DEV Community: Emma Nasseri

UBRI Student Builder Residency Cohort 3.0: A New Frontier for High-Impact XRPL Innovation

Emma Nasseri — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 14:48:06 +0000

This spring marked Cohort 3.0 of the XRPL Student Builder Residency (SBR), a program run by Ripple's University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) that supports the development of the next generation of blockchain developers through global university partnerships.

SBR 3.0 brought together an elite cohort of student builders from universities around the world to imagine, build, and ship new use cases on the XRP Ledger.

The 14 selected students built leveraging Smart Escrows (XLS-100), Ripple’s RLUSD stablecoin, interoperability primitives, the new Lending Protocol (XLS-66), and more.

Project Focus

From lending protocols to cross-border payment rails, here's what the cohort shipped:

Atlas (Sankara Wigneswaran, ESILV Paris): An overcollateralized lending protocol built on the XRP Ledger.

Cascrow (Paul Wagner & Jan-Niklas Möller, EBS University): An AI-powered verification and escrow platform on XRPL that automates RLUSD payouts once milestone proof is validated.

ShipSure (Hassene Ezzeddine, ETH Zurich): A trustless cross-chain escrow platform that automatically releases XRP payments to sellers only when real-world FedEx delivery is cryptographically verified on-chain via Flare's Data Connector.

Returnee (Sejal Jain, Cornell Tech): A smart package drop-off box for apartment buildings that gives residents an instant refund the moment the courier verifies their return.

Zipp (Antonio Meneses, IE Madrid): Automates cross-border supplier payments for Latin American importers using AI invoice extraction and XRPL settlement.

TerraSwap (Youssef Jeddi, EPFL-ETHZ): A stablecoin DEX on XRPL where compliance is enforced at the protocol level through credential-gated Permissioned Domains.

Verix (Sumit Shinde, National University of Singapore): A trustless task settlement for AI agents.

Sidiq - صِدِّيق (Madiha Zafar, University of Birmingham): A decentralized interest-free lending protocol on the XRP Ledger, giving underserved communities access to Qard Hasan microloans.

UniPay (Junaid Oozeerally, NYU Abu Dhabi): A blockchain-based payment and escrow platform on XRPL that enables students across the world to securely and instantly access international educational services.

PayTrace (Ranjana K. Kodandaraman, University of Birmingham): A real-time cross-border payment intelligence layer for SMEs that provides end-to-end settlement visibility and invoice matching powered by the XRP Ledger.

DropIn (Aaron Zheng, University of Pittsburgh): A per-article micropayment platform where readers pay cents to unlock individual articles instead of committing to monthly subscriptions. Publishers set their own prices and receive instant payments directly via the XRPL.

SafiPoints (Enock Mecheo, NYU Abu Dhabi): A blockchain-powered loyalty platform where restaurants issue and redeem verifiable loyalty tokens on the XRP Ledger, and customers earn and claim rewards via SMS with no app download and no crypto knowledge required.

Freeway (Irene del Carmen Gracia Perez, IE University): A turnkey API gateway that lets developers monetize their endpoints using XRP prepaid credits.

Beyond the Code: What Four Weeks can Do

Most students came in as XRPL beginners. Four weeks later, nearly all were shipping independently on-chain. According to self-assessments, the students’ developer skills increased by an average of 52% and their knowledge of blockchain technology grew 98%.

Beyond the numbers, the students shared deeper wins and takeaways. In their own words:

"Made my first (and not last) project on XRPL." — Youssef

"Built a much stronger introduction to blockchain through a real end-to-end product." — Sejal

"Met with incredibly successful and driven people. It motivated me to work harder and become a better developer." — Junaid

92% of participants said they were proud of what they accomplished throughout the residency, and almost all are sure they’ll continue building. Nearly every student noted they hope to support the program in the future through peer mentorship as it continues to grow and create new opportunities for others.

Beyond generating creative XRPL projects or new use cases, the Student Builder Residency is about supporting young builders developing cutting-edge technology while paving the paths for others to follow them.

Looking To The Future

Across three cohorts, the Student Builder Residency has produced 40+ high-quality projects built on the XRP Ledger, shipped by students from 28 universities across the globe.

The next generation of developers is already building solutions for the future of financial technology. Between classes and exams, they’ve been hard at work ideating, innovating, and iterating infrastructure for the internet of value.

This program could not have been possible without the dedicated mentors Tushar Pardhe (WellArrive), Modupe Diyaolu (meCash), Ashley Rho (Ripple), Sree Sanakkayala (CoverMax), Dhruv Shah (Flare), Filip Koprivec (Flare), and Satyam Singh.

We are especially grateful for the support of this year’s peer mentors and program alumni Stan Stelcher (SBR 1.0), Alex Salsali (SBR 2.0), and Nischay Rawal (SBR 2.0) who have been integral in shaping the culture and community of the Student Builder Residency across all three cohorts.

Follow Ripple (LinkedIn, X) on social media for future updates!

Student Builders Push XRPL Innovation Forward at Residency 2.0

Emma Nasseri — Tue, 26 Aug 2025 14:18:48 +0000

This week, Cohort 2.0 of the XRPL Student Builder Residency wrapped up with an energetic Demo Day in New York City.

