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- Local Ethereum #6
Local Ethereum #6
June 2025 Roundup
Artist: Liam Cobb
Greetings Ethereum Pioneers! 👋
Welcome to Local Ethereum, a newsletter where we cover the geo-story of Ethereum.
We explore and document the latest stories on Ethereum technology and community from every corner of the earth. Love what you read? Subscribe here for fresh updates. Let’s dive in!
Asia 🌊
India: Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal steps up as Polygon Foundation CEO. Polygon and GSR's DeFi-focused L2 Katana chain launches on mainnet. Fileverse launched dSheets.
Malaysia: The grassroots community in KL is thriving: ETHKL meetups are ongoing. Etherscan publishes an excellent Ethereum ecosystem newsletter called Block, thanks to TY and Harith.
Taiwan: DeFiHackLabs launched Unphishable, an interactive Web3 anti-phishing training platform designed to help you identify scams before they empty your wallet. Taipei Ethereum Meetup Medium page, one of the best technical writing columns in Chinese media.
Hong Kong: The FSTB and SFC launched a public consultation on legislative proposals to regulate virtual asset custodian services.
Singapore: Guidelines for digital payment token service providers on Notice PSN02 for the prevention of money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism. ShanhaiWoo, a month-long builder village in Singapore, is back this September.
Japan: EDCON 2025 is coming to Osaka! Unpredictable RANDAO by Banri, Vita, and Hiro from Titania Research. Awesome VOLE by Shouki. Intmax, a stateless Layer 2 protocol on Ethereum, launched on mainnet.
Korea: The Bank of Korea paused its CBDC project as local stablecoin adoption picks up speed. A recent survey by Hana Financial Research Institute found that 27% of respondents already own digital assets, while 70% of all respondents (and 86% of current holders) plan to buy more crypto within the next year.
Vietnam: Vietnam has one of the world’s largest crypto adoption rates, WHY? The recent crypto legislation opens doors to new business opportunities.
Europe 🏰
U.K.: Aztec published a ZKPassport Case Study. Noah, a stablecoin firm, closed a $22M seed round.
Germany: Sparkassen, Germany’s largest banking group, planned to introduce cryptocurrency trading services to its retail customers. You can now watch all Protocol Berg v2 talks here.
France: Ledger unveils Recovery Key, a PIN-protected physical card for tap-to-recover crypto wallets.
Switzerland: Jordi Baylina has moved the Polygon zkEVM team into a standalone startup, ZisK.
Poland: A comprehensive Poland Ethereum Ecosystem Overview. ETHWarsaw launched the Kolektyw3, a curated community space for Polish builders. ETHBelgrade 2025 in numbers: 1,000+ attendees, 100+ speakers, 280+ hackers, 80+ projects submitted.
Ukraine: ETHKyiv 2025 hackathon, 3 days, 200+ hackers.
Serbia: A comprehensive Serbia Ethereum Ecosystem Overview. Tenderly CTO Bogdan Habić on the importance of developer tools and Community Events like ETH Belgrade for innovation. Curvy, one of the youngest startups from Serbia, won first place at Starknet Hacker House at EthCC.
Czech Republic: This is the 4th year of ETHPrague, 1,000+ attendees, 600+ hackers.
Romania: 3 fun facts about ETHCluj and the Romania Ethereum ecosystem.
Others: Unveiling ZKsync Airbender, the world’s fastest open-source RISC-V zkVM. Central Ethereum Europe, the Zero-Knowledge Kid of the Ecosystem.
North America 🗽
CCI on Inside Washington’s strategic overhaul of Crypto Policy in 2025.
Stablecoin & payment:
Big tech giants like Apple, Airbnb, and X are in early discussions with crypto firms about using stablecoins.
Shopify and Base built the smart contract rails to bring stablecoin payments to checkout.
Kinexys by J.P. Morgan is launching JPMD, a USD deposit token for institutional clients, on Base.
Stripe acquired Privy, a web3 wallet infrastructure company, following its acquisition of the stablecoin platform Bridge.
June 2025: Stablecoin Summer by Grayscale.
Robinhood launches stock tokens, reveals an Arbitrum-powered Layer 2 blockchain, and expands its Crypto Suite in the EU and US with perpetual futures and staking.
