Arbitrum Foundation announces winners of Bengaluru IRL Hacker House
BENGALURU, India, Sept. 23, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Arbitrum Foundation today announced the winners of the Arbitrum Open House India IRL Hacker House in Bengaluru, a four-day build sprint connecting India's developer talent with Arbitrum's production-proven technology stack. Teams built across DeFi, privacy, onchain insurance, and developer tools, with the top three projects sharing $70,000 in prizes and advancing to Demo Day.
- First Place - $40,000: Orbital AMM Protocol. A new and novel AMM that supports thousands of stablecoins within a single pool by extending concentrated liquidity into higher dimensions.
- Second Place - $20,000: Shinobi.Cash. Cross-chain privacy pools enabling deposits on any EVM chain and private withdrawals on another, from a single Arbitrum deployment.
- Third Place - $10,000: GuardChain.ai. A community-owned, blockchain-native insurance model for gig workers and self-help groups, combining AI-assisted claims with onchain transparency and governance.
"Some projects make great hackathon demos, some become useful open-source tools, and a few show the shape of a meaningful new product for the ecosystem. Orbital is in that last group," said Ben Greenberg, who leads Developer Relations at the Arbitrum Foundation and served as a judge. "They combined rigorous math with clear market thinking and shipped fast."
Projects were evaluated by a panel of judges from the Arbitrum Foundation and ecosystem partners on technical rigor, user value, readiness to ship, and a credible path to adoption. The judging process emphasized working software, with teams assessed on architecture quality, execution speed, and clarity of go-to-market.
The Open House India program was structured as a three-stage journey that meets builders where they are, then moves them forward with momentum.
- Learn introduced the Arbitrum stack through practical workshops and Q&A, reducing time-to-first-commit for both new and experienced teams.
- Build followed with a three-week online buildathon that helped teams form, test, and iterate toward working prototypes with mentor-led feedback and informal pitch sessions.
- Hack culminated in Bengaluru with an application-only in-person hacker house that paired deep technical reviews, tight checkpoints, and nightly feedback with hands-on guidance from Arbitrum engineers and ecosystem partners.
Over four days, participants worked alongside mentors from the Ethereum Foundation: Founder Success, OpenZeppelin, Couchbase, and Appwrite, applying production-grade tooling to ship features that matter. Builders chose their path across the unified Arbitrum stack: write smart contracts in Rust, C, or C++ with Stylus, or use Solidity; deploy to Arbitrum One for shared liquidity or scope an Orbit chain for dedicated block space and predictable cost profiles. The result was working software, sharper positioning, and credible plans to reach users.
"India's builders move quickly, solve real problems, and set a high bar for product quality," said Aditi Chopra, who leads regional growth for India at the Arbitrum Foundation. "Across the board, we saw clear user value, credible adoption paths, and strong technical judgment. Open House is designed to turn focused work into lasting outcomes, and these teams delivered."
On the ground, teams put Stylus and Orbit to work. Orbital AMM implemented a high-precision math layer in Stylus (Q96.48 fixed-point) to compute multi-asset invariants at speed, then added trade segmentation to handle large orders without slippage spikes. Shinobi.Cash integrated account-abstraction paymasters on Arbitrum to reduce withdrawal costs and prototyped deposit-anywhere, withdraw-anywhere flows with a ZK circuit leveraging the Open Intent Framework from a single Arbitrum deployment. GuardChain.ai scoped an Orbit-backed path for a dedicated insurance chain so claims processing, jury votes, and surplus distribution run at predictable costs as usage scales.
"Open House shows how the Arbitrum technology stack supports complete application lifecycles, enabling teams to build, execute, and get a faster feedback loop from the mentors onsite," said Lorenzo Sicilia, Head of Technology at the Arbitrum Foundation and a judge. "Arbitrum One's battle-tested infrastructure gave builders a robust environment with a reliable developer experience and access to billions in liquidity from day one, while Orbit made it simple for teams to spin up custom chains with dedicated, customizable block space."
Winners will present their projects at Demo Day on October 6, showcasing them to ecosystem leaders and strategic partners. Select teams will be considered for an accelerator track focused on go-to-market execution, fundraising readiness, and deeper integration across the Arbitrum ecosystem.
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About The Arbitrum Foundation
The Arbitrum Foundation accelerates the growth and resilience of the Arbitrum ecosystem. Founded in 2023, the Foundation implements onchain governance with open processes and accountability. Token holders direct protocol upgrades and treasury allocation, and the Foundation executes through grants, partnerships, research, education, and developer programs. Community governance, including the ArbitrumDAO, aligns incentives while the Foundation provides disciplined delivery. By turning priorities into funded work and measurable outcomes, the Foundation strengthens tooling for builders, deepens liquidity for users, and supports a healthier, more resilient network.
About Arbitrum
Arbitrum is a unified stack for building onchain. Arbitrum One delivers low fees, rapid confirmation, and strong security with straightforward deployment. Orbit enables purpose-built, interoperable chains that tap shared liquidity while staying connected to the wider ecosystem. Stylus extends smart contracts to Rust, C, and C++, allowing developers to build with their existing knowledge and tooling, which expands the pool of contributors and speeds adoption. Projects span DeFi, gaming, social, DePIN, and enterprise workloads that require predictable costs and scale. Initially developed by Offchain Labs and governed by the ArbitrumDAO, Arbitrum pairs production-ready technology with open governance so teams can build and grow with confidence.
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