APPLY TO EASY RESIDENCY S4 — BUILD INSIDE BHUTAN'S NEW SOVEREIGN TECH CITY - YZI LABS BLOG

Apply to EASY Residency S4 — Build Inside Bhutan's New Sovereign Tech City 2026.5.22  •  9 min read Start 5 weeks from anywhere. Finish 5 weeks in Bhutan. One cohort unlike any before. Main takeaways: • Season 4 of EASY Residency is a 10-week founder program — 5 weeks online + 5 weeks in person — running the second half on the ground inside Bhutan, including Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC), a newly chartered Special Administrative Region built for blockchain, AI, and frontier tech. • Accommodation, meals, and workspace in Bhutan are fully covered. Founders just bring the work. • Priority sectors: across Web3, AI, and biotech — with a particular focus on global payments (stablecoin infra, settlement rails, neobanks), the agentic economy (agent wallets, agent-to-agent settlement, agentic finance), next-gen DeFi (on-chain credit, RWA rails, decentralized insurance), AI infrastructure (agent infra, chips, hardware, vertical robotics), and AI × Bio and Web3 × bio (clinical AI, drug discovery, decentralized health data). Full thesis below. • Applications close at 23:59 (GMT-7) on June 21. Apply here: wkf.ms/3IA5iBk • Building with YZi Labs at the newest frontier YZi Labs' EASY Residency Season 4 is the inaugural global founder cohort to build inside ≈ (GMC),  Bhutan's new Special Administrative Region. In the fragile, early stages of a startup, a founder's most scarce commodity is cognitive bandwidth. GMC is a sovereign jurisdiction crafted to protect that bandwidth, blending forward-thinking crypto regulation with a distraction-free, low-overhead lifestyle. Bhutan is an oasis built for deep work. Surrounded by its profound tranquility and stillness, the noise of the outside world fades, allowing founders to enter a pure, uninterrupted flow state. By anchoring the world's boldest builders in the earth's most focused and peaceful environment, we create the perfect vacuum for compounding innovation. The program runs for 10 weeks, structured as 5 weeks online plus 5 weeks in person in Bhutan. • Weeks 1–5 (online): Onboarding, deep co-building with YZi Labs investors on GTM, hiring, capital strategy, and mechanism design. Founders continue running their companies from wherever they are. • Weeks 6–10 (in person, Bhutan): The full cohort relocates to Bhutan. Workshops, 1:1s, and community sessions happen in the same building where the cohort lives and builds. The week closes with Demo Day. • What Gelephu Mindfulness City actually is The cohort will operate on the ground in Bhutan, including Gelephu Mindfulness City (GMC). A few facts about the city that much of the world hasn’t discovered yet: • It's massive and strategically positioned. 4,046 km² on the Bhutan–India border —five times the size of Singapore — at the land bridge connecting more than 2 billion people across South and Southeast Asia. • It's sovereign. Established by Royal Charter in December 2024 as a Special Administrative Region with full executive, legislative, and judicial independence. Think Shenzhen, Dubai, or Hong Kong at Year Zero, except the policy stack is written specifically for crypto, AI, green energy, and longevity. • It's crypto-native. Bhutan has committed up to 10,000 BTC from its sovereign reserves to underwrite GMC's build-out — the Bitcoin Development Pledge. • The infrastructure is being built. A data center for AI and on-chain finance. A new international airport. A master plan by Bjarke Ingels Group — eleven neighborhoods inspired by the Mandala, woven through 35 rivers and streams. • A different measure of progress. Bhutan is the world's only carbon-negative nation to have enshrined Gross National Happiness, not GDP, as a constitutional standard, weighting spiritual well-being, cultural preservation, environmental health, and good governance alongside economic output. "YZi Labs represents the kind of long-term partner Gelephu Mindfulness City was designed to attract - builders focused not only on both technological advancement, and real-world impact. Bhutan offers founders something increasingly rare: the space to think long term, operate with clarity, and build within a culture that values purpose, trust, and human wellbeing alongside innovation. We are pleased to welcome YZi Labs to this growing ecosystem.”." — Jigdrel Singay, Board Director of Gelephu Mindfulness City. • What founders get covered 1\. Investment EASY Residency founders may receive up to $500,000, structured as: • $150,000 for 5% equity (plus other rights, where applicable) via a Simple Agreement for Future Equity