SharpLink closed a $425m private placement led by Consensys Software Inc., positioning itself to become the largest publicly-traded ETH holder globally.
Etherealize published “The Bull Case for ETH”. ETH is the Digital Oil for the Digital Economy.
Eigenlayer introduced EigenCloud, a developer platform for developers to build verifiable and trustless web2 applications and services.
Ethereum House SF, a local hub for Ethereum builders, researchers, founders and investors in SF’s Frontier Tower.
Latam 💃
Argentina: Devconnect ARG tickets are live now! ETH HOUSE Argentina by Ethereum Argentina, ETHKipu and Buidlers. Say hi to Uniswap House in Buenos Aires. Aleph announced the biggest hackathon in Latam, taking place August 29-31.
Brazil: Brazil sets flat 17.5% tax on crypto profits, ending exemption for smaller investors.
Africa 🦁 & Oceania 🏄
We'd love to learn more from you! Share what's happening in your region 💬
Global Ecosystem Update 🗺️
Again, sharing the Ethereum Foundation’s R&D team structure under Protocol, followed by the strategic goals: 1) Scale L1; 2) Scale L2; and 3) Improve UX.
Ethereum Foundation Treasury Policy and Defipunk.
The 2025 Onchain UX Report shows growing concern: 44% of users manage multiple wallets for safety, 18% say security is their top issue with wallets, and over half want wallets and dApps to do more to protect them.
EF Protocol research updates. Learn more from ladislaus.eth’s note.
Scale and harden L1:
Vitalik wants 10-100x the L1 gaslimit. Ethereum core dev MariusVanDerWijden shared that all major Ethereum clients signaled that they consider a move to 45M gas per block safe. Learn more from ethPandaOps on Scaling Ethereum: The Path to 45M Gas Limit and Beyond.
The first Trillion Dollar Security (1TS) initiative report: an overview of the existing security challenges in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Scale blobs: Road to Shipping PeerDAS to Mainnet in 2025 by Jimmy from Lighthouse.
Improve UX: Barnabe walks through how the Ethereum Foundation is improving every layer, from block production to interop standards to embedded wallets.
Protocol: a) Shortening the Ethereum L1 slot time from 12 to 6 seconds; b) Fast Finality; c) Fast safe confirmation rule.
Interop: a) Bridges; b) Intents; c) Faster withdrawals; d) Sequencers and confirmation services; e) Token issuance; f) Interop UX.
Apps: Apps compatibility; App <> Wallet UX.
Wallet: EF Interop wallet, introducing Kohaku: a prototype wallet purpose-built for interop, crosschain UX, and privacy; Clear signing; Embedded wallets. Learn more from Josh Rudolf‘s notes.
Accounts: Account abstraction.
Opportunities 💡
Ethereum Job and Opportunity Board by Geodework and BuidlGuidl.
Devconnect Scholars Program is still accepting applications! If you are working in community, art, legal, R&D or related fields, apply now! Deadline extended to July 6th.
Sony Block Solutions Labs is launching the “Soneium For All” incubator.
Ream Labs is looking for contributors to build the Ethereum Beam client in Rust. If you are interested, please ping Unnawut.
Some of the most interesting open research problems:
Ethereum protocol research: Open Problems in Ethereum Research by EF.
MEV space: Flashbots Research Problem Database.
Ethereum Foundation Zero‑Knowledge Education Team (EF ZKET) 2025 Core Program in 7 cities: Taipei, Da Nang (Vietnam), São Paulo (Brazil), Quito (Ecuador), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Tokyo (Japan), Seoul (Korea).
Highlighted Events in July ✨
RWA Summit Day, July 1, 2025, Cannes, France
ETHCC, June 30 - July 3, 2025, Cannes, France
UZH-International Summer School- Deep Dive into Blockchain, June 30 - July 18, 2025, Zurich, Switzerland
EPFL-ETH Summer School on Lattice-based Cryptography, July 7-11, 2025, Lausanne, Switzerland
ETH Huangshan Hackathon, July 7-13, 2025, Huangshan, China
NapulETH, July 17-19, 2025, Naples, Italy
MXNB Hackathon, June 17 - July 14, 2025 Build the Future of Payments, Online
Unite DeFi Hackathon, July 25 - August 6, 2025, Online
Ethereum's 10-year anniversary, July 30, 2025, Global