Shaping
Ethereum,
One
Community
at a Time
People, places and experiments that keep the
ecosystem moving
Contents
Content
Page
Editorial Note
3
ETHIndia
4
Road to Devcon
5
ETHMumbai
7
Lucknow DAO
9
ETHPune
11
ETHKolkata
13
Hyderabad DAO
15
ETHIndia Merch
17
Blockchain Society IITR
19
Loops House
20
Blocsoc, IIT Delhi
21
GRYD
22
The Phoenix Guild
23
Dev3Pack
24
Easter Egg Behind the Design
25
Find the Easter Eggs
27
Kerala Blockchain Academy.
Thiruvananthapuram · since 2017
29
Web3Events
Ahmedabad · since 2021
30
Inner Circle Bengaluru
Bengaluru · since 2024
31
Puzzles Lore Check & Number Go Up
32
33
Devfolio
Global . since 2018
Decentralized. since 2018
Global. since 2014
Mumbai · since 2023
Lucknow · since 2024
Pune · since 2026
Kolkata · since 2026
Hyderabad · since 2022
Roorkee · since 2021
Pune · since 2025
New Delhi · since 2022
Mumbai · since 2023
Bengaluru · since 2022
Delaware and India · since 2025
Editorial Note
A letter to the Ethereum community
W
find their collaborators? What made them stay?
e often tell Ethereum’s story through its milestones: the upgrades, the projects,
the things that became possible. But how people become part of that story
deserves just as much attention. Who helped them get started? Where did they
Dear reader,
In India, communities have helped answer those
questions. They have given people a place to explore an
unfamiliar technology, find others who share their
curiosity, and build the confidence to contribute. Much
of the ecosystem we see today has grown out of those
early connections.
Since the first ETHIndia in 2018, we’ve had the chance to
watch this happen. People who arrived to try something
new have gone on to build products, contribute to open
source, and start communities of their own. A first-time
hacker returns as a mentor, helping another team work
through its idea.
Across
cities,
campuses
and
hacker
houses,
communities have carried that work forward in their
own ways. They’ve brought Ethereum into classrooms,
made technical ideas easier to approach, and opened
doors for people far from established centres. Their
patient teaching and everyday collaboration have helped
more people find a place to belong and a way to
contribute.
We wanted to make this magazine because these
experiences
deserve
a
lasting
record.
So
much
community history lives in chat groups, photo folders,
and the memories of those who were there. Behind what
a community does today are years of effort that can be
easy to miss.
In these pages, communities share their journeys: the
beginnings, the friendships, the experiments and the
work still ahead. Together with the ideas and cultural
references woven through this magazine, their stories
offer a glimpse of Ethereum in India as something lived
and built together.
This edition is a beginning, not a complete account. We
hope it encourages more people to preserve their
community’s history, share what they’ve learned, and
make connections beyond their own circles.
We’re deeply grateful to every community that trusted
us with its story, and to the community builders whose
work gives these pages meaning. Thank you to Arko
Mukharjee and Sushant Mishra for the design, and
Varun Krishna & Denver Dsouza for their care and work
in making this magazine possible.
Thank you, too, for reading. We hope you find a little of
your own journey here and a reason to help someone
else begin theirs.
With gratitude,
Veesesh (@vee19twt)
Community at Devfolio
3
A place to start, a reason to keep building
ETHIndia
I
n 2018, we brought people together to build on
Ethereum. That gathering became ETHIndia, a
hackathon where people could also meet a future
co-founder, find their first contributor or speak to
someone whose work they had followed.
Across six editions, ETHIndia has welcomed more
than 10,000 developers from over 400 cities and 30
countries. Together, they have built more than 2,000
projects spanning DeFi, identity, public goods and L2
scalability. For many participants, it was their first
experience of building on Ethereum.
Supporting builders beyond the weekend has been
part of that work from early on. We saw promising
ideas come out of hackathons, but turning them into
something people could use took more time, funding
and support. We wanted to help builders keep going.
ETHIndia
Grants
has
provided
funding
and
mentorship to more than 30 projects after the
hackathon. Through eight weeks of building with
mentors, the ETHIndia Fellowship has also helped
hundreds
of Web2
developers
get
started
in
Ethereum, giving them time to learn and develop
their ideas beyond a weekend.
The hackathon itself continued to grow. In 2022, 2,000
builders from 321 cities submitted over 450 projects,
making ETHIndia the largest in-person Ethereum
hackathon ever held. The following year brought 1,500
hackers and 480 projects.
Over the years, some projects became startups,
secured grants or developed into open-source tools.
Builders explored onchain identity, attestations and
open-source tooling through Devfolio. Protocol teams
met contributors, DAOs found members, and early
ideas found people willing to back them.
Those connections have a life of their own. Someone
arrives to try a new technology and meets a teammate
they’ll build with for years. Others return as mentors,
judges or organizers, helping people through the same
questions they once had. Seeing someone get started,
find their footing and come back to help is one of our
favourite parts of this work.
We’ve kept experimenting with how to make those
encounters happen: online buildathons, large-scale
hackathons, grants, fellowships, a hackathon in a villa
and another on a moving train. Each has taught us
something about what helps people get started and
what makes them stick around.
That brings us to 2026, with ETHIndia taking the form
of a conference within Devcon in Mumbai. This time,
we’re making more room for conversations, questions
and thinking through what’s worth building next. The
aim remains familiar: bring people together and help
them take the next step.
4
5
Devcon
Road to
D
Road to Devcon
Since 2014 | 40+ events · 20+ locations
mentorship, visibility across Devcon channels, and help with
connections and coordination. We looked for communities
that share Ethereum's values, among groups totally remote
from blockchain ecosystems: open-source contributors,
privacy advocates, digital rights activists and others whose
work has long been close to ours. Road to Devcon was as
much about bringing them into the room as it was about the
Ethereum community itself.
Many of the communities in these pages were part of that
road. ETH Kolkata took Devcon to five college campuses.
ETH Pune's final meetup drew four times as many
registrations as its venue could hold. Loops House ran 11
weekends of Build Battles, and GRYD took the road to 11
cities across the country. The last stretch was, quite literally,
on rails: just before Devcon, Edge BlockTrain put around 100
builders on a hackathon train from Goa to Mumbai, hacking
all the way into the city. You'll find their stories in the pages
ahead.
And the road ended where it began, with ETHIndia. Held
during Devcon in Mumbai, it brought builders from across
the country together under one roof, a fitting finale to a year
on the road. We hope it won't be the last time.
What stayed with us most was the people behind these
events. Many of them hosted Road to Devcon in their own
time, with their own effort, because they cared. They showed
us how much is possible when a community decides to show
up for itself.
Thank you to every local community that took part in this
movement. A special thanks to Devfolio, and to Denver in
particular, for being on the Road to Devcon all year long, and
for building something we hope will last well beyond Devcon.
Our wish is that it marks a new beginning for the Ethereum
community in India, one whose impact will be felt around the
world for years to come.
By Nethan (@nethan_eth), Devcon Team
evcon is the annual global event for the movement
building free, open, private, and verifiable systems.
This year, it comes to Mumbai. Road to Devcon is an
initiative by the Devcon team to bring local builders,
researchers, contributors and enthusiasts together. Every
year, Devcon moves to a new place. The event happens in one
city, but the goal is for the whole country, and the wider
community around it, to feel part of something larger.
This year, Devcon came to Mumbai and we wanted all of
India to feel connected to it. So we went to where people
already were: their campuses, their city meetups and even
Telegram chats ;)
It all started in Bengaluru, at the Devfolio office back in
January 2026. The Devfolio team, who had spent years
bringing builders into Ethereum, gave the first Road to
Devcon event a home. From there, the road kept going on…
Over the months that followed, Road to Devcon grew to 40+
events across 20+ locations. Devfolio (ETHIndia) led the way.
