Local Ethereum

🌍 Beginning

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!

Asia 🌊

India

• India topped the Chainalysis global cryptocurrency adoption ranking for a second year.

• Indian Railways Embraces Polygon NFTs for MahaKumbh Tickets.

• At ETHIndia, Indians united to experience quadratic voting through the Anon Aadhaar.

• The StackTooDeep Ethereum Hackathon 2025, running from January 31st to February 2nd, was hosted by the Blockchain Society of IIT Roorkee, one of India's premier technical universities.

• ZuGrama, a 6-week pop-up village experiment in India inspired by Zuzalu, covers impact public goods, AI, cryptography, and more.

Malaysia

• ETHKL meetup: From Data to AI Agents - From Code to No-Code. Jan 2025

• Scroll is doing a builder program, online and then a residency in Kuala Lumpur from Jan 27th to March 17th, Malaysia. Apply now.

China Mainland

• Dapp Learning, one of the best Ethereum dev community in mainland China - January Sharing: Boundary Adaptation Automatic Market Maker Model.

• Panta Rhei, an Ethereum research community focused on advancing the study of the Ethereum protocol and its ecosystem, held its January meetup: Devcon SEA Continuum on Ethereum roadmap and ZK tech.

• Deepseek AI shakes the market.

Taiwan

• Digital Ministry Launches Taiwan's Own DID, further reading: Digital Ministry Launches Taiwan's Version of DID(EN), 數位部提出台版 DID (CN).

• Community Privacy Residency (2025), a 2-4 week residency focused on researching, co-designing, prototyping, and building open-source applications for community privacy, with emphasis on Applications for Vulnerable Communities, Community Co-Design, and Privacy Infrastructure.

• Taipei Ethereum Jan meetup, From zkEVM to zkVM.

• You can now buy ETHTaipei 2025 tickets.

Hong Kong

• Hong Kong Monetary Authority announced that the ‘supervisory incubator’ is designed to help banks manage the risks associated with experimenting with blockchain or DLT implementation.

Japan

• Titania Research and the local ZK community have launched Uzumaki, the first Ethereum research house in Tokyo, Japan.

• Sony’s Ethereum Layer-2 Blockchain 'Soneium' Goes Live. Soneium leverages the OP Stack and Superchain architecture.

South Korea

• Lotte Group, South Korea's retail giant, deepens ties with Arbitrum, enabling crypto payments for its services.

• At KAIST, one of Korea's leading technology universities, the CS496 course combines Ethereum, cryptography and advanced mathematics for ambitious students.

Singapore

• Singapore Blocks Polymarket, Following Taiwan and France.

Vietnam

• Vietnam, a country ranked 5th in Chainalysis’ 2024 global crypto adoption index, plans to include crypto and digital asset exchanges in a fintech sandbox for its new financial centers in Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang, pending approval in mid-2025.

Kazakhstan

• Almaty, Ethereum security mini hackathon at BlackIce hacker space took place from 25th to 26th Jan 2025.

Bhutan

• Bhutan‘s new special administration region, Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC) has announced that it will acknowledge digital assets like BTC, ETH as part of their strategic reserves.

Iran

• DeCaffeth Meetup #4 brought together Iran’s Ethereum developers, security researchers, and community builders to explore key topics shaping the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond.

Europe 🏰

Germany

• Deutsche Bank is using zkSync to build their own rollup. Further reading: The details of the Deutsche Bank Layer-2 (DE).

• Protocol Berg v2: A decentralized protocol and infrastructure conference organized by the Department of Decentralization (DoD) - Call for Papers.

Switzerland

• Swiss Bank PostFinance Launches ETH Staking.

• UBS tests zkSync's layer-2 technology to explore if it could scale its current Key4 Gold program.

• Ethereum Zurich, organized by UZH Blockchain Center and DuctTape Events, took place from January 30-31, 2025.

Ukraine

• The ETHKyiv Impulse Hackathon begins on February 1st, 2025, offering $20,000 in prizes. It’s organized by the amazing ETHKyiv team.

