# Local Ethereum #1 Source: https://localethereum.beehiiv.com/p/local-ethereum-1 Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Local-Ethereum-1?index=0x67acb4fa5d38dbf1eadb5f797eceec299b1b5c9e6b8fd846acd8c44d87efceb509976704 Submitted by tim on 2025-02-12 UTC, 3 upvotes, 0 comments ## Summary Local Ethereum #1 is a newsletter that covers Ethereum's geographic spread through local communities, meetups, universities, startups and policy news. Its regional items include Sony's Ethereum layer-2 blockchain Soneium going live in Japan, which leverages the OP Stack and Superchain architecture, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's 'supervisory incubator' for helping banks manage risks from blockchain or DLT experiments. In North America, the SEC approved Bitwise's filing for a Bitcoin-Ethereum ETF. The newsletter also estimates that about 19% of Argentina's population, or 8.6 million people, uses some cryptocurrency. ## Article 🌍 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 Indian Railways Embraces Polygon NFTs for MahaKumbh Tickets. ZuGrama, a 6-week pop-up village experiment in India inspired by Zuzalu, covers impact public goods, AI, cryptography, and more. Malaysia China Mainland 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. Taiwan 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. 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 Sony’s Ethereum Layer-2 Blockchain 'Soneium' Goes Live. Soneium leverages the OP Stack and Superchain architecture. South Korea At KAIST, one of Korea's leading technology universities, the CS496 course combines Ethereum, cryptography and advanced mathematics for ambitious students. Singapore Vietnam Kazakhstan Bhutan 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 Protocol Berg v2: A decentralized protocol and infrastructure conference organized by the Department of Decentralization (DoD) - Call for Papers. Switzerland 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 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 Sweden 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 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. 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. 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 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 Magma: A two-week in-person residency for Africa’s top founders. April 2025 in Kenya. Zambia 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 Thanks for reading, and have a nice day! 🌸 Best regards, ❤️❤️❤️ Love Local Ethereum? Share. Have any comments or feedback? DM. Want to advertise on Local Ethereum? DM or Email. 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