ETHOnline 2026 Kickoff | Kartik Talwar

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all. My name is Kartik, I'm one of the co-founders of ETHGlobal, and I want to welcome you all to ETHOnline 2026. You're watching this on ETHGlobal.tv, and that's the platform we'll be using for the entire event, where you'll see what's happening during this hackathon, what we'll be doing over the next 10 days, and the winners' projects as part of their finals. All of this will be available on this page.

This is a real-time interactive platform. You can ask us any questions, communicate with other participants from all over the world directly here, and we will be able to see you and answer you. Now, for those joining us for the first time, this is an ETHGlobal event for the first time, this is an ETHGlobal event , and we are an organization with a very simple mission. We host hackathons and summits around the world. Our next two events will be held in Tokyo and Mumbai.

And we just want to bring as many smart developers as possible into the Web3 ecosystem. This happens both in person and asynchronously, through summits with informative talks and mini-conferences, as well as through developer-focused hackathons where we focus on creating projects. Our next summits and hackathons will be held in Tokyo and Mumbai. These are the last two events of the year after EthOnline. So we will see those who join us in Tokyo in person in just 2 weeks.

And our last event of the year will be held in Mumbai along with Devcon in November. But we will dedicate the next 20 minutes to EthOnline. So, in the next few slides and sections, I want to talk about how EthOnline works and what you need to know to succeed at this hackathon. This is already a large-scale event. We have over 1,300 hackers, a total of 1,400 participants, including partners, speakers, mentors, and volunteers.

26% of them are volunteers. 26% of them are new to Web3. They came from 88 different countries, from almost 400 cities spanning six continents. This is where everyone has come from, and it's incredible to see so many talented developers and builders who will be with us for the next 10 days. And we can't wait to see what you'll be working on.

In addition, we are providing over $100,000 in prizes. So, our goal is So, our goal is to tell you everything you need to successfully integrate many of these protocols and win incredible prizes. We especially want to say a huge thank you to our 11 incredible partners, starting with 1 inch, Arc, Present, Chainlink, ENS with 1 inch, Arc, Present, Chainlink, ENS , Hedera, Ledger, Privy, The Graph, Uniswap Foundation, and World. Now let's talk about a few things we need to know to successfully participate in this hackathon. I will tell you how to approach all of these sections and how to best use your time and the resources we have prepared for you all.

Let's start with communication. Everything we do for this event will take place on Discord. This means that everything here should be as asynchronous as possible. There are private channels for all developers and participants. And everyone participating in this event is in the ETHOnline channel set.

So, if you are a confirmed attendee, you will automatically gain access to these channels, and only those who are participating in this event are allowed in them. So anyone you write to is guaranteed to be one of the participants or hackers in the hackathon. This also applies to our mentors and partners, so you can ask any of them questions directly here and communicate with them asynchronously . If you are not already on our Discord, you can go to eat club/discord and simply log in with the same email you used to register for the hackathon and permissions will be granted to you automatically. Now let's talk about how this hackathon is organized.

The hackathon officially starts now starts now , which means you can continue working on your projects, and you have until Sunday, September 13th, 12:00 PM Eastern Time ( Eastern Time ( noon New noon New York time) to submit your projects. You can submit these projects individually or work in a team. If you work in a team, it can consist of a maximum of five people. And as part of a major update to our recent policies implemented 3 months ago, you are allowed to do the following. You can work on your project if it already exists, or you can start from scratch.

You don't have to start all your projects from scratch. But if you decide to develop an existing project, you must inform us in advance , and this is part of the application process. This is called a continuity track. We'll be able to talk a little more in a few minutes about how the continuity track works. But you must make sure that you have chosen in advance between the "from scratch" track or the continuity track, and there you can act at your own discretion, guided by the rules of the track.

Also, only those participants who have successfully confirmed their presence and are part of your team will be able to claim prize payouts. This means that if your team members are not confirmed in your dashboard and are not yet part of the team, then if you win, you will only receive your share of the prize, and no changes will be allowed after the event starts. In addition, there will be many more issues that you will have to understand and clarify, and some of them will be resolved on an individual basis. So, if you have any other questions, you can ask them to us directly on Discord or by email, and we will clarify each such case. We now encourage you to use AI and large language models (LLMs) in your projects.

