Here's a TLDR of this month's edition:

• 🚀 Arbitrum Founder House, London — apply now ($300K in prizes & grants)

• 📍 On the ground — Berlin Blockchain Week 2026

• ⚡ Ethereum Is for Shipping — last month's ecosystem highlights

• 🛠 Builder tools — Biela.dev & Adevar Labs Pre-Audit discount

Arbitrum Founder House — London, July 10–12

London is where startups, capital, and real-world adoption meet.

We're supporting Arbitrum's Founder House in London, hosted at the Encode Club venue — a 3-day in-person event for early-stage founders and teams building their ventures on Arbitrum.

📍 London | July 10–12, 2026

- 💰 $300K in prizes & grants

- 🤝 Direct access to Arbitrum, Offchain, Robinhood Chain, AWS, and ecosystem mentors for technical, business, and GTM feedback

- 🛠 Apply with an existing project, or come ready to build a new business on Arbitrum

Limited spots available.

📍 On the Ground — Berlin Blockchain Week

Berlin Blockchain Week brought together a broad mix of founders, builders, researchers, and security teams across a packed schedule of side events. We attended Founders Eve, Cypherpunk Congress, and Ethereum Day, reconnecting with familiar faces, meeting new teams, and keeping a close eye on emerging projects and security trends.

A few highlights included strong early-stage project pitches at Founders Eve, valuable conversations with teams like DarkBio, Armada, and Web3Privacy Now, and an insightful talk from Oak Security on operational security.

Overall, the week was a great opportunity to strengthen relationships, discover promising projects, and stay closely connected to what's happening across the Ethereum ecosystem.

⚡ Ethereum Is for Shipping — Highlights from the Past Month

The official Ethereum account summed it up perfectly: "Ethereum is for shipping." In the past 30 days alone, the ecosystem delivered dozens of meaningful launches, upgrades, and announcements. Here's the tight roundup:

Bottom line: while the noise continues, Ethereum builders keep delivering real progress in security, adoption, tooling, and usability.

📲 View the original thread on X

Ethereum

@ethereum

Ethereum is for shipping.

Here are 25 things the Ethereum ecosystem launched, upgraded, and announced over the past month.

0/ @thedaofund Ethereum Security Quadratic Funding Round with @Giveth wrapped. The fund supported 134 security projects and had 3,934 unique donors.

1/

1,631

8:16 PM • Jun 18, 2026

Which update excites you most? Reply and let us know. Keep shipping.

🛠 Builder Tools & Partners

Biela.dev — your AI co-engineer for hackathons & fast prototyping

Building at a hackathon? Need a working prototype yesterday? Biela.dev turns plain-English prompts into real, production-ready full-stack apps — frontend, backend, database, and deployment, all in one flow. No boilerplate, no late nights wiring up auth and APIs from scratch.

Perfect for hackathon teams racing the clock and builders who want to go from idea to working demo in hours, not weeks.

👉 Try it with our referral link: https://ide.biela.dev/r/VM9QE6CR

Adevar Labs Pre-Audit Service — 10% off for ETH Bucharest community

Don't let your formal audit get eaten up by low-hanging fruit. Adevar Labs' Preaudit is an AI-assisted security review that catches missing access controls, common anti-patterns, and structural issues before your formal audit clock starts so your audit budget goes toward the deep vulnerabilities that actually matter.

Every automated finding gets validated by a human security engineer, and you walk away with a prioritized report and clear guidance on what to fix before you go further.

🎁 Mention code ETHBUCHAREST for 10% off.

That's all from us this month.

Whether you're heading to London for the Arbitrum Founder House or just keeping up with everything shipping across the ecosystem, you'll be in good company.

Stay connected, keep building, and we'll see you out there. As always, hit reply if you have questions, feedback, or just want to say hi. 🫡

Until then — build something worth talking about

— The ETH Bucharest team

Gm frens,

This month we are a bit delayed with the newsletter (we aim at sending it out once a month around the 20th). Hope you didn't miss us too much!

Here's a TLDR of this month's edition:

• Bizza Day 2026 is THIS FRIDAY — join us in Bucharest

• ETH Cluj 2026 — recap from an incredible second edition

• ETH Bucharest × Arbitrum Open House — official community partnership

• Carpath Labs — Romania's new coordination hub for blockchain and AI

🍕 Bizza Day 2026 — This Friday, May 22!

