Berlin Ethereum Meetup Opening and Ecosystem Updates | Eniko (March 2026)

All right. Hello, everyone. [sighs and gasps] Welcome to the Berlin Ethereum Meetup in March. Uh we have these meetups every month. Um started re- restarted relaunched uh last year around October.

Um and planning to do this this every month. So, hope to see you in the future as well. This is uh the first one since we restarted without Martin. So, I'm a little bit sad. If you've been here at the Meetup see probably remember him.

Um but he's been uh he he relocated recently. But he will be back sometimes, but um yeah, he won't be here at every Meetup unfortunately. Um Okay. So, I just quickly the agenda today. We are um I'm just going to go through uh some ecosystem and community updates.

Um and then we have [clears throat] Party from the Eth PandaOps team talking about the straw map. This is the new updated uh Ethereum roadmap. You're probably familiar with the roadmap of Ethereum um and this is uh an updated one that's been published recently. Um and then we also have Rick who was working with the foundation um talking about agent commerce. And in the end, we will have some time for just open networking um and community time.

Um and thank you again for for Gnosis for hosting us and sponsoring the event. And uh we have some drinks and some merch in the back. So, feel free to grab some of those as well. Okay. Um I wanted to quickly mention again the Berlin Ethereum community hub.

That's another initiative that we have. Some of you a lot of you probably already been participating at our co-working Wednesdays. It's happening at the Ethereum Foundation office here in Berlin. And you're all welcome to join. Uh there's a quick application form.

Um it's on every Wednesday um from 10:00 to 6:00 p.m. And then from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. usually just hang out uh stay for some pizza and just chat so there is no agenda and just open co-working collaboration networking and um that's the main focus so it so no strings attached.

Um just a a few pictures of the vibes. We started this last year so this pictures from last fall. Some of you might uh uh you can might maybe recognize yourself on the pictures. Um yeah, pretty pretty good vibes. And um if you're interested we already have an option for a more permanent membership at the office.

We have a couple of open seats so if you're interested feel free to come and find me after the talks and chat. Okay. A couple of things about the local events happening here in Berlin. Uh the Berlin Blockchain Week is back and as always um it's I think it's one of the most exciting Blockchain events of the week of the year.

[laughter]

Sorry. Um and yeah, it's this time again it's going to be in June from the 13th around the 21st. Uh the biggest events are going to be around this time frame but I'm sure there are more happening before and after. Um there will be more events here also probably organizing something um but it's not announced yet but just stay tuned for more updates. You can scan the QR and that's for the uh website and you can see all the events that's happening.

And again much much more will be probably added closer to the to the date. Um Okay, I also wanted to mention Devcon. It's uh going to India this year um to Mumbai. Um it's the biggest Ethereum community conference and developer conference of the year. That's the only event that is organized by the Ethereum Foundation.

Um a lot of other events are organized by local grassroots communities which is also very great. Uh Uh, I usually personally I encourage people go to events that are nearby, um, at least in the same continent throughout the year just because of the, you know, carbon footprint and other, you know, budget considerations, but this is the one that most of the community in the ecosystem is usually going to every year, so I recommend to go to this one. There are some opportunities, scholarship opportunities, maybe even some more open jobs. I'm not sure if they are still hiring, but the Def Con team was hiring. So, you can [clears throat] take a look on this QR.

There was an article about it um, with a bunch of uh, resources. Um, okay.

[clears throat]

And I wanted to talk a little bit about um, a topic I'm really excited about. Um, this was not published last month in the last meetup of our workshop yet, but uh, I think it's really cool. Um, I don't know some of you might have read there was um, a blog post published by the team foundation recently. Um, uh, along with the Ethereum Foundation mandate, which [clears throat] is mostly intended for the Ethereum Foundation itself, um, with the core values, why we are even doing this, um, why Ethereum was built in the first place. Um, and it's intended again for the foundation, but it's also it has a lot of good fundamentals about what is Ethereum, what is role, um, and what are the values that we would like to we don't want to compromise on basically.

Um, so to me after reading it I'm I was really not going to go through the whole thing. That's not the purpose of this uh, um, talk, but just kind of wanted to highlight a couple of things and we probably going to talk about this more in the coming meetups as well, but uh, just highlight a couple of things that me personally I find interesting or important to highlight.

[clears throat]

So, after reading it to me it all comes down to freedom. Um, what does freedom mean to you guys? In a few words? Anyone wants to mention a word or a sentence or whatever? Choice to do things.

A choice to do things. Freedom to own your assets even if some other somebody else doesn't try to prevent you from owning your assets. Okay, so owning your own assets without being censored or prevented um to do that. Anyone else? Yeah.

Maybe to be independent so you don't have to depend on other people or systems. Mhm, be independent and don't have to depend on other systems or people. Anyone I have a sword which I think is very ugly but I think it's self-sovereignty which is a very ugly word. But I think it's nice because it kind of says that you don't have mama, papa, king or somebody to rule over you. Okay.

Yeah, self-sovereignty. Yeah.