• Ukraine set to legalize cryptocurrency in early 2025, without tax breaks.

• Valeriia Panina, a Next Billion Fellow, studied how everyday Ukrainians adopt cryptocurrencies and blockchain apps, mapping their use cases and behaviors.

Italy

• Italy’s largest bank Intesa makes first spot bitcoin purchase.

• NapulETH and the University of Naples Federico II are exploring a master's program in blockchain development.

Sweden

• Recent Ethereum-related research from KTH Royal Institute of Technology: 1) Geth Rebuild: Verifiable Builds for Go Ethereum; 2) Proving and Rewarding Client Diversity to Strengthen Resilience of Blockchain Networks.

Netherlands

• Netherlands’ third-largest bank ABN AMRO pilots tokenized trading on Ethereum.

Serbia

• ETH Belgrade, one of the strongest communities in the Balkans, launched ETH Belgrade University, focusing on Zero Knowledge, Web3 security, and Solidity.

Poland

• ETHWarsaw meetup on blockchain oracles, Jan 2025.

Romania

• ETHCluj meetup: 1) Features for Experienced Developers in Remix IDE; 2) Scaling Ethereum: A Deep Dive into the L2 Landscape, Jan 2025.

• ETHCluj 2025 conference tickets are out now! Buy Now.

North America 🗽

United States

• Etherealize, launched in January 2025, is an institutional marketing and product arm for the Ethereum ecosystem.

• The SEC approved Bitwise’s filing for a Bitcoin-Ethereum ETF.

• Gary Gensler, the former SEC Chair, returned to MIT to teach—where he had previously led the popular ‘Blockchain and Money’ course.

• Glad to hear of Ross Ulbrict's pardon and we are actively seeking the same relief for Virgil.

• Another court orders treasury to lift Tornado Cash sanctions.

• The Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) Forum, Call For Papers.

Latam 💃

Argentina

• The city of Buenos Aires has created 300k DIDs using Quark ID and zkSync.

• It is estimated that about 19% of the Argentine population uses some cryptocurrency, that is, 8.6 million people.

• Ripio, one of Argentina's exchanges, integrated with zkSync Elastic for their LaChain.

• ETHKipu, an active Ethereum community from Latin America, has shared their 2024 annual report.

• Aleph returns with a four-week pop-up city, featuring bootcamps, a hackathon, AI tracks, and more.

Brazil

• ERC55, a local Ethereum dev community, is organizing regular meetups.

• Modular Carnival, a crypto hackathon and conference in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil, will be hosted from February 26 - March 1, 2025.

Honduras

• Ethereum TGU, a local community active since 2018, recently released their Q4 2024 update.

Africa 🦁

Nigeria

• Over half the population in Nigeria (84%) report owning a crypto wallet in 2024 according to the annual multi-country web3 perception survey conducted by Consensys and YouGov.

Kenya

• Kenya prepares to legalize cryptocurrencies in policy shift.

• Magma: A two-week in-person residency for Africa’s top founders. April 2025 in Kenya.

Zambia

• Summitshare launches "The Leading Ladies of Zambia" virtual exhibit, a project led by Next Billion Fellow Mulenga Kapwepwe.

Egypt

• Blokkat's Arabic Blockchain Developer Bootcamp offers a 12-week online course in Ethereum development, from basics to Zero Knowledge, with hands-on projects and job connections.

Oceania 🏄

Australia

• Immutable, a Sydney-based Ethereum L2 for NFTs and blockchain gaming, has signed 500+ games and is now at 1.8M MAU.

• Melbourne, Ethereum Melbourne Jan meetup, 7702 Workshop: Odyssey chapter 1 reading club at 29th Jan 2025.

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day! 🌸

Best regards,

Riely and the Geodework team.

Subscribe

❤️❤️❤️

Love Local Ethereum? Share.

Have any comments or feedback? DM.

Want to advertise on Local Ethereum? DM or Email.

^{_{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.}}