However, there are several points that we recommend taking into account, and what you should not do . Remember: you can simplify the thinking or prototyping process by using different tools like Codex tools like Codex , Cursor , or Cloud Code—all of these are allowed. However, you should clearly understand what exactly is happening with the code in your work. You can't just put everything into AI and hope it works. If your project is not integrated properly, it will lead to the complete disqualification of your application.

You should also explain exactly how the AI ​​was used, where exactly, and what your instructions were. Therefore your instructions were. Therefore , if you use use any LLM service, we recommend writing everything down in regular notes, committing these plans to your repository, and only then continuing your work. Please make sure you do this. Additionally, as part of the application process, you should know exactly what has been done and what has not, and check everything, as we want to ensure that you do not submit an improperly implemented project for the prize.

So, the deadline for submitting applications is Sunday, the 13th , at 12:00. We will tell you more about how to prepare for the submission process. Key point: you will be asked to record a 4- be asked to record a 4- minute video demonstrating the project. You need to make a high-quality screencast that clearly shows your project and conduct a live demonstration. And this will be your competition entry.

During this demonstration, you can explain what is happening, why you chose this particular direction, and how everything works. But you are limited to 4 minutes to present all the information. This means you need to be very skilled at explaining concisely and clearly what is done, how it works, and why. We strongly advise against leaving this to the last minute. If you speed up the video, you will most likely be disqualified.

And if it's unclear what's going on, it directly affects your ability to win prizes. All of this still happens in your control panel, so please keep an eye on the project submission page and use it to prepare in advance the information you will need and learn how to do it. Now let's talk about something new—the continuity track. Three months ago, we changed the event rules to allow people to work on existing projects. Historically, hackathons have been a place where you have to start from scratch, only create prototypes create prototypes , and actually stop or have no good reason to continue working on the project after the event ends.

We want to change that, and as part of that, we're introducing the ability to continue adding features to whatever you've been working on: whether it's a personal project, your own company, or something you want to contribute to in open source that could change your workflow or life, given how important Sub Services is to you. And as part of this big change, we've introduced two additional tracks and classifications of how you can work on your project. So, everything you know now is part of the track " From Scratch". There you just have to start something from scratch and continue doing what you've always done. Otherwise, you can choose the continuity track, where you have the option to do two things.

You can extend any open source software. This means that if you use an open source service or there is an open source repository where there is a bug report, feature request, or things that you started yourself and want to support, you can take on the feature, contribute to that repository, and consider that a qualified submission for this event. So, you can fix bugs, add new features, and new functionality. You can do all of these and claim various prizes as long as they are part of the continuity track. Or if you are a founder and want to add a feature to your existing company, you are also allowed to do so by relying on your private code, provided that your new application is a public, open- source module that plugs into your existing codebase.

This means that things like integrations you want to make for different protocols to support additional functionality, from supporting different networks to supporting different protocols— different protocols— all of that is allowed, as long as the new work you do is fully public. This allows you to be part of the continuity direction and still win various prizes. So, the bottom line: nothing changes on the main track, the rules are the same as before. Your code should be created today in a private repository, but you can extend open-source projects by simply forking the repository, adding new features, and sending us a link to it from your GitHub account. And actually creating a clear division so that we can track the state of things.

Or you can add a new feature to existing closed source code, as long as that feature is modular and open source. Some specific cases may arise here. So if you find yourself in this situation, send us a short message, tell us exactly how you plan to use your existing code and what you want to do, and we will provide full confirmation whether it will be allowed. This is what continuity is. We hope you will work on exciting projects and use the next 10 days to improve something that will be truly useful not only for you, but also for many other people in our ecosystem.

So, the tracks are binary and the prizes depend on the track, meaning you can participate either in continuity or from scratch. And there will be various prizes available for continuity participants and for those starting from scratch. You are not automatically entitled to all prizes. You need to make sure need to make sure that the prize you are trying to get are trying to get matches your track. Therefore, please make sure you read all these terms and conditions, detailed on the prizes page.

There you can see whether a particular provider or SDK entitles you to win in the continuity track or only in "from scratch". When you submit your projects, you will be asked to choose a track for evaluation. You will be offered two options. You can choose the partner track or the finalist evaluation. The differences between them are as follows.

