In October 2023, we launched the Aquarium, a one-of-a-kind residency program hosting founders from all over the world to build impactful projects leveraging the XRP Ledger. Originally inspired by artist residencies, it provides the time, space, and focus needed for innovators to learn, explore, and build—like the program we wished we had as founders.
The 12-week-long version of the Residency was based full-time in Paris, and each cohort was focused on a specific theme. Over seven cohorts, we tackled real-world use cases related to DeFi, Intellectual Property, Regeneration, Gaming, Decentralized Identity, and at the intersection of AI & Blockchain. We supported individuals from diverse backgrounds and profiles: entrepreneurs, developers, researchers, designers, and field experts. Their goal was to build sustainable projects and to expand our collective knowledge through collaboration. We welcomed 79 residents from 23 countries, including Nigeria, India, Peru, Ukraine, Malaysia, Korea, USA, Turkey, Uganda, Germany, China, Brazil, and more. Despite being early-stage projects, about 70% of them are still active today, including:
- Ekonavi, a collaborative platform mapping for Brazilian farmers to share and be incentivized for their regenerative agriculture efforts.
- Filedgr, digitizes assets and creates verifiable records, helping lower compliance costs, reducing risk, and enabling secure collaboration across enterprises.
- Ushi, a secure platform that enables individuals to share their health journeys and participate in clinical trials with enhanced privacy and authenticity using decentralized identification technology.
- Anodos, a one-stop shop for onchain finance with a suite of next-gen financial solutions powered by blockchain technology.
- Agrify, an AI Agent that helps African farmers improve soil, tell their farming story with a blockchain passport, and access global markets to sell their products.
- Exfil, a Web2→Web3 threat intelligence and attribution platform.
- Blockvault, a Web3 finance platform that empowers XRP holders to earn yield, access lending, and unlock more utility from their digital assets.
- Trustline, a comprehensive solution that protects digital asset service providers and their users from fraud and hacks while enforcing regulatory compliance.
Read more about their stories in the XRPL Community Magazines.
Strengthening the founder journey in the XRPL ecosystem
After two years of learning, experimenting, iterating, and building, the Aquarium is evolving to better support founders’ needs in the growing XRPL ecosystem. We’re introducing a clearer structure to help teams move from early ideas to viable onchain products — a shift that’s even more critical as AI shortens time-to-market cycles.
The Aquarium is transitioning from a residency program for individual builders to a modular incubator supporting teams through defined stages of progress. The new incubator model combines mentorship, structured learning, technical resources, and milestone-based grants to help founders grow with focus and accountability.
The Aquarium Incubator keeps the core elements of a residency - time, space, focus - with a twist. It will run three times a year - winter, spring, fall - in Paris for 9 weeks. Instead of individuals, we are looking to recruit pre-seed/seed startups with at least one cofounder hosted full-time in our shared coliving space. The focus will no longer be one theme per cohort but a common thesis for all, including DeFi, Social Impact, and Infra/Security/AI projects. Through more personalized 1-1 coaching (technical & business), we want to accelerate the integration to the XRPL mainnet - or XRPL EVM Sidechain - and the go-to-market. After the program, startups will be eligible for milestone-based grants. As with the Residency prior, XRPL Commons is not taking equities in exchange for our support. Our long-term objective is to better support projects until they reach viability. We’re looking forward to building together the future of the XRPL ecosystem.
At the core, we believe that the more viable projects are running on the XRPL protocol, the more teams will support, maintain and improve it. It’s a win for the whole ecosystem!
Interested in joining the Aquarium Incubator? Here is what we are looking for:
- Pre-seed/seed projects building on the XRPL (or looking to switch L1)
- A focus on DeFi, Social Impact, RWA tokenization, Infrastructure/Security/AI
- At least one full-time founder (business and/or technical) minimum
- MVP ready
- Available to spend 9 weeks in Paris (Winter, Spring, Fall)
- Open to sharing & collaborating with other founders
It’s a fit? Applications are open for our Spring 26 cohort, apply here!
Ready to give back? Whether you’re an experienced founder, dev, designer, investor or academic, your skills can shape the future of our teams. Join the journey by reaching out to us : aquarium@xrpl-commons.org