ETHMumbai followed with a series of MIPs on how the local
community can be a part of Devcon, Ethereum's latest
upgrades and the CROPS (censorship & capture resistance,
open source, privacy and security) mandate. Then came the
rest of the map: Kolkata, Pune, Hyderabad, Lucknow and
Kerala, along with smaller cities like Bikaner, Baroda,
Mangalore and Surat and many more!
Campuses were a big part of the journey. IIT Roorkee, IIT
Delhi, IIT Bombay, NSUT, IIT Mandi and other leading
institutes joined in. For many students, it was the first time
the Ethereum community had shown up on their campus, sat
with them and built alongside them.
Our role was to support the people already doing the work.
Through
the
Ecosystem
and
Academic
programmes,
communities received some financial support, Devcon tickets,
6
ETHMumbai
Since 2023 · Mumbai · ethmumbai.in
Build from Mumbai, for the World
By Chandresh Jain, lead organiser, ETHMumbai
“Our vision is to build Ethereum experiences
that create not just a community but
opportunities.”
7
B
in Mumbai, but across several other cities in India, building
experiences together that connect people building on
Ethereum. To date, we have hosted 20 meetups with 1000+
attendees and special events like Farcaster Night, 10 Years of
Ethereum, Cowork with ETHGlobal, and Road to Devcon.
Being
part
of
the
community
has
already
created
opportunities for some in terms of jobs, getting early access to
apps, and finding people to hack with.
ETHMumbai began with a hackathon hosted in March 2024
for 200+ hackers who submitted 64 projects and took home
$30K in prizes. Our core team and contributors went all in on
making it one of the best hackathon experiences.
orn out of a simple idea to drive forward Ethereum,
from wherever we are and however we can:
ETHMumbai is our chance to build from Mumbai,
for the world. We are many people located primarily
In 2026, ETHMumbai grew fourfold with BEST, its flagship
Ethereum hackathon and conference, which brought together
200+ hackers, offered $10K in bounties, and welcomed 700+
attendees and 50 speakers.
Our vision is to build Ethereum experiences that create not
just a community but opportunities for people to come
together to share ideas, build together, and learn from each
other.
ETHMumbai was founded in 2023 in Mumbai.
ethmumbai.in · x.com/ethmumbai · t.me/ethmumbai
8
Building Ethereum’s Grassroots in
Lucknow
By Suraj Sharma, lead, Lucknow DAO
“You shouldn’t have to live in a major
tech hub to find your place in Web3.”
9
Lucknow DAO
L
Since 2024 · Lucknow · x.com/Lucknow_DAO
We wanted to create that space.
Lucknow DAO grew into a community bringing together
developers, founders, students, researchers and Web3
enthusiasts. Ethereum has been an important part of that
journey because it represents more than a technology stack.
Its open-source culture and permissionless nature allow
anyone to explore, contribute, experiment and build without
needing an invitation.
Our approach has always been hands-on. We organize
community meetups, technical workshops, hackathons, and
ecosystem events that help people move beyond simply
hearing about Web3 to actually engaging with it. We connect
local builders with protocols, developer communities and
opportunities across the global ecosystem.
Over time, Lucknow DAO has grown to more than 1,000
community members, built relationships with 50+ ecosystem
partners, and organized 30+ events. We’ve collaborated with
communities and ecosystems across Ethereum, Solana,
Starknet, Avalanche, Monad, Arweave and others. Each
collaboration has helped bring new ideas, people, and
opportunities to builders in our region.
But the most meaningful impact isn’t measured by attendance
numbers alone. It’s seeing someone attend their first technical
workshop, find collaborators for a project, discover a
hackathon, or realize that contributing to an open-source
ecosystem is within their reach. Those moments are why
community building matters. One of our proudest milestones
has been bringing the Road to Devcon experience to
Lucknow.
For us, it’s about making the conversations surrounding
Ethereum more accessible and helping local developers feel
connected to the people and ideas shaping its future. Global
conferences are important, but the communities that prepare
people to participate in them are just as important.
Building outside the biggest technology hubs comes with
challenges. Awareness takes time to grow. Communities need
consistency, not just occasional excitement. And meaningful
participation requires more than bringing people into a room.
It means creating an environment where they keep showing
up, keep learning and eventually start building together.
That’s what we’re working toward with Lucknow DAO: a
community where curiosity can turn into contribution and
local connections can lead to global opportunities.
Looking ahead, we want to deepen our involvement in the
Ethereum ecosystem, support more developers and open-
source
contributors,
create
stronger
pathways
into
hackathons and grants, and connect more builders from
across the region with the global Ethereum community.
We believe Ethereum becomes stronger when more people
can participate in shaping it. Our role is to help make that
participation possible, starting right here in Lucknow.
Lucknow DAO was founded in 2024 in Lucknow.
x.com/Lucknow_DAO · t.me/Lucknow_DAO
technologies, and people who wanted to build but didn’t
always know where to start. What was missing was a
consistent space where these people could meet, learn from
one another, discover opportunities and become part of a
wider ecosystem.
ucknow DAO began with a simple belief: you
shouldn’t have to live in a major tech hub to find your
place in Web3. In Lucknow, there were developers
curious about blockchain, students exploring new
10
ETH Pune
Since 2026 · Pune · ethpune.com
Where the Oxford of the East
Meets Ethereum
By Akash Kshirsagar, founder, ETH Pune
“For us, success isn’t only about how many people show up. It’s
about whether someone finds a new interest, meets a future
collaborator, discovers a project to contribute to, or feels
confident enough to start building.”
11
une is often called the Oxford of the East, and it’s
easy to see why. Every year, thousands of students
come here to learn, try new things, and figure out
what they want to do next.
P
We started ETH Pune with that in mind: we wanted to bring
Ethereum closer to students and give more people in the city
a way to discover what they can learn and build with it.
If you’re new to Web3, it’s hard to know where to begin.
There’s a lot to take in, and honestly, the quickest way to
understand something is often to talk to people who are
already working on it. So we wanted a space where beginners
could ask questions, meet builders, swap ideas, and learn
about Ethereum without feeling they had to know everything
first.
That’s what ETH Pune is about. We run community meetups,
work with colleges, and create ways for people to learn about
Ethereum and the wider Web3 world. We want our events to
work for people who are completely new and also for those
who are already building and want to meet others with
similar interests.
One of our biggest efforts this year was the Road to Devcon
meetup series. With Devcon coming to India, it felt like the
right moment to introduce more people to the Ethereum
community and show them what Devcon is all about. Across
the meetups, speakers and community members got together
to talk about real-world uses of Ethereum in India, where
crypto and AI overlap, CROPS, and how to get involved in the
ecosystem.
The final meetup, on October 24, 2026, was a special one for
us. We got four times as many registrations as our venue could
hold, which made it the most popular event in the series. It
was really encouraging to see that much interest from Pune.
Alongside the talks, we ran an interactive quiz and a few other
activities to keep things fun.
We’ve also been reaching out to college communities and
encouraging students to take their first steps into Ethereum.
For us, success isn’t only about how many people show up. It’s
about whether someone finds a new interest, meets a future
collaborator, discovers a project to contribute to, or feels
confident enough to start building.
What makes ETH Pune special is the city itself. Pune already
has a strong learning culture, and we’d love to bring that
energy into Ethereum. You don’t need to be an experienced
developer to be part of this. If you’re a student, designer,
researcher, developer, or just curious, there’s a place for you
here.
We’re still early in this journey, and there’s a lot we want to do
next: reach more colleges across Pune, run more hands-on
sessions, and help more students find opportunities in the
Ethereum ecosystem.
Pune has always been a place people come to learn. With
ETH Pune, we want them to have a place to build, collaborate,
and contribute to Ethereum’s future too.
ETH Pune was founded in 2026 in Pune.
ethpune.com · x.com/EthereumPune · t.me/EthereumPune
12
ETH Kolkata
Since 2026 · Kolkata · x.com/eth_kolkata
By Sachindra Singh, core team, ETH Kolkata
“The next great Ethereum contributor
shouldn’t have to leave Kolkata to find their
people. They should be able to find them
right here, at home.”