If you choose to only evaluate partner prizes, it is a completely asynchronous process, which means that once you submit your projects, all partners whose prizes you want to win will receive your data and start reviewing your projects on their own. You don't need to do a separate demonstration for them . Your 4- . Your 4- minute demo video is what they will use, along with your codebase and project description, to assess whether you have successfully used their integrations. And if they have questions—and only if they do— if they do— they will contact you via email or Discord.

This allows you to fully understand how different partners evaluate your work, and during the closing ceremony and live broadcast you will find out if you have won any prizes. And since they’re only looking at your project page, the better you describe what you’ve done, how it works, and why, the better your chances are of helping them understand whether the submission is a proper integration. So, this means that the more details you add, the higher your chances of making sure that what you are trying to do will officially impress the judge on the other side. Then the finalists are evaluated, which is divided into two rounds in the CC synchronized track. This means that if you are trying to become a finalist, i.

e. one of the top 10 teams in this hackathon, you will be placed in the finalist track, where a smaller group of judges will review your work on the Sunday after submission, and they will select the teams for a live judging broadcast. Judges will review the videos asynchronously, they will look at the projects, descriptions, code, and evaluate whether you have built something well that follows the event rules, works in real time, i.e. is a working product, and properly follows Git procedures so that we can track what was done and how everything was built.

After that, you will be notified about your participation in the finalists' call. This is a Zoom finalists' call. This is a Zoom call that will take place on Monday, September 14th, from 12:00 PM to 2:00 PM Eastern Time, where each team will have 7 minutes to showcase their projects and answer questions from our judges. You must be able to join this call, which is happening at this time for everyone, which means that if you are in a different time zone and it is nighttime for you zone and it is nighttime for you , you will only be considered qualified for this round if you can actually join the call and answer the judges' questions. And after that, we will select the finalist teams.

And you will become part of one of the best winning projects of this hackathon. So, there will be up to 10 finalist teams, of which up to seven will be from the Scratch category, and up to three from the Continuity category. The finalist teams are the best projects of this hackathon. So, we have 1,300 hackers, we'll only choose 10 incredible projects incredible projects . And it does not disqualify you or put you at a disadvantage in receiving any other prizes.

If you want to get into the top 10 teams, the condition is to deploy your project in a production environment, i.e. it cannot be on localhost. It is quite possible if it is on the testnet. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the mainnet right away if it's a smart contract.

smart contract. Anyone else should be able to use it without your physical presence to show or start the server. You are still eligible for all prizes from our partners, they are not mutually exclusive, but rather complement each other. And if you become a finalist and make it to these ten teams, you will receive an ETHGlobal kit with such incredible bonuses. You get access to ETHGlobal Plus for 12 months, which allows you to get a lot of dollars in credits and access to various events.

And the ETHGlobal team provides one thousand USDC to each team member. You also get a $500 flight credit to the next offline next offline hackathon, so you can meet us in person in Tokyo or Mumbai. You also get a free pro- free pro- pass to next year's ETHGlobal, the largest institutional Ethereum event in the world. We host many private events with various founders in this field, where you can participate, ask questions, and learn from each of them how to build a successful project in this field. The requirements here are as follows: to become a finalist, you must start from scratch must start from scratch , but you can also participate from the direction of developing existing projects.

You should have an organized repository so we can see how events have evolved over time. You can't just make three commits with a million lines of changes. Everything needs to be properly structured so that we can see the commits, who did what, whether it's a bug or a feature request, following the rules for working with branches and pull requests so that there is no doubt about when and why it was done. The project should also be open source, if you are participating in the "from scratch" or " "from scratch" or " development of existing" track, we should be able to see the code, and it should be deployed and available for everyone to use. And you must be present at this call to win, otherwise you are automatically disqualified, even if you make it past the first round.

Finally, one thing to remember to make your project really stand out is to make the video as high-quality as possible. The better you can talk about what your project does and how it works, the better your chances are of impressing the judges, our partners, us, and partners, us, and anyone on the internet with how talented you are and how incredible your solution is . This will allow you to really stand out, and the more details you add, the better your chances. And of course, since we have many people with different backgrounds, we want to make sure this event is welcoming to everyone. We have plenty of content for everyone, whether you are a beginner or a seasoned professional, you can see how different protocols work.

