New year, new NFTs! To kick off 2022, RippleX teamed up with Devpost to host a global hackathon on NFT-Devnet from January 31 through March 14 of this year.

We invited interested developers to build functional (i.e. programmable) NFTs on the XRP Ledger (XRPL) — a decentralized, permissional, open-source blockchain — to explore creative, original use cases that will not only expand real-world NFT utility, but also be leveraged to solve real-world problems across industries.

The XRPL was the first-ever blockchain to allow the tokenization of assets. This, in combination with its built-in decentralized exchange (DEX), makes it ideal for developers that want to bring their ideas to life. With more than 400 participants and $50,000 in prizes, the first XRPL hackathon of 2022 has set the bar pretty high.

Hackathon judges included James Sun, founder and CEO of MintNFT, and Mo Morsi, founder and CEO of Dev Null Productions. In-house judges included Nik Bougalis, Director of Software Engineering at Ripple; Jazzi Cooper, Senior Product Manager of RippleX; and myself as Ripple’s Tech Community Liaison.

The five of us wrapped up judging last week, and we’re thrilled to announce the winners and their innovative projects. Drumroll, please…

Grand Prize & Best Industry Use Case: “ERC721 to XLS20 Decentralized NFT Bridge”
Created by Adam Kagy (United States)
What it does: Bridges NFTs from Ethereum-based chains with the ERC721 standard over to the XLS20 standard on the XRPL
Inspiration: To create an interoperable tool to advance NFTs on the nearly frictionless XRPL
Tech accomplishments: Superior end-user experience, multi-sig issuer for security, extending the RippleDotNet open source C# library for NFT transactions, creating a secure link between ETH and the XRPL
Winnings: $22,500 in XRP + virtual meeting with Ripple engineers to discuss the project

2nd Place: “AutoML.NFT”
Created by Gurdal Ertek, Albert Vo, Orhun Özer, oğuzhan özer (UAE)
What it does: A Machine Learning as a Service (MLaaS) platform to interactively and dynamically generate Machine Learning (ML) report for uploaded data files and issue NFT tokens on the Ledger as certificate of ownership
Inspiration: Enabling end-users in business, industry, government and NGO to run AutoML easily, accept crypto payments, and issue NFT certificates of ownership
Tech accomplishments: Integrating smart contracts, marketplace, ML engine and other features in a single working dApp.
Winnings: $10,000 in XRP

3rd Place & Best Entertainment Use Case: “XRSpace”
Created by Yatin Jadav (India)
What it does: A metaverse platform with pre-built, editable templates powered by web3
Inspiration: Decreasing existing metaverse limitations like cost, invite-only events, slow on-chain payment time
Tech accomplishments: First token-gated web3 platform for deploying a metaverse, first template-based metaverse platform, supports DeFi, NFTs and DAOs
Winnings: $10,000 in XRP

Popular Choice + First Eligible: “MonnoLiza Al Ritratto di Monna Lisa del Giocondo 2022”
Created by Oleh Olegeek and X1007 X (Ukraine)
What it does: Converts AI interpretations of real art into a unique virtual format
Inspiration: The game “Detroit Android City” in which a robot with AI tries to draw art
Tech accomplishments: Gathering 10,126 pictures of AI-interpreted Mona Lisas using different GPUs
Winnings: $3,500 in XRP

Other First Eligible Winners:
“Compound-minted XRPL bcdomaine{.cropto. nft} MATIC IFPS NFT” - David Harness (United States)
“TKTZ - An event ticketing solution” - Mark Sean (United States)
“Mintagram” - interc0der x (United States)
“Vortex” - Juan Carlos Garcia, Andrea Chávez, Jaime Chávez (El Salvador)

Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to everyone who participated!

To learn more about developing NFTs on the XRPL, check out the XRPL Foundation’s documentation and tutorials to get started building today.