13
How the City of Joy Geared Up for
Ethereum’s Biggest Festival
“E
TH Kolkata, pretty cool?” we said. “Pretty cool
indeed,” I thought. It started with a phone call
between Agnish, a core developer from Kolkata who
had been thinking about starting a local Ethereum
community, and me, a builder who had been building on
Ethereum since my first days of college.
One phone call, years of pent-up excitement, and ETH
Kolkata was born.
Here’s the thing about Kolkata. The city has always had
incredible talent in Web3. Core developers, builders,
designers, founders, you name it. People from this city have
been contributing to Ethereum for years, but they’ve often
had to go the extra mile to get noticed. And they did.
But not everyone has the privilege of travelling across cities,
attending 100+ events, meeting the right people, and finding
opportunities along the way.
That’s the gap we wanted ETH Kolkata to fill.
What if opportunities came to you instead? What if
Ethereum came to your nearest college campus? No expensive
travel, no complicated plans. Just show up, meet people, and
start building.
And that’s exactly what we tried to do.
We brought students, existing builders, founders, growth
hackers, and designers together under one roof to talk about,
you guessed it, Ethereum! And of course, Devcon.
Across five events hosted at different college campuses in
Kolkata, we saw over 1,500 signups and 600+ attendees. And
trust me, Kolkata’s weather wasn’t making things easy. Heavy
rains, transportation problems, and everything in between.
But people showed up. Big time.
They came to learn about Ethereum, listen to speakers, meet
fellow builders, and discover opportunities they might never
have known existed.
One of my favourite memories was from our main
ETHKolkata event. I’d stayed up all night vibecoding a Hi-Lo
game and deploying it on Ethereum, which we then played
live with the community. And then something hilarious
happened.
One guy bet on one side all by himself and ended up winning
the ENTIRE prize pot.
You really had to be there. But beyond the events and the fun,
what matters most to us is the people. ETHKolkata has always
been people-first. We wanted everyone to feel heard, included,
and genuinely part of something. We helped raise awareness
about Devcon, introduced new developers to Ethereum, and
today, over 100 people from Kolkata are heading to Devcon
this November.
A special shoutout to all the amazing women from our
community joining us! What makes ETH Kolkata special isn’t
just the events. It’s the hunger.
The developers here are hungry to build, contribute, and
make their mark. They’re not waiting for someone to tell
them what to do. They’re waiting for the right opportunities,
and we’re trying to bring those opportunities closer to home.
And we’re just getting started.
Next, we’re planning dedicated coworking sessions for active
contributors who consistently bring value to the ecosystem,
alongside builder highlights on X Spaces to showcase the
products and teams shipping on Ethereum from Kolkata.
Because for us, ETH Kolkata was never about organising five
events and calling it a day.
It’s about building a community where the next great
Ethereum contributor doesn’t have to leave Kolkata to find
their people.
They should be able to find them right here, at home.
ETH Kolkata was founded in 2026 in Kolkata.
x.com/eth_kolkata
14
Hyderabad DAO
Since 2022 · Hyderabad · hyderabaddao.com
A City That Refused to Be Left
Behind
By Rohan Reddy and Siv Ram Shastri, co-founders of Hyderabad DAO
I
when they noticed something. DAOs and Web3 communities
from different cities had shown up, bringing their builders,
ideas, and energy with them. But there was barely any
representation from Hyderabad.
For a city with so much engineering talent, that didn’t quite
make sense.
Instead of waiting for someone else to fix it, they created a
Twitter handle: @hyderabaddao. After that conference, they
crossed paths with Siv Ram Shastri. What began as a
conversation soon became a shared mission: to build a home
for Hyderabad’s Web3 community and make sure the city had
a seat at the table.
Our first meetup happened in September 2022. Around 80
people showed up, including students, developers, and
curious builders who wanted to understand what was
happening in Web3. Out of that gathering, a small group of
seven or eight people connected over the same idea and
continued the journey on Telegram. There was no grand
roadmap or big organisation behind us. Just a handful of
people who believed Hyderabad had the talent to build
something meaningful.
We started reaching out to blockchain protocols and inviting
them to bring their India tours and community meetups to
Hyderabad. Within a year, we had organised more than 15
meetups with different protocols. We also signed an MoU
with the Government of Telangana’s Emerging Technologies
Wing to support blockchain awareness through meetups,
workshops, and hackathons.
t all started with a simple question in 2022: Why was
Hyderabad missing from the Web3 conversation?
Rohan Reddy and Vijay Ankith, two builders from
Hyderabad, were attending a Web3 conference in Goa
Fast-forward
to
September
2026,
and
those
early
conversations have grown into something much bigger: 100+
meetups, 30+ hackathons, 50+ college workshops and
bootcamps, and partnerships with 40+ blockchain protocols.
We’ve worked with more than 30 colleges and universities to
help establish their first blockchain clubs and conducted
faculty development programmes to encourage blockchain
education in academic curriculum. Across these initiatives,
we’ve reached more than 10,000 people. And we’ve kept our
community initiatives free and non-profit, because access to
learning and building opportunities shouldn’t depend on
someone’s ability to pay.
One of the things that makes this journey special is seeing the
growth for ourselves. At ETHIndia 2022, only around three
or four teams came from Hyderabad. By 2023, that number
had grown to 10–15, and by 2024, around 30 teams were
participating.
By 2026, we’ve seen at least 40 teams from Hyderabad
participating in ETHGlobal hackathons, with teams from our
wider ecosystem going on to win at least 10 ETHGlobal &
other Web3 hackathons across different countries each year.
Those numbers mean more to us than any event attendance
figure. They represent developers who found their people,
discovered new possibilities, and went on to build on a
global stage.
We’ve also carried Hyderabad’s voice to events like Devcon
Bangkok, Devconnect Buenos Aires, and Token2049 in Dubai
and Singapore. Our initiatives have been featured in the
Global
Blockchain
Business
Council’s
India
Country
Spotlight: Telangana’s blockchain ecosystem report. And now,
we’re excited to look ahead to Devcon Mumbai.
But if you ask us what Hyderabad DAO is really about, it’s not
the numbers, partnerships, or conference appearances. It’s the
15
“We started because Hyderabad was missing from the
conversation. We’re building so the next generation of builders
never has to feel that way.”
student attending their first workshop, the developer finding
teammates at a meetup, and the local team realising they can
compete with builders anywhere in the world.
We started because Hyderabad was missing from the
conversation. We’re building so that the next generation of
builders never has to feel that way.
A huge part of Hyderabad DAO’s journey belongs to the core
contributors who have consistently shown up, taken
ownership, and kept the community moving forward. Their
time, effort, and belief in our mission have helped us grow
and continue building without losing sight of why we started.
A heartfelt shoutout to Vishal, Vinay, Chandrabose, Chetana,
Rahul,
Satyanarayana,
Sai
Charan,
Naveen,
Manas, Nikhil, Dusa Praharsh, Dusa Paritosh, Mujahid, Devi,
Keerthana, Siri & Sayan. Hyderabad DAO wouldn’t be what it
is today without these incredible people standing behind the
mission.
The next chapter is about going deeper into universities,
creating more opportunities for emerging developers, and
helping more homegrown teams take their ideas to the world.
Hyderabad has the talent. We’re here to help it find its people,
its opportunities, and its place in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Hyderabad DAO was founded in 2022 in Hyderabad.
hyderabaddao.com · x.com/hyderabaddao
16
MERCH
Every year, we try to do something special with ETHIndia
merchandise. And every year, we put an unreasonable amount of
thought into it.
It's never just, "Let's put our branding on something and give it away."
We think about whether hackers would actually like it. Would they
keep it? Would it become a part of their everyday lives? Would they
show it to their friends? Would they be proud to own something that
came from ETHIndia?
And then comes the endless back and forth. V0, V1, V2… V9000. We
keep experimenting, changing things, throwing ideas away, and
starting over until we land on something that feels right.