BIZZA DAY 2026 @ The Vintage Bucharest

📅 Friday, May 22 — 5:00 PM

📍 The Vintage Pub, Old Town, Bucharest

One of the biggest Bizza Days ever! Get ready to celebrate the most delicious deal in crypto history — back in 2010, 10,000 Bitcoins were traded for two pizzas. Today, that's worth over $943 million!

What's on the menu:

• 🍕 Mouth-watering pizza & electric vibes

• 🍸 Drinks sponsored by Bitget

• 🎁 Crazy merch and one-of-a-kind activities from Bitget

Guest Speakers & Panelists: Daniel Nita, Crypto Ace, Stefan Stoean, AB Crypto, Anna Mera, Alexandru Hobincu — moderated by Alex Cărbunariu

Big names from the Romanian crypto scene, plus epic networking with blockchain builders, investors, enthusiasts, traders, and more.

🎉 Prizes, surprises & an unforgettable night! Whether you're new to crypto or a seasoned HOLDer, Bizza Day is your place to be. It's going to be a slice above the rest!

REGISTER HERE

🤝 ETH Bucharest × Arbitrum Open House — Community Partnership

We're excited to announce that ETH Bucharest is an official community partner of Arbitrum Open House London 2026.

Arbitrum Open House is the ecosystem's flagship builder acceleration program — not a hackathon, not a conference, but a high-touch builder funnel combining capital, mentorship, and deep ecosystem integration to help founders go from idea to funded startup.

What's included:

• Online Buildathon — May 25 to June 14, 2026

• IRL Founder House, London — July 10 to 12, 2026

• Structured mentorship, ecosystem access, investor introductions, and a Demo Day

Tracks: General, Agentic AI, and Robinhood Chain Prize pool: $300K in prizes & grants

Whether you're a technical founder deciding where to build, a Web3 engineer working across EVM ecosystems, or a Web2 developer making the move into crypto, this program was built for you.

Previous edition (Open House NYC, March 2026): 1,712 builders engaged · 177 projects submitted · $340,000 in prizes and grants awarded

Applications for the Online Buildathon close on May 25th.

👉 Interested? REGISTER HERE

A special note for ETH Bucharest Arbitrum track teams (2024 & 2025)

If you built on the Arbitrum track at ETH Bucharest (in either 2024 or 2025) we want to hear from you. You're exactly the kind of team this program was designed for, and we'd love to see you apply.

Interested in applying? REGISTER HERE

Applications for the Online Buildathon CLOSE May 25. The London Founder House runs July 10–12, 2026.

🏆 ETH Cluj 2026 — Recap

Just got back from Cluj after the 2nd edition of ETH Cluj, and what a time it was.

ETH Cluj is one of our favourite boutique events in the space — and the one we keep coming back to every year. Not your typical blink-blink conference. No side-quest chaos. Just real builders in a room actually talking to each other.

It genuinely feels more like a bootcamp than an event. Everyone there actually wants to be there. And the talks? Actually attended — because the speakers know their stuff and don't waste your time.

A few highlights that hit differently:

• Simona Serban's opening ceremony

• Sebastian Banescu's Drained Before any Code Exploit: The Non-Code Risks of Web3

• Security panel w/ Sebastian, Dmytro, Riptide, Kryztof & Steffen

• Filippo on next-gen DeFi Lending

• The Agentic Layer of Smart Contract Security (Andrei Dobra)

• Privacy panel w/ Roxana, Mike, Robert, Steffen & Gavin

• Can small teams still build on Ethereum? — one of the best panels of the year

📹 All recordings here.

Cluj itself is a vibe. History, nature, great coffee, even better food. The perfect place for authentic builder gatherings.

Huge shoutout to Simona Serban and the entire ETH Cluj team + volunteers, and to every sponsor who made it happen. See you next year frens. LFG 🚀

🏔 Carpath Labs — Romania's Coordination Hub for Blockchain and AI

Launched in April 2026, Carpath Labs is a new think tank and coordination layer for Romania's top blockchain and AI projects. It connects teams that already have working products and real traction, aiming to foster genuine collaboration, shared knowledge, and stronger global impact.

Rather than another accelerator or community, Carpath Labs focuses on practical coordination — helping Romanian builders move beyond isolation and hype toward collective growth.

Early Momentum

Within weeks, the initiative attracted over 10 founding members, including SmartSentinels, Adevar Labs, Quantorius, Humans.ai, and Pigli Network. The group is already active, with updates shared on X at @CarpathLabs.

