Blockchain Ireland
Blockchain Ireland is the national industry network for blockchain, crypto and Web3 in Ireland, run as a non-profit organization led by its members. State agencies, corporates, academics and professionals who work with blockchain technology belong to the network. Blockchain Ireland grew out of the Irish Blockchain Expert Group, a forum founded in late 2015 with support from industry, academia and state agencies.
Blockchain Ireland connects its members with regulators, policymakers, other technology clusters and international industry networks. Six working groups cover legal and regulatory questions, crypto and digital assets, technical topics, startups, education and events, and they report to the steering group. The network also organizes the annual Blockchain Ireland Summit in Dublin.
Blockchain Ireland Summit
The Blockchain Ireland Summit is the annual conference of the network in Dublin, and more than 1,000 people a year attend the events of Blockchain Ireland. The 2025 summit ran over two days at Trinity Business School and combined events hosted by Blockchain Ireland with events from the wider Irish blockchain scene.
For the 2026 edition, Blockchain Ireland teamed up with TEDxDublin for an afternoon of curated talks at the Sugar Club in Dublin under the title "The Next Era of Finance: The Onchain Age". Speakers from CBRE Ireland, Stripe, Accenture and Payward, the parent company of Kraken, talk about tokenized real estate, stablecoins and AI agents that hold their own wallets.
Blockchain Ireland Week
Blockchain Ireland Week is the annual national event series of the network, and the 2024 edition brought more than 400 attendees to Trinity Business School in Dublin. Speakers included Michael McGrath, Minister for Finance at the time, Gerry Cross of the Central Bank of Ireland, Anthony Scaramucci of SkyBridge and executives from Halborn, PwC Ireland, Blockdaemon and the Algorand Foundation.
The two-day program of Blockchain Ireland Week 2024 covered Web3 communities, security and staking infrastructure, NFTs and the state of the crypto market. Trevor Clohessy, then chair of the working group for education and skills, moderated an early morning blockchain bootcamp with mentors from the startup working group.
Membership and fees
Organizations join Blockchain Ireland through a Standard Membership for 5,000 euros excluding VAT per year. Members get access to all six working groups, regulatory roundtables, member-only events and discounts, and inclusion in the annual national survey that Amárach Research carries out for the network.
Members propose agenda items for a quarterly meeting with the Central Bank of Ireland and receive structured feedback from the regulator. Through Blockchain Ireland they also take part in the Financial Industry Forum, which works on the national digital finance strategy of Ireland.
Upcoming fintech and finance events in Europe
Chair, steering group and working groups
Lory Kehoe is the chair of Blockchain Ireland, and Paul Hearns runs the network as executive director. Most members of the steering group also chair one of the six working groups, which report to the steering group and to the wider organization on a regular basis.
Pearse Ryan and Chris Martin co-chair the Legal and Regulatory Working Group, and Hitesh Tewari chairs the group for education, skills and innovation. Niall Dennehy, Smriti Verma, Stuart Schneller and Karl Timmins co-chair the group for startups and Web3, and Brian Elders leads the Crypto and Digital Assets Working Group. Gonzalo Faura leads the technical group, and Sebastian Grube leads the group for events and communications.
Regulation and European networks
The Legal and Regulatory Working Group of Blockchain Ireland follows policy developments, drafts guidance and supports members in their talks with regulators. The Crypto and Digital Assets Working Group works on the competitiveness of crypto and digital asset markets in Ireland, which operate under the MiCA regulation of the European Union.
Blockchain Ireland co-signed the Cooperation on European Blockchain Partnership in February 2019 and receives regular updates from the EU level through it. The network also works with international industry bodies such as INATBA, the British Blockchain Association, the Slovenian Blockchain Innovation Ecosystem and the Australian Blockchain Association.
From expert group to industry network
The Irish Blockchain Expert Group started in late 2015 as a forum for blockchain businesses, academic institutions and the wider blockchain scene in Ireland. Led by IDA Ireland, the expert group launched Blockchain Ireland in June 2018, with further input from Enterprise Ireland and the Department of Finance.
Blockchain Ireland holds monthly meetings at which keynote speakers share their experience with blockchain applications in their own fields. The network partners with more than 100 organizations in Ireland and keeps an ecosystem map of the blockchain firms and projects in the country.
Blockchain Ireland and Finance Loop
Finance Loop members work on the questions that the working groups of Blockchain Ireland handle in Dublin, from MiCA authorization to tokenized funds and stablecoin payments. Finance Loop brings people from banks, asset managers and crypto firms in Germany and other European countries together on these topics at its events.
Finance Loop is a professional network and has the goal of driving the institutional use of emerging technologies in finance, such as AI, tokenization, stablecoins, and DeFi. Finance Loop helps its members build skills and personal networks in these fields: Investment & Digital Assets, Payments & Digital Money, Digital Infrastructure & Sovereignty, and Risk & Compliance.