Why do we go through all this trouble? It's hard to explain, really. We
just want ETHIndia to set the bar for what an event can be. Not just in
the talks, the hacking, or the people you meet, but in every little
detail that makes the experience memorable.
That's the standard we aspire to, and every year, we try to push it a
little further.
Sticker Sheet
ETHIndia Villa
Welcome
ETHIndia
Welcome Card
ETHIndia Villa
The Legendary 2586 Hoodie
ETHIndia 2022
Card
a Villa
Wristband
ETHIndia 2024
Tote
Bag
ETHIndia 2024
Blockchain Society, IITR :
“We wanted one open space
where any student could walk
in curious and leave building.”
By Soham Vijay, member, Blockchain Society IIT Roorkee
either. At almost every summit or hacka-
thon we attend, in India or abroad, we run
into a BlocSoc alum, often without planning
it. We work hard and we party harder,
and those friendships travel with us across
cities and time zones.
What defines us is a culture of shipping
projects that run beyond a demo. Our mem-
bers have nurtured startups like Blockflow,
which was acquired, along with Privote and
Useaspen. Our open-source work includes
Selene, a fast, portable Ethereum light client
in Go; Plexus, which turns Ethereum’s block-
level access data into dependency graphs
for parallel execution; FluxDB, a database
that outperforms SQLite under concurrent
workloads; Deimos, client-side benchmark-
ing for zkVMs; and Nexus, an MCP server for
Hyperliquid.
Our most memorable moments happened
on the road. In 2023, BlocSoc made its
first international appearance at ETHGlobal
Paris and came home with Best Mobile App
and Best Use of The Graph. That trip raised
the bar for everyone who followed. Since
then, our members have built at ETHGlobal
Brussels and Singapore, Devcon Bangkok,
ETHVietnam, TOKEN2049
Singapore
and
hacker houses across India.
The wins have followed. In the last two
years alone, our teams have taken the PayPal
and Alliance tracks at ETHGlobal Delhi, the
Arbitrum track at Agentic Ethereum, the
Base and Zircuit tracks at ETHVietnam, the
AlphaTon track at TOKEN2049, and the File-
verse track at ETHMumbai. We’ve also won
Inter IIT Tech Meet silver and hackathons run
by Polkadot, Aptos and OpenAI. Our mem-
bers have been selected for Google Summer
of Code, Summer of Bitcoin, the Ethereum
Protocol Fellowship, LFX Mentorship and the
Protocol Labs Dev Guild. Many alumni now
build full-time in Web3.
What makes us different is depth. We don’t
just build apps on blockchains. We build the
infrastructure underneath them, from light
clients and databases to ZK tooling. And
we do it in public: every repo is open, and
anyone can join.
Next, we want to keep growing blockchain
culture on campus and beyond it. That
means more first-year students in Forge
Build, a bigger Stack Too Deep, more open-
source infrastructure, and deeper work. This
November we represent IITR at Devcon and
ETHGlobal Mumbai, and we plan to bring
that energy home.
Blockchain Society IITR was founded in 2021 at
IIT Roorkee, Uttarakhand.
blocsoc.iitr.ac.in · x.com/BlocSocIITR
lockchain
Society
IITR
began
in
2021 with a handful of developers
who believed Web3 deserved a real
home at IIT Roorkee. We launched
B
on 31 October, the anniversary of the Bit-
coin whitepaper. There was no funding, no
roadmap and no playbook. There were just
a few people reading protocol specs late
into the night, breaking things on testnets,
and sharing what they learned with anyone
who would listen. That genesis group grew
into a community of developers building and
exploring distributed systems, blockchain
protocols, and the infrastructure underneath
them.
It needed to exist because on campus, block-
chain was scattered. Curious students were
learning alone, with nobody to ask about
Solidity, Bitcoin internals or why a trans-
action failed. We wanted one open space
where any student, from any branch and at
any level, could walk in curious and leave
building.
That openness is who we are. Every year,
our Forge Build cohort guides beginners
into blockchain and distributed systems,
and seniors mentor juniors who soon keep
them sharp with fresh questions. Our 36-
hour hackathon, Stack Too Deep, is where
many of them ship their first real project.
The community doesn’t end at graduation,
19
Loops House :
“Loops House didn’t
start as a platform. It
started as a house.”
By Rishikesh Kale, founder, Loops House
Loops House now hosts builder challenges
and Build Battles where an AI Judge reads the
actual code and shows its reasoning. Every
submission gets a permanent public page,
and sponsor docs live inside the builder’s
editor instead of a tab they forgot to open.
The house became infrastructure, so any
community can run one.
Back home in Pune, a community lead
invited us to run a MetaMask session in July.
Instead of a talk, we ran a Build Battle. Thirty
builders, most of them new to Web3, had 40
hours to fix real problems for first-time wallet
users:
approvals
nobody
understands,
transactions that read like machine output,
flows with one step too many. Only six points
separated the top eight. A week later, 29 more
builders
took
on
smart
contracts
and
decentralised storage in our Zero to One
series.
Then came Road to Devcon. Ethereum turns
11 this year, so we ran 11 weekends of Build
Battles, one for each year, with participation
from more than 500 builders. The themes
started with Reading Ethereum and Art,
Culture & Ethereum in India. They moved
through smart accounts, onchain identity,
decentralised storage, x402 pay-per-call, AI
and
Web3,
onchain
gaming,
prediction
markets
and
privacy,
and
ended
with
Funding the Commons. The top builder of the
final weekend won a ticket to Devcon 8 in
Mumbai.
We aim to make Web3 learning paths easier
for everyone, starting from day one.
L
Loops House was founded in 2025 in Pune.
loops.house
oops House didn’t start as a platform.
It started as a house. At ETHNewDelhi
last year, we ran a hacker house: a
space where builders came to ship
rather than sit through talks. The
energy of people building side by side, at all
hours, was the whole idea, and we wanted
more of it.
So we took the hacker house on the road.
During Devconnect in Buenos Aires and then
in Shanghai, we ran it again with builders
from very different ecosystems. Each time we
saw the same gap. The work in those rooms
was real, but when it came time to prove it,
everything came down to a three-minute
pitch. The best slides won, repos went
unread, and strong builders who weren’t
strong presenters slipped through.
That’s what we set out to fix. We turned what
we learned in those houses into a platform.
20
“The inertia was a call for community, the call
for Blocsoc.”
By Nikhilesh, overall coordinator, Blocsoc, IIT Delhi
B
Blocsoc regularly hosts events to onboard
beginners into blockchain and Ethereum
with our classic BC106 series and workshops
on ZK and CROPS. For intermediate and
advanced participants, we regularly host
hackathons and CTFs with interesting and
difficult problems. Every summer, Blocsoc
hosts a DeFi or ZK online workshop of
roughly five weeks for students all over India
with
weekly
assignments
and
lecture
sessions hosted by Blocsoc members and
guest lecturers who are experts or startup
founders in those respective domains.
Blocsoc has co-hosted Interfaces, a major
blockchain conference at IIT Delhi that
brings
together
founders,
researchers,
technical leaders and students supporting the
Ethereum ecosystem in South Asia, alongside
Devfolio through 2025. Interfaces has made
history in India, as IIT Delhi was the first
university in South Asia to be directly
addressed by Vitalik Buterin. We’ve also
hosted Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood for
a JAM lecture tour at IIT Delhi in the same
year before Interfaces. Hosting Vitalik and
Gavin were two of our most memorable
events. Workshops on ZK, cryptography, DeFi
and AI agents have been conducted in
collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation,
bringing together students from IIT Delhi and
the wider Delhi University circuit.
The Blocsoc team has won prizes at many
hackathons, including ETHGlobal Online,
ETHGlobal Mumbai, HackMoney, ETHIndia,
ETHMumbai and ETHSingapore. Winning
projects received grants from L2s and other
chains.
Four years after our founding, we remain
motivated to contribute as a student-run
community and grateful for the opportunity.
We’ll
continue
in
the
same
direction,
contributing further to Ethereum and the
broader blockchain ecosystem.