Why It Matters

Romania has deep talent in software engineering, cybersecurity, and emerging tech. Carpath Labs aims to channel that potential into a cohesive ecosystem, helping the country become a notable player in decentralized AI and Web3. By uniting strong local projects, it turns individual efforts into something greater — positioning Romania as an innovation hub with real global ambitions.

That's all from us this month. A little late, but packed.

Stay connected, keep building, and we'll see you out there. As always, hit reply if you have questions, feedback, or just want to say hi. 🫡

Until then — build something worth talking about.

— The ETH Bucharest team

We said we'd take 2026 differently. No main conference, no hackathon. Just deliberate, smaller steps toward something more sustainable. This newsletter is one of those steps.

We're keeping this first issue short and focused. There are two events coming up that are genuinely worth your time and money, one of which has free tickets available through us.

Read on

02 — ETH CLUJ 2026

May 13–14, 2026 · Cluj-Napoca, Romania

ETH Cluj is now the closest thing Romania has to a proper home-grown Ethereum conference, and the 2026 edition is shaping up to be their strongest yet.

The theme — Ethereum for Everyone — is a deliberate signal: this isn't a conference for people who already know everything. It's for the developer who's been watching from the sidelines, the student who's curious but hasn't found a way in, and the builder who wants to connect with others doing serious work in the region.

The confirmed speaker lineup already includes Milos Stankovic from the Ethereum Foundation, Andrei Duma from LI.FI, Sinkas from ArbitrumDAO, and Roxana Nasoi from Logos Network. More will be announced before May.

If you're a student, pay attention to this.

ETH Cluj is offering free conference tickets to students curious about blockchain. You get full access — talks, hands-on workshops, and time to meet people actually building in the space. Applications are reviewed on motivation, not credentials or prior knowledge. The deadline is April 30, and spots are limited.

→ Discounted General tickets (ONLY 60 EUR for 2 days of conference)

→ Student free ticket application

→ More info: ethcluj.org

03 — PARIS BLOCKCHAIN WEEK 2026

April 15–16, 2026 · Carrousel du Louvre, Paris

Paris Blockchain Week is a different kind of event.

Where ETH Cluj is about community and builders, PBW is about where capital, regulation, and infrastructure converge. Over 10,000 attendees, 300+ speakers, and a room that includes senior figures from BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Circle, Ripple, and EU regulatory bodies. It's the event where the institutional side of the industry sets its agenda for the year.

This year is particularly relevant. With MiCA now fully in force across Europe, and with serious institutional capital finally moving into digital assets, the conversations at PBW will directly shape what gets funded and built over the next two years. For a Romanian Web3 professional or founder, being in that room is not a small thing.

We have a limited number of free community passes.

As a community partner, ETH Bucharest has access to a small number of complimentary tickets to PBW 2026. These are for active builders: developers, founders, and contributors who are already working in the space. They are not for spectators.

If that's you, reply to this email with one sentence on what you're currently building or working on. We'll follow up directly. First come, first served.

SEE YOU NEXT MONTH

That's all for this first issue — short by design.

Until then — build something worth talking about.

— The ETH Bucharest team

While the event continued to be valuable for networking and crypto awareness, interest declined on both the participant and sponsor sides. At the same time, hackathon participation grew and the quality of ideas improved, but ETH Bucharest did not succeed in consistently helping teams move forward after the hackathon ended.

Romania has strong technical talent. What it lacks is a sufficient number of entrepreneurs willing to turn that talent into sustainable blockchain companies. The gap between builders and builders-with-direction remains real.

There is also a hard truth: many want access, visibility, and opportunity, but far fewer are willing to pay for it. That model does not support long-term value creation.

What happens next

2026 will be a year of transformation.

ETH Bucharest will evolve into a new structure with two clear pillars:

1. Education
   Becoming the go-to place for anyone who wants to seriously explore blockchain beyond hype, beyond surface-level content.

2. Founder Enablement
   Actively supporting teams in moving from testnet to mainnet, with real support, real accountability, and real outcomes.

The focus going forward is simple:
real ROI, real value creation, no fluff.

The ecosystem does not need another conference for the sake of having one. It needs structures that help good ideas survive, scale, and ship.

Updates on the new format and initiatives will be shared throughout 2026.

To follow the transition and upcoming initiatives, subscribe to the official ETH Bucharest Newsletter

LFG 🔥