Over the last four weeks, 18 student builders from leading universities around the world built projects on the XRP Ledger, experimenting with features like Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), Multi-Purpose Tokens (MPTs), RLUSD, and more. The residency program and demo day were hosted by Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) which supports a diverse portfolio of blockchain research, technical development, and innovation at universities around the world.

Along the way, student builders were supported by mentors with experience across the XRPL community, Ripple, Meta, Kraken, and Coinbase. The result? A showcase of projects spanning DeFi, tokenization, identity, infrastructure, and real-world financial applications.

Highlights from Cohort 2.0

ContextChain – Turning AI into NFTs

Socrates Osorio (UC Berkeley) built ContextChain, a system that turns every AI prompt, dataset, and fine-tune into an XRPL NFT with authorship, license, and usage logs. This enables automatic royalty splits and tamper-proof compliance audits.

“I wanted to explore how blockchain could secure the provenance of AI training data. XRPL’s lightweight tokenization features made this vision possible.”

X-Card – RWA Tokenization for Lending & Trading

Song Sheng & Peisong Hao (UC Berkeley) created X-Card, a platform for tokenizing real-world assets. By leveraging XRPL’s DEX and cross-chain tech, X-Card enables secure lending, trading, and liquidity in global markets.

XRPLend++ – AI-Powered Credit Risk Scoring

Siya Jariwala (Purdue University) introduced XRPLend++, a DeFi protocol using AI-driven on-chain credit risk scoring to enable capital-efficient, undercollateralized lending.

“The opportunity to combine XRPL’s speed and cost-efficiency with new forms of lending was eye-opening. We’re building something that could expand access to capital globally.”

Axon Protocol – Optimizing Consensus Across Regions

Shashank Joshi (University of Waterloo) worked on Axon Protocol, an infrastructure project focused on adaptive consensus pipelines and predictive membership algorithms to improve XRPL throughput across geographic regions.

“I’m passionate about building scalable, secure blockchain systems that can handle real-world demands. The residency gave me the space to bring academic research into a practical XRPL use case.”

RePawn – Gold-Pawn on the Ledger

Si Hui (Ariel) Ong (National University of Singapore) led RePawn, the first gold pawn shop on XRPL. With prior experience building invoice financing and student debt refinancing platforms, she explored how XRPL Hooks could power programmable finance and compliance-driven wallet automation.

Verge – Visual Prediction Markets

Hrishabh Ayush (Cornell University) built Verge, a visual prediction market where insights earn rewards.

“I wanted to better understand XRPL’s tech stack and its tradeoffs. Prediction markets felt like a fun and meaningful way to test this.”

Certifiable Credentials – Diplomas on XRPL

Charlie Doherty (University of Kansas) created Certifiable Credentials, a project for issuing academic diplomas and certificates directly on-chain.

BountyX – GitHub Issues Meet XRP Payments

Agrim Jaimini (Cornell University) built BountyX, a decentralized platform that pays developers in XRP for completing verified GitHub issues, using secure escrow to protect both sides.

vir.l – Social Media Meets User Investments

Caleb Hite (University of Kansas) launched vir.l, a social media app where users create videos and make revenue from user investments.

XRPLTrades – Incentive-Aligned Trading Education

Sophie Xu (University of Pennsylvania) presented XRPLTrades, an educational dApp that uses XRPL’s escrow and batch payout features to reward improved trader performance.

Kleo – A Decentralized World Map for Real-Time Stories

Dan Truong (UT Austin) introduced Kleo, a decentralized world map for real-time, uncensored stories, combining his passion for social transparency with XRPL’s messaging potential.

Eunoia Atlas – Smarter Donor Intelligence
Alex Salsali (University of Waterloo) built Eunoia Atlas, the world’s first global donor intelligence network on XRPL, designed to give charities transparency without compromising privacy.

Libreprop – Real Estate, Simplified

Natasha Piedrabuena (Manhattan University) created Libreprop, a Web3 platform for buying, selling, and renting property in a simple and transparent way.

Seeker-PL – Safer Token Trustlines

Haonan Yan (Carnegie Mellon University) built Seeker-PL, an AI-powered Chrome extension that warns XRPL users whether a token is safe before creating a trustline, preventing scams before they happen.

XRP-Actions – Automating Corporate Events

Henry Trinh (Harvey Mudd College) presented XRP-Actions, a tool for companies to transparently announce corporate actions (like dividends or splits) and distribute payouts directly on XRPL.

MicroStream – Trustless Micro-Subscriptions

Shail Shah (Stevens Institute of Technology) built MicroStream, a subscription platform using XRPL + Xumm Wallet to deliver ultra-low fee recurring payments and credential-based access.

Looking Ahead

The XRPL Student Builder Residency shows how quickly the next generation of developers can take core XRPL features like DEX, NFTs, Hooks, MPTs, RLUSD, and apply them to real-world problems.

From tokenized gold pawn shops to GitHub bounties and decentralized prediction markets, these builders are pushing XRPL beyond payments and into the broader landscape of programmable finance, compliance, and social applications.

Agrim Jaimini shared what he was proudest of:

“I made my first on-chain project! This was genuinely really fun and I was glad to be able to pursue it with the guidance and support of my mentors and the program leaders.”

Residency 2.0 built on the foundation of the first cohort, and it’s clear each round expands what’s possible. As XRPL continues to evolve, programs like this provide the spark for the ecosystem’s next wave of innovation.

Stay tuned for details on the next cohort and ways to get involved.