Blocsoc was founded in 2022 at IIT Delhi
blocsoc.in · x.com/0xblocsoc
itcoin
and
Ethereum
were
everywhere in online technology
circles, but there was still too much
inertia in academia, especially in
Delhi and North India. That inertia became a
call for community: the call for Blocsoc.
Founded in 2022, we started with a bang by
building
deeply
researched
and
novel
projects, winning hackathons, publishing
articles, hosting events across North India
and, of course, partying hard. Since then,
Blocsoc has contributed to the blockchain
community, especially Ethereum, at IIT Delhi
and across Delhi.
Our core team has worked on projects in
domains such as zero knowledge, including
zkVMs and prototype implementations from
scratch;
markets
and
DEXs,
including
quantum
and
prediction
markets
and
clobDEX; core cryptography, including RSA,
an FHE compiler and other encryption
systems; intent-based, encrypted and private
swaps; and hardware projects such as wallets
and ZK verifiers, including implementations
of whitepapers from scratch. We publish
deeply researched articles for experts and
beginners through the IIT Blockchain Review.
21
We Build, We Curate,
We Educate!
By Shankar Warang, co-founding contributor, GRYD
G
RYD
(previously
known
as
Edgetributor
SubDAO)
is
a
collective of solo contributors
originating from Edgeware DAO,
the first solochain in the Polkadot
tools, executing meetup series across 11
cities, expanding to multiple ecosystems,
or hosting full-fledged hackathons, it’s very
difficult to choose our favourites!
Everything we do flows from our motto.
We build grant-funded public goods and
independent products like the Universal
Hybrid Substrate Faucet, AgentDOT, the
Road2DevCon portal on Ethereum, PlugPort
on Monad, and Tychee on Stellar. We curate
vital open-source infrastructure, most not-
ably guiding Paul Miller’s @scure/sr25519
cryptography
library
through
Polkadot
OpenGov and coordinating its Oak Security
review. And we educate through hands-on
workshops, hacker houses, and hackathons
across the country.
So far, we’ve hosted or partnered on 32
events across India at institutions including
IIT Roorkee, IIT Bombay, MIT Manipal, and
NITK Surathkal, and an 11-city run for Road
to Sub0. Along the way, we’ve reached over
3,000 attendees in aggregate and shipped
seven open-source products & tools.
What makes us unique is the process of
proving one’s worth through contributions
to earn a place in GRYD. We also believe
that small teams make a greater impact,
which we practice by splitting contribut-
ors into different sub-collectives to focus
on several projects at once.
Our next step would be to scale in order to
accommodate more sub-collectives and to
nurture continuous parallel contribution
pipelines for building, curating, and edu-
cating!
Building, curating, and educating is what
we do best, and we will continue to stay
GRYDy while doing it!
ecosystem, now expanded across four
different ecosystems, with a wide range of
Web3 experience spanning 9+ years.
GRYD opened up a way for proven solo
contributors to come together and build
tools & products, do business curations and
host educational initiatives across web3,
setting up a new standard for quality-
focused impact.
We bring together students, professionals,
teams and projects, thus bridging the gap
between
them
to
enable
meaningful
collaboration.
Whether starting the workshop series at
IITs,
curating
multiple
ecosystem
onboarding proposals, building several
developer
GRYD was founded in 2023 in Mumbai.
x.com/TeamGRYD
“Building, curating, and educating is
what we do best, and we will continue
to stay GRYDy while doing it!”
22
Rising AGAIN: Community, Learning and The Phoenix Guild
By Gnana Lakshmi, co-founder, The Phoenix Guild
I
From the start, we wanted the guild to
be decentralised. We never wanted a small
group to be the centre of the guild. We
wanted every chapter to stand on its own.
The core team was there to advise and
help whenever a chapter needed it, and the
chapters ran everything else. Pune, Jaipur,
Bhopal, Chennai and Delhi took that and
ran with it: a Build-a-thon in Kochi, zero-
knowledge meetups with Aleo in Jaipur,
and Road to Devcon across five cities with
Nethermind, taking Ethereum to places that
rarely make it onto the crypto calendar.
We’ll be honest: the last couple of years have
been quieter for us. Our own careers and
lives got busier, and the guild’s pace slowed
down with them. The chapters kept going
on their own, which is exactly what we had
hoped for. Since then, each one has taken its
own path. Some have wound down for their
own reasons. Others are still active, just in
different shapes than before.
What hasn’t changed is the people. We are
still close to so many of the builders, organ-
isers and friends we met through TPG. We
received a lot of love and support from this
community, and we hope we gave some back.
If someone, somewhere in India, picked up
their first web3 skill or found their first team
because of the guild, that matters more to us
than any number.
Now we’re getting ready to reactivate the
community. Over the past few months,
people have been asking us for sessions on
AI, and that’s where we’re heading next:
practical, easy-to-follow learning, taught by
people from within our own community.
Reach was never the goal. We want people
to walk away having actually learnt some-
thing, from someone who’s been where they
are.
Phoenixes are supposed to rise again. This
feels like the right time for ours.
The Phoenix Guild was founded in 2022 in Bengaluru.
x.com/PhoenixGuildHQ · linktr.ee/PhoenixGuildHQ
n late 2021, a few of us working
in tech noticed something uncomfort-
able about web3. The space promised
to rebuild the internet, yet the rooms
looked exactly like the old ones. Fewer
than one in ten people in blockchain were
women, and at hackathons the few women
builders often sat alone, looking for a team.
So in January 2022, with an Ocean DAO grant
and a lot of conviction, a small group of us
started The Phoenix Guild in Bengaluru. We
wanted to make web3 easier to walk into for
women and non-binary folks, and to make
sure nobody had to learn it alone.
We started with the basics: free sessions on
NFTs, DAOs, tokenisation and how block-
chains actually work. Then came a JavaScript
bootcamp and masterclasses and workshops
with teams like the Ethereum Foundation,
Covalent, Filecoin/IPFS, Biconomy, Ocean
Protocol and Arcana Network. Around 1,000
women from more than 10 countries joined
those early programs.
One moment we still talk about is ETHIndia
2022, when we set up the TPG Hacker House
in Bengaluru, one of the first web3 hacker
houses in India built for women. Before it, we
hosted a Women in Web3 brunch so builders
could meet and form teams before the hacka-
thon started. Watching people walk in as
strangers and leave as teammates is a feeling
we’ve held onto.
Phoenix Guild :
“We want people to
walk away having
actually learnt
something, from
someone who’s been
where they are.”
23
Dev3Pack :
“We don’t just build a community. We build the
spaces, connections, and opportunities for women to
build the future together.”
By Solene, founder; Naina, India chapter lead; Vishnu and Adrija, organisers. Dev3pack
ev3pack started with a simple idea:
bring more women into Web3 and
give them the space, tools, and
people they need to build.
our members learn new technologies, meet
other builders, contribute to real projects,
and access opportunities in the industry.
One of our biggest moments so far was the
Dev3pack Global Hackathon, co-hosted with
Solana, Vercel, and ElevenLabs. We brought
together 682 hackers from 84 countries who
built 382 projects. It showed us what happens
when you give people the right environment,
connect builders from different backgrounds,
and let them ship.
We’ve also organised technical schools, uni-
versity activations, and local build stations,
creating opportunities for women to learn
together
and
build
their
first
projects.
Through our fellowships and in-person resid-
encies, we’re taking things further: bringing
people together offline, helping them find
co-founders and teammates, and supporting
them as they turn ideas into real products.
What makes Dev3pack different is that we’re
not just a community where people come
to attend events. We want our members to
become builders, contributors, organisers,
founders, and leaders. Someone can join as
a beginner, learn a new technology, parti-
cipate in a hackathon, find a team, launch a
project, and eventually help someone else do
the same.
And we’re building this globally. From uni-
versity campuses to local chapters, from
online hackathons to in-person builder
houses, we want people everywhere to have
access to the same opportunities, regardless
of where they come from.
We’re just getting started.
