Builder's Block #026: $300K Awaits at Founder House Singapore & What Great Startups Have in Common
🇸🇬 Founder House is coming to Singapore on October 23 with $300k in prizes to back founders
🎤 We’re hosting Arbitrum Founders Eve + a pitch competition during Token2049
đź“ť Tips & advice on building a successful startup
đź“Ł Announcements
Key updates from the Arbitrum ecosystem and Foundation.
Founder House Singapore Is Bringing Founders Together With A $300K Prize Pool
Registrations for Founder House Singapore are now open.
From October 23rd to 25th, we're teaming up with Robinhood Chain to back founders with technical, product, and GTM support, plus $300K in prizes and grants.
If your team is building products around tokenization, finance or AI, apply today and learn more here.
Arbitrum’s Founders Eve + Pitch Competition during Token2049
Join us on October 7th at Arbitrum's Founders Eve during Token2049 - a big opportunity for founders to hear about the latest on Arbitrum's ecosystem growth & join a pitch competition hosted with DeFi Founders Club to win a sponsored trip to our Founder House in Singapore
All founders currently building (or looking to build) on Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain are welcome to apply
đź“š Learn & Build
New learning drops and hands-on resources from across the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Deep Dive on Arbitrum: Full Keynote by Entropy Advisors
Want a complete deep dive into Arbitrum before you deploy?
Hear the full keynote by Ali from Entropy Advisors at Founder House as he breaks down why the Arbitrum Platform is the ultimate place for founders to launch and scale onchain.
The 24kb Limit for Smart Contracts is Gone - Read the Article
ArbOS Elara is now live on the Arbitrum Platform. One of the upgrades it brings is a 4x capacity increase to Stylus contracts, letting teams build larger Rust apps with fewer contract splits.
This article by our DevRel Ben breaks down the upgrade and what it unlocks.
How To Build A Successful Startup In The Age Of AI
Building a successful startup starts with these questions:
- Does this solve a real, painful problem?
- Have I validated that people actually need it?
- Can I find users before I build it?
This article by our DevRel Jess breaks down what founders should focus on.
How Do You Build A Good Submission For Arbitrum’s Open House With Your AI Code?
You're using AI. No need to hide it.
With AI making building easier, the amount of competition in buildathons has grown. In this article, Ben, our DevRel Engineer and frequent Open House judge, shares how you can ensure your submission stands out.
MPP support on Arbitrum - An Agentic Payment Guide
Onchain payments are being used by agents to pay for things like API calls autonomously, but having funds in a wallet isn’t enough. A wallet can sign the transaction, but how do you verify payment before delivering the result? Ben’s article breaks down the agentic payment problem, and how the Machine Payments Protocol, or MPP, solves it.
Founder Testimonial - Dewi, Cofounder of Liquida
Dewi from Liquida joined us at Founder House London to refine their UK Treasury bond platform and find product-market fit. After winning Founder House London’s 1st prize, they received interest from VCs, and advanced through the Bank of England’s Digital Securities Sandbox program.
If you’re a hungry team looking to bring an idea or MVP out of stealth, apply to Founder House Singapore, happening October 23-25.
🔦 Ecosystem Highlights
Fresh launches and standout threads from around the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Arbitrum Becomes Top 3 Blockchain by Revenue
Arbitrum broke into the top 3 by weekly revenue at the start of September. Revenue comes from multiple high-margin blockchain products, including Arbitrum One transaction revenue, 10% licence fees under the AEP program for Arbitrum Chains, and treasury income from non-ARB assets in the ArbitrumDAO.
Q3 Arbitrum Check-In: Major Revenue Flows, Fundamentals Compounding
Over the last 30 days, the Arbitrum Platform generated $4.3M+ in revenue across transaction fees, Timeboost, AEP fees and treasury management.
In this update, we highlight Arbitrum’s surge in revenue as the Robinhood Chain grows, ongoing momentum with RWA deployments on Arbitrum crossing 4,500+, and a couple ecosystem highlights across teams building in the programmable economy.
🛠️ Dev Tooling & Infra
Updates to SDKs, CLIs, and developer workflows across the stack.
Nitro v3.11.3 is Now Fully Released
The release improves node reliability and Ethereum compatibility, including support for newer parent-chain header fields, safer limits on RPC requests to prevent excessive memory usage, more informative BoLD staker logs, and a fix to batch poster gas estimation handling.
🗓️ Events
Workshops, hackathons, and ecosystem meetups to watch.
Founder House Singapore is Coming to Singapore on October 23
Following the online Buildathon, Founder House Singapore is an application-only, three-day, in-person experience built for founders and teams who already have an existing product, prototype, or business and are actively building.
​Selected teams will spend three focused days alongside fellow founders, ecosystem leaders, and mentors, working to ship meaningful product progress, validate key assumptions, and receive direct feedback from the Arbitrum ecosystem.
$25,000 Up for Grabs at Colosseum’s Hackathon
We’re excited to support Colosseum’s Crypto World’s Fair as the 5th dedicated hackathon pavilion.
The Arbitrum track, also supported by Offchain, will award $25,000 across the top 5 startups integrating the Arbitrum blockchain.
🧵 Forum & Community Discussions
What builders are debating and proposing this week.
Banning Projects Identified in the High-Severity Watchdog Program Cases
The following cases from the Watchdog Program have been deemed to constitute high-severity misuse. Accordingly, the Watchdog Committee is proposing to ban three projects identified from these high-severity cases from the ArbitrumDAO. Read about them here:
Arbitrum Ecosystem Fellowship - Final Report & Grant Completion
The final report for the Arbitrum Ecosystem Fellowship, sponsored by Arbitrum DAO and powered by CoBuildersis live, consolidates all milestones in one place to close out the grant.
From May to September 2026, the program supported a cohort of 8 senior LATAM engineers with no prior blockchain experience as they shipped public infrastructure on Arbitrum Stylus.
That’s all from Builder’s Block #026. Thank you for reading, and keep building. Arbitrum Everywhere.