Edinburgh Decentralised Finance Summit 2026
Edinburgh Decentralised Finance Summit 2026
A full day on decentralised protocols, decentralised applications and decentralised AI. Practical insights from the builders, researchers and institutions adopting open decentralised finance.
The summit builds on the success and high quality of the 2025 Edinburgh DeFi Summit, Scotland's first, which brought together 18 speakers across four sessions and was supported by the Ethereum Foundation, Linea, Gnosis, Nexus Mutual, Redeem Technologies and BCP Technologies. It follows our Edinburgh Tokenisation Summit in May 2026, which drew speakers from JPMorgan Kinexys, the Ethereum Foundation, 21Shares, Baillie Gifford, the FCA, the Asian Development Bank, Burness Paull, Polymath, WisdomTree and the University of Edinburgh Business School.
This is a curated event, like our previous summits. Speakers are selected on merit, against clear criteria, so the programme stays relevant and the talks are worth your time. We are planning for around 25 speakers and 300 attendees.
The programme spans 18 topics, including DeFi lending and onchain credit, liquid staking and restaking, Bitcoin DeFi, Layer 2 scaling and zkEVM rollups, stablecoins and onchain banking, tokenised real world assets, agentic finance and autonomous AI agents, privacy preserving DeFi, institutional DeFi and prime brokerage, DAO governance, and policy and digital asset clearing. The day mixes keynotes, panels, fireside chats and lightning talks.
The venue is one of Edinburgh's largest purpose-built auditoriums, a 300-seat theatre in the New Town. It is five minutes' walk from Edinburgh Waverley and six minutes from parking at St James Quarter. The historic library and reception hall give plenty of room for catering and networking.
Detailed List of Topics
DeFi lending, vaults and onchain credit
Liquid staking, restaking and validator decentralisation
Bitcoin DeFi and hybrid Layer 2 architecture
Layer 2 scaling and zkEVM rollups
Stablecoins, payments and onchain banking
Smart wallets and account abstraction
Tokenised real world assets and onchain yield
DeFi insurance and onchain risk management
Oracles, data and decentralised intelligence
Agentic finance and autonomous AI agents
Decentralised compute and verifiable machine learning
Privacy preserving DeFi and zero knowledge tech
Smart contract security and wallet protection
Institutional DeFi, derivatives and prime brokerage
DAO governance and onchain coordination
Capital allocation, market making and DeFi research
Policy, regulation and digital asset clearing
Energy DeFi and regenerative finance
First Confirmed Speakers
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy at The University of Edinburgh & Chief Scientist, IOHK
Travel Instructions
By train: Arrive to Edinburgh Waverley train station and walk 5 minutes. The venue is rather close to the train station.
By plane: Arrive to Edinburgh Airport and take 25 min Uber or 40 min by tram + 5 min walk.
Speakers
Contact us here to apply to speak at this event and we will evaluate your talk proposal.
Sponsors
Contact us here to sponsor this event