Our next goal is to help more women go
from learning to building, and from build-
ing to launching startups. We’re growing our
local chapters, expanding our educational
programs, creating more opportunities to
contribute to open source, and building
bridges between talent, founders, and com-
panies.
In the long term, we want Dev3pack to
become the place where women come to
build their future in tech, whether that
means getting their first job, finding their
co-founder, launching a startup, or becom-
ing a leader in the ecosystem.
More
women
building.
More
startups
shipped. More opportunities for everyone.
D
We believe talent is everywhere, but oppor-
tunities aren’t. Too many women around
the world want to get into tech but don’t
know where to start, don’t have access to the
right network, or end up learning alone. We
wanted to change that.
Today, Dev3pack is a global community of
women building in AI, Web3, and emer-
ging technologies, with members across
100+ countries. We bring together students,
developers, designers, founders, and curious
minds from everywhere. Some are writing
their first lines of code, others are shipping
products, contributing to open source, or
launching startups. What connects us is the
desire to learn, experiment, build, and help
each other grow.
We don’t want people to just join a com-
munity. We want them to build something
with it.
That’s why we organise bootcamps, hacka-
thons, startup programs, and pop-up cities.
We work with ecosystem partners to help
Dev3pack was founded in 2025 in Delaware, US,
and has an India chapter.
dev3pack.xyz · x.com/dev3pack
24
EasterEGG
Every edition of ETHIndia comes with a whole lot of design work.
Websites, posters, merch, badges, welcome kits, and countless other
little things. And we put a lot of thought into all of them, from how
they look to the stories they tell.
But here's something you might not know. We also spend a surprising
amount of time hiding little details in our designs. Some are inside
jokes, some are references to the ecosystem, and some are just there
because we thought they'd be funny.
ETHIndia 2023 was full of them. How many did you spot?
Red pill or blue pill? A little Matrix reference tucked into
the artwork. After all, questioning how the world works
and imagining something different is pretty much what
building on Ethereum is about.
India landed on the Moon in August 2023, and there was no
way
we
weren't
celebrating
that.
So
we
snuck
Chandrayaan-3 into our own little impossible world. Turns
out, building the impossible isn't always fiction.
Usually, it's the snake charmer who hypnotizes the snake.
Here, it's the price chart doing the job. A little tribute to
everyone who's spent hours staring at green and red
candles, hoping the next one goes their way.
Why is there a bank on fire? Well, DeFi was all about challenging
how traditional finance works and building something
different. So we took that idea a little too literally and set a bank
on fire. Only in the illustration, of course.
2023.ethindia.co
Flying autos? Why not? When the whole theme is
Build the Impossible, we figured even the humble
auto-rickshaw deserved an upgrade. No word on
what the meter would charge, though.
Ever wondered why the stairs in our 2023 artwork seem to lead everywhere and
nowhere? Inspired by M.C. Escher, the stepwells of Chand Baori, and Monument
Valley, we wanted to capture the feeling of Never Stop Building. No matter how
many stairs you climb or how far you go, there's always something being built
around you, by you or by someone else. There's no finish line, and that's the whole
point.
Just like A$AP in A$AP Rocky stands for “Always Strive and Prosper,”
NSB stands for “Never Stop Building.” You've probably spotted it on
our merch, stickers, and even in our URLs, like nsb.dev. Once you
notice it, you'll start seeing it everywhere.
Remember the panda that took over Ethereum Twitter during The
Merge in 2022? It became an unofficial mascot for Ethereum's move to
Proof of Stake. Naturally, we had to sneak it into our 2023 artwork,
iconic goggles and all.
Why is someone cutting down a Merkle tree? Well, back in
2023, Ethereum was exploring Verkle trees as a way to
make cryptographic proofs smaller. We thought the most
reasonable way to explain that was with a pair of scissors.
Very technical, we know.
Your turn to find s
We were hiding things long before 2023. Take a closer
look at ETHIndia 2022 (https://2022.ethindia.co). What
can you find?
some easter eggs
By Dr. Arya V N, Ethereum Community Manager and Content Writer
at Kerala Blockchain Academy, and organiser of EthKerala to DC8
e began our journey in 2017
in
Technopark,
Thiruvanan-
thapuram,
as
India’s
first
blockchain
academy
in
the
We believe knowledge should be shared
in every form, including print. Blockchain
Technology: Algorithms and Applications
(2023) serves as the primary reference for
the blockchain elective in engineering col-
leges across Kerala under APJ Abdul Kalam
Technological University, while Advanced
Blockchain Technologies (2025) explores
topics from Ethereum smart contracts to
decentralised applications.
What we build
Our Distributed Lab builds open-source
tools for the Ethereum ecosystem.Supported
by the Ethereum Foundation, AetherGuild is
a complete Ethereum development suite
featuring
Cleric
(deployment),
Druid
(blockchain simulation), and Sorcerer (data
visualisation).
Apart from AetherGuild, we developed tools
including AetherPay and Aethereal, which
are accessible in the kerala-blockchain-
academy organisation on GitHub.
Blockchain for public good
For us, Ethereum’s values of openness, trans-
parency, and trust go beyond technology.
Through our work with government and
industry, we’re exploring how these prin-
ciples can help solve real-world problems
and improve public services.
Our recent endeavours include the Secure-
chain project (2025–26), which brought
blockchain to recruitment at the Kerala
Public Service Commission, making it the
first public service commission in India
to adopt the technology and setting a
new benchmark for digital governance. The
blockchain-powered Digital Revenue Card
gives citizens tamper-proof access to land
and revenue records. At Kerala University
of Health Sciences, graduation certificates
are now secure and instantly verifiable, and
our CertiChain solution serves universities
across Kerala.
Moments we remember
Every December since 2018, BlockHash
LIVE has brought global builders, poli-
cymakers and students to Kerala. Built
around the Ethereum ecosystem, our ini-
tiatives bring people together to learn,
build, create, and contribute in different
ways. In 2024, BlockHack kept hackers
working through the night. Our Road to
Devcon events, including the Ideathon and
the Creators Call, welcomed writers and
artists who had never thought Web3 was
meant for them. Translatathon 2024: Jnana
Edition brought ethereum.org to under-
represented languages, because we believe
an idea explained in your mother tongue
stays with you. At Devcon SEA in Bangkok,
we were proud to represent India among
Ethereum’s top contributors. In 2025, we
joined Ethereum’s ten-year celebration with
EthGlobetrotters: The Moving Celebration,
taking the anniversary out of conference
halls and into campuses and communities.
Our vision for the future
As we look ahead, we envision a future
where learners, developers, researchers, and
innovators from Kerala contribute to shap-
ing the global Ethereum ecosystem. Through
our continued engagement with the global
Ethereum community, we hope to nurture
ideas, tools, and solutions that make decent-
ralised technologies more inclusive and
impactful. Rooted in Kerala and connected to
the world, we remain committed to helping
shape an open, collaborative, and accessible
Web3 future.
Kerala Blockchain Academy was founded in 2017
in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.
kba.ai · x.com/kbaiiitmk
W
government sector. The Government of
Kerala gave us a simple mission: to make
sure that anyone who wants to learn and
explore Web3 gets the chance to be part of
it. We started in Kerala, but we have always
built for the world, one block at a time.
Back then, resources were limited, especially
in languages people were comfortable with.
We wanted to change that and make block-
chain learning more accessible to everyone.
The people
Our community is mostly students, with
working professionals, faculty, researchers
and policymakers alongside them. More
than 50,000 learners from 96 countries have
come through our programmes, and 45%
are women. Some started as beginners and
left as founders, while others emerged as
developers, innovators and policymakers.
Seven startups have grown out of our
classrooms.
What we teach and write
We started with the Certified Ethereum
Developer and Blockchain Foundation pro-
grammes, and as demand grew, we expanded
to over 20 programmes, from developer cer-
tifications to open courses for the general
public. As part of our mission to expand
the Web3 ecosystem, we established the
Kerala Blockchain Academy Innovation Club
(KBAIC), bringing more than 100 member
colleges into the world of Web3, foster-
ing learning, collaboration, and innovation.
