1inch and the Blockchain Association reveal Groundwork DC lineup, uniting DeFi education, policy and industry

• The forum marks the next step for 1inch Forward, the education-centric initiative, building on its landmark open letter.
• Featuring Kartik Talwar, co-founder of ETHGlobal; Ronghui Gu, co-founder of CertiK; Coy Garrison, Deputy General Counsel at Robinhood, Brian Nistler, Head of Policy at Uniswap and many other DeFi veterans. 

ROAD TOWN, British Virgin Islands, October 13, 2026 (2pm UTC) — 1inch, the leading DeFi ecosystem, and the Blockchain Association today announced the Groundwork lineup, a forum on how decentralized finance should be taught, researched and responsibly integrated into the future of finance. 

Taking place on October 16, 2026, at the National Union Building in Washington, DC, Groundwork will bring together students, academics and policymakers alongside industry leaders from companies and organizations including Circle, Robinhood, Uniswap, Fireblocks, Digital Asset and OpenZeppelin, around a single idea: learn the system you’re about to inherit.

For 1inch, education is a responsibility the whole industry shares. The people who have spent the last decade building decentralized finance have a duty to pass on what they have learned.

Groundwork is designed as an education-first program rather than an industry conference. The programming combines main-stage panels with small-group roundtables, giving students and professors direct access to the policy and industry leaders working in digital finance today.

The event program will cover how DeFi has evolved and what the next generation will inherit, how laws and regulation shape decentralized systems, what universities should teach about the future of finance, what changes when stocks, funds and other real-world assets move on-chain, how to build financial systems people can trust, how students go from an idea to a company, and what AI means for the future of finance. Parallel roundtable sessions give attendees a smaller setting for discussion, with topics including prediction markets, crypto 101 and career pathways. 

Hosting Groundwork in Washington was a deliberate choice. On September 15, the US Senate did not advance the CLARITY Act, the market structure bill that would divide oversight of digital assets between the SEC and the CFTC, leaving comprehensive federal rules unresolved. The decisions made in Washington over the coming years will shape the financial system that today’s students step into, and many of the people who will one day write, interpret and apply those rules are still in the classroom. Groundwork puts them in the same room as the policy leads, lawyers and builders working on these questions now, so the next round of the debate includes the people who will inherit its outcome.

The forum is the next step in 1inch Forward. In March 2026, 1inch led a coalition of more than 20 DeFi organizations and policy groups in an open letter urging US business and law schools to include digital assets, blockchain and decentralized finance in their curricula. Since then, the 1inch team has held campus events at universities across the US and published ReDefine Money, a book that tells the story of DeFi through the voices of the industry’s first builders and founders.

“If DeFi is to achieve the adoption it deserves, we must not assume that those outside our industry have the same understanding or interest that we do. Those of us who have spent the last decade building DeFi learned much of it the hard way, and it is on us to pass this on in an accessible way. Transferring this knowledge is a final step towards creating the future of finance and ensuring the next generation benefits from it,” said Sergej Kunz, 1inch co-founder.

“Bringing students, academics, policymakers and industry leaders together is essential to building a stronger understanding of how digital assets and decentralized finance are reshaping our financial system. We’re proud to support Groundwork alongside our member 1inch and help ensure the next generation of leaders has a seat at the table as these important policy conversations take shape in Washington,” said Lindsay Fraser, Chief Policy Officer, Blockchain Association

“Universities are where many of the ideas shaping the future of technology begin, while industry is where those ideas are tested and applied at scale. Especially in Washington today, it is important that academia, industry, and policymakers remain in close dialogue so that innovation is supported by a strong understanding of both the technology and its real-world implications.” said Ronghui Gu, Co-Founder and CEO of CertiK and Tang Family Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University.

Confirmed speakers include Lindsay Fraser, Chief Policy Officer at the Blockchain Association; Orest Gavryliak, Chief Legal Officer at 1inch; Coy Garrison, Deputy General Counsel at Robinhood; Julie Lascar, Director of Policy and Government Affairs at Digital Asset; Brian Nistler, Head of Policy at Uniswap; Jessica Martinez, US Policy Director at Fireblocks; Jason Gottlieb, Partner and Chair of Digital Assets at Morrison Cohen; Kartik Talwar, co-founder of ETHGlobal; Robert Chen, CEO of OtterSec; Professor Gregory Johnson of NYU; Ronghui Gu, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University and co-founder of CertiK; Derek Horstmeyer, Professor of Finance at George Mason University and founder of its Future of Finance Lab. 

Registration for Groundwork is open at luma.com/groundwork_dc.

About 1inch

1inch provides secure, efficient decentralized finance products to 27M users. That means intent-based and aggregator swaps powering $100M+ daily crypto trading volume across 18 chains, including tokenized RWAs; a secure self-custodial wallet; and 1inch Aqua, the shared liquidity protocol that allows users to back multiple liquidity positions with the same assets, without depositing tokens in pools. And 1inch Business provides scalable, ISO-certified access to the same infrastructure for wallets, exchanges and institutions across DeFi, CeFi and TradFi – building financial freedom for everyone.

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