Last week, ETH Belgrade 2025 brought the heat - literally (RIP deodorant) - as  we joined the conference and hackathon at the Sava Congress Center. Picture a massive venue  on the banks of the Danube and Sava,  upgraded and swarming with a three-day marathon of talks, workshops, and dev  action for over 1,000 participants.

Four speaker slots, a booth, and a hackathon bounty that triggered actual brain activity. We didn’t just talk about how Neon brings Solana liquidity and users to EVM dApps - we did the whole thing:  met brilliant builders, heard fresh perspectives, and got a much-needed reality check on where the ecosystem stands.

In case you missed it, here's what happened.

State of the Ecosystem: Shipping > hype

Gone are the days of buzzwords and vapor decks. What we saw:

Infrastructure, privacy, governance, and cross-chain interoperability. From OGs (Curve, Lido, and Chainlink) to global innovators like Polkadot and iExec, as well as local powerhouses (DeFi Saver, MVP Workshop, Decenter), the focus wasn’t on flashy launches—it was on robust systems and shipping products.

Tooling teams like Tenderly and GetBlock demonstrated how developer infrastructure is becoming more accessible and observability-driven. AI/blockchain convergence was a clear thread too, with Ethernal and Apillon exploring agent integrations and verifiable ML models. Projects like Civic tackled identity and privacy challenges, while Xsolla and Quex bridged blockchain with gaming and finance. Meanwhile, protocol teams such as OriginTrail, Oasis, and Flare introduced fresh angles on data security, cross-chain data availability, and DAO coordination.

Over 50 projects from the Balkans alone made their mark - not just by showing up, but by leading conversations.

Talks & Solidity-to-Solana Demos

We came with code. And slides. But mostly code.

We explored what Neon does best: EVM-Solana composability: . I

• Our talk “Neon EVM: Bringing Ethereum and Solana Together,”  broke down how Solidity contracts can  trigger Solana programs with no friction.
• Our workshop “Break the Runtime Barrier: EVM dApps that talk to Solana” took  it a step further, offering devs a practical look at Neon’s composability libraries, and combining just enough theory to make it click with the code to make it real.
• At the Rust Summit, our session on Tracing Neon Transactions  answered the question every engineer asks sooner or later: “How do I know what’s actually happening?” Turns out tracing tools are pretty essential.
• At the DevRel Summit, our talk on Cross-Departmental Work of DevRel showed how to scale developer relations by collaborating across teams.

Booth Buzz

At our booth, that same energy carried through. Between talks, we met with teams exploring everything from liquidity routing and NFT infra to DAO governance. Devs came for the tech and stayed for the swag. Or maybe it was the other way around? Honestly, who can say at this point.

Hackathon Highlights: Devs cooked

280+ hackers in town. Our bounty invited them to build DeFi applications using Neon’s cross-chain architecture. What we got? Pure sauce.

We walked through composability flows on repeat, explained our Solidity-to-Solana libraries and precompiles in five different ways, and watched participants connect the dots between their own dApps and a cross-runtime future. Conversation quickly turned into MVPs.

Winner – Чаробни Internet Money:

A sleek, Magic Internet Money–inspired stablecoin built on Neon. Deposit USDC, mint 4ap—cross-chain logic handled cleanly with Neon precompiles. It worked. It slapped.

Honorable Mentions:

• DeepVest – A crowdfunding platform for early‑stage startups that uses AI to evaluate projects and automate investment decisions in USDC on Neon EVM.
• MPC Curvey – Uses Neon EVM to deploy Solidity contracts that execute approved treasury transactions on Solana, enabling MPC-governed vaults to operate cross-chain with EVM-based logic.
• Securepool – Implemented secure yield aggregation with a focus on safety-first DeFi exposure.
• Barter NFT – A swapping protocol enabling permissionless NFT-for-asset trades.
• ComposabilityDAO – A hybrid governance layer operating across EVM and Solana runtimes.
• evmSolRaise – An infrastructure tool for launching token sales using Neon composability.
• Time Locked Yield – Yield farming tool offering time-based lockups with cross-chain execution.
• Neon ERC20 to SPL Launcher – A utility for seamlessly converting ERC-20 tokens into Solana SPL equivalents via Neon.

TL;DR — A Mental Snapshot

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ETH Belgrade was more than a conference. It was a vibes check and a reality check. Builders showed up. Ideas leveled up. And the future of cross-chain apps just got a whole lot realer.

See you at the next one. Bring sunscreen and Solidity - and we’ll give you the famous Neon underpants.

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