We have a lot of workshops that show how to integrate different things. And all of this is also public. In the sense that you can watch everything on demand later. Plus, everything is available to you in our knowledge center, where you can find documentation on everything from how to use different protocols, to how to get started, to what a good application should look like , and much more. It's all on our YouTube channel, and you can go to youtube.

com/ethglobal to watch over 2,000 talks and workshops. It's a whole ecosystem. And of course, there are those of you who are still brand new to this process and are looking for members for your team or want to join another one . We recommend going to the team search channel on Discord and seeing if you can join someone, or if you can recruit someone to help with a specific skill. We want to make it easy for you to get all the help you need, there will also be workshops and live calls where we will help you generate ideas, form teams, and you can do it directly.

Of course, having a team member is not a requirement team member is not a requirement . You can work independently, but note that it is much easier to distribute the work than to do everything yourself. So we strongly recommend that you have at least one other person that you work with. Now a few things you should know. The first should know.

The first is project verification. We want to make sure you get the help you need to be successful at this event. As part of this, we are implementing two checks that will take place directly in your control panel. They act as a small stand-up as a small stand-up report where you take 5 minutes to report whether you are on the right track on the right track — from what you are working on to situations are working on to situations where you are stuck somewhere or waiting for an answer from someone: whether from mentors, partners, or the global team. We review all of these responses and make sure to remove any obstacles for you so you can start building as soon as possible without any difficulties in the decision-making process.

Additionally, there will be live sessions where you can show what you've been working on and get feedback from our mentors and team. You can join these Zoom join these Zoom calls at various times. The first session will be on Tuesday, the next on Tuesday, the next on Thursday to optimize participation for different time zones. You can just drop in, get advice, and show us your work, which will make it easier to get feedback before the Sunday submission deadline. Of course submission deadline.

Of course , this is an equal opportunity event, even if it is asynchronous, so all our rules remain in effect. You can read everything at ecup.com/rules, but most importantly, be respectful to all participants. Any form of harassment or abuse will not be tolerated. If you see someone being treated inappropriately, please send us a quick message and report the incident.

We will take action immediately. One of the key aspects of this event is that everything you create will be considered your own intellectual property, and each member of your team will be considered an equal owner of that intellectual property. So, you are free to do whatever you want. Neither our partners nor ecup global retain any rights to this work. You have full access to your project and the ability to commercialize anything.

Of course, we can't cover absolutely everything here. So if you have any questions, you can ask them directly in the chat on ecup.tv, write to us on Discord or by email, and we will be happy to answer them. Everything I said is also available on our website, including details on how refereeing works within the information center. So, head over to ethglobal.

com/ethonline to see all the details, this will be our main source of information. Now let's quickly talk about the prizes. We are giving away many incredible prizes. The total prize pool is over $100,000, with Hedera and The Graph each providing $15,000 in prize money . Arc World and 1inch are providing up to $10,000 in prize money each.

ENS, Ledger, Uniswap Foundation, Previ, Chainlink, and Byzantium are providing up to $5,000 in prize money each. You can find all this information on the prizes page on the event website. There you will see specific rules about what counts, what needs to be done, how many winners there will be, what is prohibited, and whether the project is part of the content we track. You'll also find plenty of documentation on how to get started quickly . You can do everything from cloning a repository with a starter kit to reviewing the documentation and getting a sample project to get started with.

All of this is made accessible and simple for you. So just take a look at the prizes page and simplify your setup by using the links in the resources section for each of these prizes. And finally, a few tips. We really want this event to be a good learning experience for you. We want you to share your strength.

You have 10 days, which means you can break the task down into multiple days, get feedback, make changes, and be sure you're doing everything right. And ultimately, we want you to have fun. We want you to learn. This entire event is dedicated to experiments. Now you can continue to create what you are passionate about, or contribute to improving existing open source technologies.

It's all part of this new experience. So we sincerely hope you have a great time over the next 10 days. With that, I want to wish you all successful hacking. See you on Discord. Let us know if you have any questions.

And we'll see you next time at our workshops, team building and feedback sessions in the coming days. And then we'll be back on ethglobal.tv for the closing ceremony in exactly 2 weeks. So see you there. Thank you for joining Thank you for joining , and I look forward to meeting each of you.

In the meantime, enjoy the lo-fi beats and, uh, successful hacking. Take care of yourself, friends. See you later.