Ripple Pushes for Dominance on XRP Ledger, Launches ‘Innovation Challenge’

Ripple, the company behind the cryptocurrency XRP and the XRP Ledger (XRPL), has launched an innovation challenge to encourage the development of XRPL apps for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). 

Entrants will need to either build a new solution or update an existing solution that uses CBDC tech and can be run on the XRP Ledger. 

Submissions for the challenge will be accepted from June 27 until August 25, with the winners announced on September 8 set to share in US$47,000 in prizes.

Winners of the challenge will then be invited to the Ripple CBDC Innovate Winners Only Event, which has a prize pool of US$150,000.

Challenge to Cover Three Categories

The innovation challenge will accept entries in three categories each with their own separate judging criteria: interoperability, retail-facing, and financial inclusion:

• The interoperability category encourages entrants to build a solution that enables an XRPL-based CBDC to bridge with other digital assets, such as other CBDCs, NFTs and stablecoins.
• The retail-facing category requires entrants to build an interface to work with a CBDC in a “hip and fashionable way”, which is accessible enough for any human to interact with.
• The financial inclusion category instructs entrants to build a solution that can “leverage the benefits of a CBDC” to bring banking services to underserved populations.

Ripple Looking to Secure Dominant CBDC Position

Ripple has been known primarily for its cross-border payment solutions and on-demand liquidity, but recently it has also been making a push into the CBDC space. In addition to this CBDC-focused innovation challenge, last year the government of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan enlisted Ripple to pilot a CBDC running on the XRPL, and the Pacific island nation of Palau also partnered with Ripple to create an XRPL-based government-backed stablecoin.

In related news, earlier this year Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen joined forces with Greenpeace in a US$5 million campaign to encourage Bitcoin to abandon its proof-of-work consensus mechanism and transition to a more energy-efficient system such as proof-of-stake.