Latin America, and especially Argentina, has gone through countless economic crises, trade blockades and closed foreign exchange markets. That pushed the adoption of DeFi protocols, stablecoins and blockchain-based financial products, and it also fueled the growth of a generation of entrepreneurs looking for real solutions in those verticals. The DeFi Track of the Buildathon Season was created to support them, and the Uniswap Foundation was the key partner in co-creating the program.
There were 20 startups selected from dozens of applications. The selection was exhaustive on purpose: a small program can provide the personalized guidance that promising teams need. The activities ran every Tuesday at the Aleph Hub, the DeFi Tuesdays, held in person and streamed live exclusively for the selected teams.
The track was woven into the season's weekly rhythm: group mentoring on Tuesdays, the DeFi Track activities right after, and the masterclasses closing each week on Thursdays. The content thread followed the real life of a startup: product and branding in the early weeks, then go-to-market and legal, and finally pitching, demos and funding, interspersed throughout with technical sessions, from v4 hooks to workshops alongside OpenZeppelin, and fireside chats with founders like Gabriel Gruber (Exa).
There were 18 online group mentoring sessions, plus private one-on-one meetings, scheduled at staggered times so no timezone was left out. They featured experts in product and artificial intelligence like Alvaro Echazú (Paisanos) and Stewart Alsop (AI Whisperers), legal experts like Ana, la criptolawyer, and Benjamin Muñoz (Lawi), and founders and investors like Manuel Beaudroit (Belo) and Elena Obukhova (Supermoon Ventures). On the Uniswap Foundation side, Nicolás Acosta, its ambassador, and Ángela Ocando, its dev community manager, sustained the day-to-day guidance, active even in the Telegram group. And Devin Walsh, the Foundation's director, delivered one of the season's six masterclasses.
As a result, several of the startups made it to the Startup World Cup: they pitched at the Qualifiers, Delta Protocol and Zup Protocol reached the second round of the Semifinals, and AlphaEngine pitched at the Grand Finale, on Devconnect's main stage, among the 12 finalists.
The case that sums up the journey is Kumar Nilay's, who arrived from India into the Builder Funnel through the DeFi Track. AlphaEngine had been born as a hackathon project in early 2025; the Buildathon was the catalyst that turned it into a fully developed DeFi product. At the Startup World Cup, the team was selected among the top 6 out of 119 startups at the Qualifiers, advanced to the Semifinals and ended up among the 12 finalists. From hackathon to acceleration, and from there to Devconnect's main stage.
The track also came with benefits beyond the weekly agenda: Uniswap v4 and Unichain tooling, grant opportunities, and access to the Uniswap House during Devconnect.
The program it was part of has its own note: Buildathon Season.