Our latest initiative, Ethereum for Every-
one: Leaving No One Behind, supported
by the Ethereum Foundation’s ESP, brought
developer programmes to students at IIT
Kanpur, IIT Goa, and Delhi Technological
University, with all course materials open
access.
29
Kerala Blockckchain Academy :
“We started in Kerala, but we
have always built for the
world, one block at a time.”
By Abhayrajsinh Gohil, founder and CEO, web3events
seriously explored expanding into India has
crossed paths with us at some point. For us, it
has never been just about putting an event
together. It has always been about getting the
right people in the room and creating
opportunities for something bigger to happen.
One of my most memorable moments was
getting to speak on the Devcon stage. Devcon
is one of the biggest platforms in the
Ethereum ecosystem, and being able to
represent the community there felt like a full-
circle moment. What started as an Instagram
page had grown into something that could
stand on a global stage.
At our core, Web3Events is a people-first
community. A lot of our decisions are made
through community polls, and the people
who contribute to building it are a big part
of what makes it work. Our contributors
have never been here simply for a paycheck.
When we generate revenue, we distribute it
among the contributors involved rather than
treating the community as a resource to
extract value from. We want the people who
build this to share in what they help create.
In 2025, we started expanding our network
internationally and worked with organ-
isations and teams including Token2049,
Consensus, Apex Fusion, Multipli Finance,
Pantera
Capital,
Superteam
Balkan,
Fourpoint0, Streamflow, Parasol, the Serbian
government, and others. These relationships
gave us a chance to take what we had built in
India beyond our own ecosystem and work
with teams across different markets.
This year, during Devcon, we also organised
and launched ETH Gujarat, an initiative we
hope to grow into an annual event. We want
to build something that the local community
can take pride in, while giving more people in
Gujarat a way to participate in the global
Ethereum ecosystem.
Another initiative close to our hearts was
a fundraising campaign to help developers
who couldn’t afford the cost of travelling
to Devcon. We raised more than $5,000 to
support their transportation and accommod-
ation. The Devcon team also stepped in with
an additional $400 and free tickets for every-
one we were supporting. It was a reminder
of what this ecosystem can do when people
come together for the right reasons. Talent
is everywhere, but access isn’t. We wanted to
do our bit to bridge that gap.
Looking ahead, we want Web3Events to
become the go-to distribution partner for
Web3 companies entering India. We under-
stand the communities, the culture, and the
people who make this ecosystem tick. We
want to use that understanding to help good
projects find their audience, build meaning-
ful relationships, and establish themselves
in the market. Eventually, we want to take
that same approach to other parts of the
world.
Beyond business, we hope to build a long-
term relationship with the Ethereum Founda-
tion and contribute to the larger mission of
digital freedom. The internet is becoming an
increasingly important part of how people
live, work, transact, and express themselves.
We believe the future of that internet should
remain open, accessible, and owned by its
users.
We’ve come a long way from an Instagram
page in 2020–21, but in many ways, we’re still
working towards the same idea: connecting
people with opportunities they might never
have found on their own.
We want to keep building, keep bringing
people in, and stay on the front lines of the
fight for a more open and free digital world.
eb3Events started with a simple
idea: there should be one place
where people can find out what’s
happening in Web3 around the
W
world.
Back in 2020–21, there was no dedicated
platform consistently covering Web3 events.
So we started with an Instagram page
called @web3.events, sharing events happen-
ing across the ecosystem. But as we grew, we
realised there was a bigger problem, espe-
cially in India. Most people had barely heard
of Web3, let alone had a way to get involved.
That’s what led us to create our first event
IP, Knock Knock. The idea was simple: knock
on the door of Web3 and bring more people
inside. We wanted to make the ecosystem
accessible to people who were curious but
didn’t know where to start. Over time, Knock
Knock became a place where some of the
brightest minds in Indian Web3 could meet,
exchange ideas, and build relationships.
Looking back at the Indian Web3 ecosystem
today, you’ll find plenty of people who star-
ted their journey with Web3Events, worked
with us at some point, or were introduced
to the space through our community. Seeing
those people go on to build successful
companies, projects, brands, and their own
IPs has been one of the most rewarding parts
of this journey.
Over the last five to six years, we’ve helped
onboard more than 50,000 people into Web3.
We’ve organised events, campaigns, and
community initiatives for companies across
the industry. Over the last five to six years,
we’ve helped onboard more than 50,000
people into Web3.
We’ve organised events, campaigns, and
community initiatives for companies across
the industry. Almost every company that has
web3events was founded in 2021 in Ahmedabad.
web3events.in · x.com/web3_events
30
Your Circle Is Your Edge
Build products, find users and raise capital.
I
for building applications within the social
feed, and much of the early experimentation
was
happening
outside
India.
Saumya
Saxena, who had recently closed his previous
startup, reached out to Rahul Bhadoriya and
other Indian builders active on Farcaster.
They called the group Farcaster Builders
India, later known as Farcaster Builders
International.
A
Frames
hackathon
became
its
first
organised activity. The group soon developed
into a community working on consumer
crypto products across Farcaster and Base,
giving builders a place to find collaborators,
share early work and get feedback.
By March, Farcaster Builders International
had helped organise more than 20 meetups
across India and launched an in-person
fellowship
in
Dharamshala.
Bringing
developers together for an extended period
became an important part of its approach.
Members could work alongside one another,
test ideas and resolve problems as they came
up. Several products developed during this
period went on to find users across Base and
Farcaster.
The following months brought a more formal
structure. Farcaster Builders International
began funding hackathons, core contributors
took on full-time roles, and the community
launched Farcaster Builders International
Labs in May. The services arm created a
source of
By Akhil, Inner Cirle
commercial revenue alongside its ecosystem
programs, reaching approximately $25,000 in
monthly recurring revenue. It also incubated
ProxySwap, a decentralised exchange in the
Degen ecosystem.
During June and July, the Onchain Summer
Camp,
organised
with
Proxy
Studio,
produced more than 20 products. Farcaster
Builders International members built four of
the top five projects in Base’s official
buildathon. Wildcard, another community-
built
product,
gained
adoption
as
an
alternative Farcaster client.
By the middle of 2024, Farcaster Builders
International had grown to more than 2,000
members,
supported
over
150
builders
through buildathons and helped bring more
than 25 products to launch.
As the community grew, maintaining the
quality of participation became a more
deliberate
responsibility.
Membership
remained open, with an expectation that
people would contribute through their work,
feedback or support for others. Its reach also
expanded
beyond
India,
and
Farcaster
Builders
India
began
using
the
name
Farcaster Builders International.
The network became a source of professional
opportunities
as
well.
Saumya
joined
Coinbase and Base to lead India efforts in
2024.
Other
members
joined
ecosystem
teams,
venture
firms
and
early-stage
companies, while some found co-founders or
began working on their own ventures.
Fellowships,
Summer
Camps
and
city
programs continued in Hyderabad, Pune,
Kochi and elsewhere.
The
eventual
transition
from
Farcaster
Builders
International
to
Inner
Circle
reflected a broader scope. The community
had begun attracting people working beyond
Farcaster and Base, including those building
with AI. Today, its network includes more
than 10,000 founders, developers, designers,
creators and testers.
Its programs now cover several stages of a
builder’s development. The Academy offers
practical learning for people building on
Base.
Fellowships
and
cohorts
support
product development, with pathways into
initiatives such as Incubase and Base Batches.
First Dollar connects members with paid gigs
and bounties. Other programs, including
Agentic Summer, bring together participants
working across AI, design and storytelling.
In mid-2026, Inner Circle opened a physical
headquarters in Indiranagar, Bangalore. The
headquarters extends an approach first tested
during the Dharamshala fellowship: give
people time and space to work together, and
allow relationships to develop through that
work. A question discussed over a desk can
lead to a collaboration; feedback on an early
prototype can help a product find its first
users.
