: A software firm providing software design and development services.

    • Fatsolutions: A development shop working on ZK solutions.

  • Social and Gaming

    • Decentraland: A virtual world platform to own and create digital assets and experiences.

    • POAP: A proof of attendance protocol to tokenize memories and turn them into onchain collectibles.

    • Bombo: A platform providing NFT ticketing solutions.

  • Decentralized Identity

    • Quark ID: A permissionless self-sovereign identity protocol built using ZKsync to store and deploy credentials offchain.

    • Sovra: A decentralized identity and RWA-focused ZK Validium L2.

  • Dispute Resolution

    • Kleros: A decentralized court system, using game theory and juror selection to resolve disputes onchain.

  • Other

    • XCapit: A company providing app development and tokenization solutions, with projects including renewable energy tokenization, and carbon credit tokenization.

    • OpenVino: A web3 platform that provides tokenization services for wineries.

Many Argentines are contributing to protocols such as Aztec, Sky (f.k.a. Maker), the Optimism Collective, SEAL, ZKsync, Certora, The Sandbox, Lido, The Graph, Graph Ops, Edge & Node and more. Argentina has an emerging startup landscape fueled by Crecimiento initiatives.

Ethereum Ecosystem Users & Use Cases

  • Stablecoin surge: In Argentina, stablecoins accounted for 61.8% of all crypto activities. Due to high inflation (reaching 211% in 2023 and 118% in 2024) and Peso devaluation, stablecoins provide an alternative way for people to protect their savings. Stablecoin-based remittances are gaining traction in Argentina and LATAM as a whole.

  • On and offramps: Locals prefer CEXs like Lemon – 46.9% of daily active users in exchanges choosing Argentine platforms in 2024. Argentines rely on CEXs and informal exchanges with parallel non-official exchange rates for onramp and offramp solutions.

  • DID: QuarkID is the digital trust framework developed by the Government of the City of Buenos Aires that establishes a new digital identity system, providing enhanced privacy for 3.6 million citizens.

Web2 and Web3 Developers

Web2 Developers

  • Argentina is the second-largest source of developers in LATAM with over 1,130,000 developers, including more than 156,000 registered software developers – a 4.1% increase since 2023.

  • Software sector employment grew 55.5% from 2015 to 2023, outpacing private sector growth (2.7%). Argentina also produces strong local talent, with over 27,000 STEM graduates annually in provinces like Córdoba.

  • Argentina is home to 228 software development firms and 11 out of 34 unicorn startups in LATAM are from Argentina. Buenos Aires serves as a hub for the startup and tech industry, supported by regional innovation clusters, or polos tecnológicos, across the country.

Web3 Developers

University & Blockchain Clubs

Navigate a full list of Ethereum and blockchain-related courses here: Universities on Blockchain 🇦🇷 by SeedOrg, with support from Eugenia.

Media - Who Are Local Players

Further Reading

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day! 🌸

Best regards,

Riely and the Geodework team.

❤️❤️❤️

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