Definitely having privacy. Privacy. Yeah, which Okay. which is hard. Yeah, it's hard nowadays.

Yeah, we are very too far gone I think in the [laughter] you know, facial recognition and all these kind of things so Yeah. Thinking, acting or speaking without any external control. Okay, speaking and acting without any external control. Anyone else? Okay, cool.

Yeah, I think these are very important things and and very um fundamental you know, of personal freedom and self-sovereignty and this is something that the mandate is also um highlighting and it's starting with why Ethereum was built in the first place, right? So um it's mentioning that what's missing from personal freedom is self-sovereign computation and the computational ability to coordinate at a scale without violating anyone's self-sovereignty, right? It all comes back to you probably remember or familiar with web one, web two, and web web three, right? Like how the internet started with this very, you know, ambitious like decentralized system. You have freedom, everyone can do whatever they want.

And then, you know, web two came and and that dream, [laughter] you know, kind of faded away and there are a lot of central entities now and corporations who are owning a lot of our data assets and and and so on. So, it didn't really materialize that much, unfortunately. Um So, that was one of the reasons why Ethereum was created.

[clears throat]

And of course, it comes with a lot of things that you guys also mentioned that users should have control over their own computation including data, assets, instructions, identities, agents. Um and also the right to exit from any systems that are not allowing you to do these things. Um Yeah, and then, so what is Ethereum? So, Ethereum has been, you know, referred to a lot of things. It's a blockchain, it's crypto, it's digital money, whatever.

You know, there is I will actually have this slide, but it's also, you know, the word computer. But, I also like this that the money that is highlighting that it's a decentralized and resilient and self-sovereignty tool, right? So, it allows self-sovereign computation and also allows you to coordinate at scale. Because normally, before blockchains and Ethereum, you needed like a central entity, right? To coordinate because of trust and and a lot of different things like how are we going to coordinate on a global scale, you know, without any any tool or platform or infrastructure.

Um Right. And then again, the word computer. So, what is the word computer? The word computer I like that picture when it says like, you know, Ethereum is a blockchain. Ethereum also has a virtual machine, so you can build applications on it, right?

So, it's not just a blockchain, not just a distributed ledger. And of course, it has the nodes that have a copy of it. Um and uh um but yeah, I like also this new um um aspect that um it enables self-sovereignty um for anyone to interact with it trustlessly, permissionlessly, and persistently. So, this is basically the world computer, right? This is why it was created for.

Well, this is why it was created. Um so, it comes down to like, what are the values that we do not want to compromise on at all costs, right? So, first is censorship resistance, open-source software, open-source and free software. Um free could be as like freedom. Um and then privacy and security, right?

So, there there is this acronym, CROPS. So, these are some of the um the most important values that that we definitely want Ethereum to always stick with and don't deviate from these because, you know, if you have to compromise on these, then what's the point? Um there's also you guys probably familiar with the decentralization trilemma, you know, with the it the the stating that a blockchain cannot be at the same time fully decentralized, scalable, and secure. All of the existing blockchains have to compromise uh sacrifice one of them for the other two, right? So, Ethereum is trying to achieve all of them.

So, all of those, and of course, these are the other core values. These are Those are more like the technical aspects of the protocol, right? The infrastructure. And this is also, of course, technical somewhat, but also related more like to the values as well. Yeah, and then I think in the as I mentioned in next couple of meetups we'll probably talk more about these, but I just kind of wanted to mention.

I think privacy and a lot of these resonate a lot with the Berlin community and and we talked about these, especially privacy on a lot of meetups before. There were sessions, there were round table discussions. We had the Web3 privacy people as guest speakers. So, I think Berlin generally has a very strong um you know, favorite appetite for for you know, disruptive and decentralized tech and a lot of these values resonate a lot with the with the Berlin community generally. Um which is great.

Um Yeah, and this is the blog, the Ethereum Foundation's blog. So, if you want to read more, there are always a lot of other technical and non-technical updates published by the Ethereum Foundation here. So, you can keep up to date here. Um that's also the Twitter, [sighs] which is yeah, not very decent. That's what this is.

This is where you can get most of the updates, unfortunately, for now. Hopefully, this will change soon or in the future at some point. Um [snorts] and then if you're looking for opportunities, there are a lot. This is just from ethereum.org.

You can scan this QR. There are a lot of technical and non-technical jobs in the ecosystem. So, this is from the whole ecosystem. So, if you're looking for opportunities, scroll through here. Yeah, and then we almost uploaded all of the recordings from past meetups now, so they will be available at this um the Ethereum Berlin YouTube channel.

So, you can also scan this to to watch the recordings or send it to your friends. Um yeah, and we also have a Twitter account. If you want to follow us, this is probably the best way to get up to date on next events and pictures and recordings. Okay. Uh all right, and that's my part.

And we will just continue with the the talks. We won't take breaks, but if you need to go to the restroom or something, feel free to, but we will get done with the talks and then there will be time to chit-chat. Okay, thank you.

[applause]