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.
Top comments (0)