For awhile now, Smealum (a fairly popular 3DS hacker) has been working on a homebrew loader for the 3DS. He's found an exploit in a particular game that works on firmwares 4.5 to 8.1 (as of writing this). He'll be releasing the homebrew loader soon, but it does require owning a specific game. This game is available in physical retail or digital over on the eShop. As for that game? He has yet to release the name of the game but it'll be sometime this week. This particular exploit is known as a usermode exploit, which means it has limited access, and cannot lead to piracy (well, other than the slight possible piracy from emulating older consoles).
According to his twitter, he's already gotten a SNES emulator to run on the 3DS. This opens up a huge door to the 3DS scene, mostly for emulators taking advantage of the 3DS's hardware over using standard DS flashcarts and emulating with an onboard CPU.
I'd keep an eye out on his twitter, and I'll post back once the name of the game is announced.
https://twitter.com/smealumWhat do you guys think about it? Anyone else excited about homebrew reaching the 3DS? It's been awhile since a decent exploit's been found. At least since the 4.xx firmware era, which did lead to piracy.