The Edinburgh Decentralised Finance Summit runs on Tuesday 1 September 2026 at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, with 300 attendees and 25 speakers across eighteen topics, among them lending without a bank, stablecoin payments, tokenised real-world assets, smart contract security and wallet protection, and AI agents that hold and move funds without a person approving each step.

Decentralised finance, usually shortened to DeFi, means financial services built as open source software running on public blockchains,
where the rules sit in programs called smart contracts rather than in a bank acting as the party in the middle. Tokenisation is the related idea of representing a real asset, such as a bond, a fund unit or a property title, as a digital token on that same infrastructure, so it can be
issued, traded and settled as data.

Two other terms come up often: stablecoins, which are tokens pegged to sterling or the dollar and used for payment and settlement, and zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic method for proving a statement is true without revealing the data behind it.

Why does it matter to Scotland’s technology sector? Mostly because of timing. The FCA’s authorisation gateway for crypto asset firms opens on 30 September 2026, four weeks after this summit, with the full regime in force from October 2027, so this moves from a fringe interest to a regulated part of UK financial services with real compliance, security and data obligations attached.

Edinburgh manages a large share of the UK’s investment assets, so much of the engineering work behind that change will land on software teams here.

Confirmed speakers include Prof. Aggelos Kiayias of the University of Edinburgh and IOG, Tobias Vogel, CEO of Consensys Diligence, Tony McLaughlin, CEO of Ubyx, Aleks Tomczyk, Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland, Chris Boyland of the Scottish Government, and Matthew Fisher, CEO of Katana.

Join our series of events, ScotlandIS Tech Tidbits, on the first Tuesday of every month!

These 30 minute webinars will be short, informative sessions on a variety of topics, from exporting to cybersecurity, cloud computing to procurement, and many more.

Each event will feature a ScotlandIS member offering their expert insights and advice on the topic in hand, however you do not need to be a member to attend these talks.

For September we’ll be joined by David Beardshaw, CISO and Cyber Security lead at 3VRM.

Supply chain risk now regularly features as a mainstream news item. While cyber security is only one element of this, events at Jaguar Land Rover and M&S (among others) have reinforced the importance and impact of supply chain risk management.

From a Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) perspective, the challenge of ensuring the cyber security and resilience of supply chains has never been more critical. Organisations of all sizes – and in all sectors – are increasingly recognising this and want to strengthen their risk management in response.

Nevertheless, “Despite an increasing trend in supplier-based breaches, just 14% of UK businesses reviewed the cyber risk of their immediate suppliers in the last 12 months”. (NCSC Annual Review 2025, “It’s time to act”). Whether acting as a ‘buyer’ managing their own supply chain or as a ‘supplier’ responding to due diligence from their (potential) clients, organisations will need to act to strengthen their TPRM for the future.

This presentation aims to help by providing an overview of cyber threats in the supply chain, a framework for effective Third Party Risk Management and by sharing relevant insights and examples.

Join Grant McGregor Ltd for an upcoming webinar exploring the latest developments in Microsoft Copilot through a series of live demonstrations.

Copilot is entering a new phase. Agents can automate business processes, Cowork can complete tasks on your behalf, and Scout can learn how you work and help you stay on top of ongoing tasks.

The session will cover Copilot Agents, Copilot Studio, Copilot Cowork, Microsoft Scout and Microsoft Frontier, followed by a live Q&A.

Date: Tuesday, 1 September

Time: 11:00 am to 12:00 pm

Location: Online via Microsoft Teams

SDS is undertaking a programme of stakeholder engagement on behalf of the Scottish Government to progress work on the next phase of Foundation Apprenticeships.   The first phase of this engagement is focused on employers and industry given the underpinning role they have with shaping and delivering FAs.

We are hosting a series of FA Consultation Workshops for employers.  Details on the workshops are below and please sign up to one of them to ensure your employer voice is captured.

AIMday is a free, hybrid event hosted at Bayes Centre, Edinburgh. Please register your questions by Friday 10 July 2026.

We welcome up to three questions from each participating company or organisation. When registering your question, please ensure that you can facilitate access to the necessary data or details to develop a solution to your challenge. Due to limited spaces we may ask you to merge related questions into one session.

Please note that workshops are in general open for other participating organisations to observe where relevant, but closed workshops can be requested if required.

Your question(s) and (organisation) name will be published on this website.

To ensure your AIMday workshop(s) are successful, we recommend that at least two company representatives are available to join the discussion of each your questions on 10 September 2026. The company representatives should be well versed in the topic of the question(s) submitted and be prepared to provide further context and background.

We are happy to help you come up with or phrase appropriate question(s), so please do get in touch with organisers at EPSRCIAA@ei.ed.ac.uk.

Please register your questions by Friday 10 July 2026. Refreshments and a light lunch will be provided for in-person attendees. Please indicate if you will participate in-person or online.