July has been a month of deadlines and new arrivals. In Europe, MiCA’s transition period officially ended on July 1: Binance’s Greek withdrawal turned into a full EU exit, Tether’s USDT disappeared from regulated venues, and only about a fifth of previously registered firms actually secured authorization. In the US, the CLARITY Act missed its informal July 4 target, with ethics provisions, DeFi classification, and stablecoin yield rules still unresolved heading into the Senate’s last real window before August recess. Meanwhile, five former Ethereum Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent R&D lab aiming to make Ethereum the settlement layer for global finance. For builders, the funding landscape stayed active regardless: new grant programmes launched across AI, quantum readiness, and campus-level education, and the fall conference and hackathon season is already stacking up.
Here’s your curated update for July.
Here’s a fresh batch of funding opportunities for builders, researchers, and innovators in Web3:
XRPL Commons Grants Program Operates across three tracks tailored to different builder profiles: Glow for protocol-level builders, an incubation track to help projects go from build to ship to scale, and a strategic integrations track for established projects laying new rails.
Propr Builders Grant A $1M pool backing new, unlaunched trading products, terminals, bots, copy-trading apps, signal services, strategy marketplaces, agent platforms, fintech apps, before they have distribution. Teams can also earn a $5,000 bonus for every 100 new paid users they bring to the platform.
Galaxy Bitcoin Quantum Readiness Initiative Up to $5M in developer grants for post-quantum solutions on Bitcoin, covering quantum-resistant upgrade proposals, post-quantum cryptography and signature schemes, wallet/custodian migration tooling, and formal security audits, backed by ongoing research from Galaxy Research and a Quantum Advisory Council of leading experts.
Unova Grant Program A global open challenge with $20,000+ in rewards (paid partly in future UON tokens) for developers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and business builders contributing to the Unova ecosystem (AI-native Layer 1 focused on private data distribution and real-world assets)
DeGrants Program (Stacks) Funds small, practical projects that strengthen the Stacks ecosystem through education, culture, tooling, public goods, and community engagement, built for builders and contributors whose work may not fit the main Stacks Endowment Grants Program. Recipients are selected by Community Stewards.
Interledger on Campus Mini-grants of up to $5,000 for student-led university club projects exploring open payments, interoperability, and digital financial access, supporting hackathons, workshops, webinars, and peer-driven learning.
Avalanche / Team1 Builder Grants Two tracks funding builders and community initiatives driving activity on Avalanche: Mini Grants (up to $10K, open applications, early-stage ideas) and Accelerator Grants (up to $30K, committee-reviewed, nominated by Team1, community reps, Ava Labs, and the Avalanche Foundation).
Hyper Foundation Migration Grant Program Roughly $10M in grants supporting projects affected by the USDH sunset, aimed at ensuring migration or orderly shutdown activities wrap up by end of July to minimize ecosystem disruption.
Qubic Incubation Program An ongoing incubation program funding development on Qubic — teams submit a detailed proposal, get evaluated by the Incubation Board within 1–2 weeks, then work in milestone-based deliverables with QA checks unlocking payment (no upfront funding). Qubic also covers one smart contract audit per project and supports mainnet deployment and an AMA at delivery.
A few things from this month worth reading together: one on a new player entering Ethereum’s ecosystem, one on US regulatory momentum, and one on Europe’s regulatory deadline finally landing.
Ethlabs launched as an independent non-profit R&D lab dedicated to making Ethereum “the settlement layer of the global economy,” founded by five former senior Ethereum Foundation researchers: Ansgar Dietrichs (now Executive Director), Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Josh Rudolf, and Caspar Schwarz-Schilling. The lab plans to work across faster settlement, cross-chain compatibility, mainnet throughput, and research into ETH’s monetary properties, sitting between builders at the frontier and the protocol work needed to support them. It’s backed by major ecosystem players including Bitmine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, with contributions flowing through an external grant administrator and quarterly reports plus annual audits to preserve research independence. Coming the same month as the Ethereum Foundation’s own internal reorg, it’s a sign of how much energy is going into stewarding Ethereum’s next growth phase from outside as well as inside the Foundation.
On the regulatory front, the CLARITY Act missed its informal July 4 target, with no floor vote scheduled and no cloture motion filed as the Senate broke for recess. Three interlocking disputes are still blocking the votes needed to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshol, an ethics provision, DeFi classification criteria, and stablecoin yield rules, the latter a live fight given Coinbase’s roughly $1.35B in annual USDC rewards revenue. A new draft circulated July 22 with a sunset clause on the ethics rules, but core disagreements remain unresolved. The Senate returns July 13 with roughly three usable weeks before August recess, widely seen as the last realistic window for 2026 passage, and August 10 is now being floated as the effective deadline, since the GENIUS Act’s own rulemaking deadline lands the same week. Miss that window, and the bill likely slides into 2027, an election-shadowed year.
Across the Atlantic, Europe’s MiCA transition period officially ended July 1, and the fallout landed fast. Of roughly 1,200+ firms that previously operated under national registrations, only about 17-20% secured full MiCA authorization, meaning the large majority are now either winding down or operating in breach of EU law. Binance followed through on its Greek withdrawal (flagged in our last edition) and ceased serving EU customers entirely on July 1, with reports it may reapply through France. Tether’s USDT was delisted from regulated EU venues after Tether never sought e-money-token authorization, objecting to MiCA’s reserve requirements, while Circle’s MiCA-compliant USDC kept its listings. Coinbase, meanwhile, opened a Luxembourg hub on June 24, using a single CSSF license to passport across all 27 member states. The European Commission is already signaling it will revisit parts of the framework, since MiCA’s original drafting focused on exchanges before stablecoins became this central to global payments.
Plenty of excellent gatherings to meet other builders, show what you’re working on, and stay close to ecosystem trends.
European Blockchain Convention — Barcelona — 16-17 September 2026 Brings together founders, regulators, and enterprises from across Europe, with dedicated tracks on DeFi, the digital euro, and MiCA-era compliance. A natural lead-in to the Malta conference the following week if you're doing a European fall trip.
Blockchain and AI Conference 2026 — University of Malta — 23–25 September 2026. An interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of Malta bringing together scholars, policymakers, technologists, and industry leaders to examine how blockchain and AI are reshaping governance, finance, law, identity, and civic participation. We attended last year and presented www.web3grants.co and can say it's one of those rare events where authentic engagement and meaningful content genuinely drive the programme, well beyond the buzzwords and marketing hype that dominate too many conferences in this space. Worth the trip to Valletta!
TOKEN2049 Singapore — 7–8 October 2026 The next edition of TOKEN2049 will take place at Marina Bay Sands, offering the global crypto community its next major gathering point of the year.
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