For Inner Circle, this is also a way to address
a practical challenge in India’s builder
ecosystem. Skilled people are spread across
cities, companies and online communities.
Sustained access to peers, collaborators and
experienced
founders
is
less
evenly
distributed. From its first Telegram group to
its Bangalore headquarters, Inner Circle has
worked to bring those people closer together.
nner Circle began in February 2024 as a
Telegram group for Indian developers
experimenting with Farcaster Frames.
Frames had opened up new possibilities
31
Puzzles
Lore Check
A warlock gets nerfed. Cats clog the world computer. Socks acquire a market price. Somehow, this is one ecosystem. How
much of the lore do you remember?
Fill the numbered entries. Ignore
spaces in answers. This is a freeform
crossword: every answer crosses
another, but not every letter is
checked. No knowledge of consensus
algorithms required.
Across
Down
1
4 The World of Warcraft spell whose nerf
sent a teenager looking for software no
company could change. (6,4)
6 Social network where you don’t post,
you cast. (9)
8 CryptoPunks’ 88 undead. (7)
9 The 2017 cat-breeding game that
clogged the network. (13)
11 Dog-coin ticker whose team handed
Vitalik half the supply; much of it ended
up in India’s Covid relief fund. (4)
13 ___ money: “sound” wasn’t loud
enough. (10)
17 First name of the whitepaper author,
patron saint of unicorn T-shirts. (7)
19 The day ETH overtakes BTC. Still
pending. (10)
20 One character auctioned every day,
forever. Glasses mandatory. (5)
23 The 2016 fund whose hack split the
chain in two. (3,3)
24 Engineer laid off by Siemens who built
an exchange instead. (6)
28 Exchange with a pink unicorn and no
order book. (7)
29 CryptoPunks’ 24 primates, years
before apes needed a yacht club. (4)
30 “Wen ___?” Answered 15 September
2022. (5)
31 Artist whose 5,000-day collage sold for
$69 million. (6)
32 ETHDenver’s token: neither spoon nor
fork. (5)
1 Proof you showed up. Not that you
paid attention. (4)
2 The document a DAO raised $47
million to buy, and didn’t. (12)
3 Browser fox that asks you to
confirm everything. (8)
5 The nine rarest CryptoPunks. (6)
7 ETH/BTC, or the gang that charts
it. (5)
10 Crypto___: once free to anyone
who paid the gas. (5)
12 ETHDenver’s half-buffalo, half-
unicorn mascot. (9)
14 Uniswap’s horned mascot. (7)
15 Uniswap socks, priced on a
bonding curve. (8)
16 Ethereum ___: the chain that kept
the pre-fork history. (7)
18 Text-only adventure bags that
launched a thousand derivatives. (4)
21 “We the ___”: 2-Down’s token. (6)
22 The creature in 13-Across’s emoji.
(3)
25 6-Across’s purple-hat tipping
token. (5)
26 Vitalik’s class, before 4-Across
was nerfed. (7)
27 Floersch, who told a laid-off 24-
Across to learn Ethereum. (4)
2
4
6
9
11
12
13
15
18
19
21
23
27
28
30
31
32
26
24
22
29
25
17
20
14
16
10
7
8
3
5
Number Go Up
A nod to Kakuro, where every number is pinned down by the numbers around it.
Here those numbers are Ethereum lore. Someone shuffled the clue cards and stole
every operator. Put the chain back together and pick up some trivia along the
way.
A1
clue 1
B1
B2
• Riddle 1 crowns the pyramid. Riddles 2–3 live in row B, 4–6 in C, 7–8 in D, 9–10 in E. The order is
yours to find.
• Each ◆ is +, −, × or ÷, joining the two boxes beneath it, left to right.
• The base holds five different digits from 1 to 9. Every box above holds a whole number, never
negative.
• Blank boxes are earned, not given.
C1
C2
C3
Lore riddles
1 Days in the year the Beacon Chain went live.
2 Ethereum’s July birthday × the Merge’s September day.
3 (Ethereum’s birthday day − the Merge’s month) × the stages from Frontier to Serenity.
4 Letters in the fee-burn fork, the Merge’s execution fork and Devcon 0’s city, minus the chains
the DAO fork left.
5 Letters in the difficulty bomb’s winter × letters in the native asset.
6 Letters in proof-of-stake’s friendly ghost × the Merge’s month.
7 Distinct digits in London’s fee-burn EIP.
8 Stack the two DAO-fork tickers and count the letters that don’t match.
9 G’s in the six names of the November 2022 roadmap.
10 Letters left in the holdout chain’s name once “Ethereum” is gone.
E1
D1
E2
D2
E3
D3
E4
E5
credits: @vhawk19
32
D4
Devfolio:
GROWING WITH
ETHEREUM AND BEYOND
By Veesesh, Community at Devfolio (X: @vee19twt)
We began as organizers ourselves, and
we have been running the InOut
hackathon since 2015. Its’ fourth edition
received more than 4,500 applications
from 8 countries in 25 days. The tools
we built to manage that response
became the foundation for Devfolio.
That’s
how
your
friendly
neighbourhood
hackathon
platform
came to be. We knew what it felt like to
be on the organizing side, and we
wanted other communities to have an
easier time running their own events.
Today, more than 1,900 hackathons
have
used
Devfolio.
Over
70,000
projects have been built across our
initiatives, and more than $4.5 million
has gone to builders in bounties. The
community has grown to over 1.1
million developers.
When ETHIndia began in 2018, India’s
Ethereum
ecosystem
was
much
smaller. A weekend together could
introduce you to your next teammate,
help you get an idea working or
convince you to keep going when you
weren’t sure there was much of a
community around you. Over the years,
our work took us from ETHIndia to
ETHDenver, and to communities in
Seoul, Prague, Berlin, Brno, Munich,
Zürich
and
beyond.
We
began
supporting fellowships, grants, and
programmes
such
as
ETHIndia
fellowships & grants and Base Batches,
giving builders more ways to continue
after a hackathon ended. Some projects
became startups, whereas some people
found collaborators they would work
with for years.
Ethereum
also
gave
us
ways
to
experiment
with
the
product.
We
introduced Onchain Credentials, built
on the Ethereum Attestation Service, so
builders
could
have
independently
verifiable records of their participation
and wins. These Soulbound Tokens
(SBTs) were a way to carry a piece of
their hackathon history beyond a
Devfolio
profile.
Crypto
Cheer
let
people
support
projects
through
stickers
carrying
an
ETH
value.
Quadratic Voting gave builders a way to
express how strongly they supported
different projects, with attestations
allowing anyone to verify the resulting
pool
distribution.
Both
explored
something we cared about: giving the
community more ways to recognise and
support good work.
33
And somewhere along the way, we
started
wondering
what
else
a
hackathon could look like. Could we
make it easier to spend time with a
mentor? Could we leave more room for
a
conversation
that
was
going
somewhere? Did everyone need to be in
a giant venue?
At ETHIndia Villa, builders shared a
villa with past ETHIndia winners,
whom we called Super Hackers. At
BlockTrain, more than 45 builders
spent 36 hours hacking on a train from
Bengaluru to New Delhi. At Interfaces,
an unconference at IIT Delhi,
contributions
from Vitalik
Buterin,
Austin
Griffith
and
the
wider
community made room for questions
and smaller conversations. These were
experiments,
and
we
learned
by
running them, and we still do.
We’ve been lucky to host people whose
work first brought many of us into
Ethereum. We’ve also watched first-
time hackers find teammates, ship their
first projects and return to help the next
batch get started. Those moments give
us plenty of reasons to keep doing this.
The credit for those projects belongs to
the builders and the communities
supporting them. Our contribution is to
make it easier to start, find help and
keep going.
Thanks to these hackathons, we’ve
hosted some of the true blue legends in
the industry!
Never Stop Building.
(This is our motto, and it's also an
advice for your life!)
Devfolio was founded in 2018.
devfolio.co · x.com/devfolio
34
ETHEREUM INDIA