Blockchain in Munich

The TUM Blockchain Club is a registered non-profit and an accredited student club at the Technical University of Munich. By its own account it is the biggest student-run blockchain club in Germany. Its members work in departments such as Education, Industry, Legal & Finance, IT & Development and Research, and in industry projects each semester students work on a question from a company. The club has organized more than 50 events, and its teams have won 16 hackathons.

Two of its formats reach far beyond the campus. The TUM Blockchain Conference at the House of Communication is "born at TUM" and built for the whole blockchain field, from zero-knowledge cryptography to production systems; one edition drew more than 1,200 attendees and over 125 speakers. The TUM Blockchain & AI Hackathon runs alongside it. Web3 Talents, the club's free 20-week online program with the courses Blockchain Fundamentals and Web3 Applications, is open to anyone who wants to learn the basics.

For Munich's financial institutions, blockchain is now a settlement question. BayernLB is one of 13 market participants in the first group of Pontes, the Eurosystem service that settles tokenized assets in central bank money. A Bavarian bank can so issue or buy a tokenized bond and settle the euro side with the same finality as a payment in T2. The blockchain in Frankfurt page covers Pontes and the other participants.

Two Munich firms work on the risk side of the same ledgers. Tangany holds tokenized securities and crypto-assets for banks and brokers under a BaFin custody license. Munich Re offers DeFi Protect, cover for institutional assets in approved DeFi protocols against smart contract exploits, governance attacks and oracle failures. A smart contract bug is an insurable event in Munich.

W3MUC calls itself "Munich's Web3 Hub" and works under the line "Web3. Build. Together." It brings people who build with blockchain, DeFi and smart contracts to the same events: an NFT exhibition at the Haus der Kunst, a Web3 Innovation Forum and stages at the Festival der Zukunft, with venues such as the Munich Urban Colab.

DLT Germany describes itself as an independent think tank for distributed ledger technology. It holds free meetups online and in person, innovation workshops, design thinking sessions and hackathons that look for use cases, and it helps startups and companies with pilot projects. For anyone searching for blockchain consulting in Munich, that is the non-commercial first stop before hiring a firm.

A distributed ledger is a database that many parties keep in copies at the same time, so no single operator controls the record. A blockchain is one kind of distributed ledger: it groups transactions into blocks and chains each block to the one before. Many ledgers built for banks let only approved participants write to them.

Munich has no regulator of its own; BaFin supervises from Bonn and Frankfurt. Three sets of rules matter most: MiCA for crypto-assets and stablecoins, the EU's DLT Pilot Regime for trading and settlement of tokenized securities, and the German Electronic Securities Act with its crypto securities register, which the blockchain in Germany page explains.

Finance Loop launched its Munich chapter with an event in the city and holds events there next to Frankfurt, Berlin and Hamburg. It became a network partner of W3MUC to hold finance and web3 events in Munich for finance professionals and newcomers, and a network partner of DLT Germany with events in the city.

Finance Loop lists the Web3 Talents program of the TUM Blockchain Club on its academy page, and Web3 Talents supported TechClub 25/3, the fintech and crypto afterwork in Frankfurt. Finance Loop is also a member of Bundesblock, which curates the Digital Assets Day at the TUM Blockchain Conference for banks, regulators and the public sector.

Yes. The TUM Blockchain Conference takes place every year at the House of Communication in Munich, with a main conference day, the Digital Assets Day curated by Bundesblock and the TUM Blockchain & AI Hackathon. The dates of the next edition are in the calendar above and on the TUM Blockchain Club page.

Blockchain at TU Munich runs through its students: the TUM Blockchain Club has a Research department, industry projects with companies, a Blockchain Bootcamp for new members and the free Web3 Talents program, which also takes people from outside the university.

W3MUC and DLT Germany hold regular meetups and forums in Munich, the TUM Blockchain Club runs events on campus, and Finance Loop holds events for finance professionals in the city. For bitcoin-only meetups see bitcoin in Munich.

Yes. The TUM Blockchain & AI Hackathon runs during the TUM Blockchain Conference, open to builders of every skill level, with cash prizes. The club's teams also take part in hackathons elsewhere.