Ripple UDAX Brazil: 9 Startups, 83% Product Maturity Growth, 44K Onchain Transactions

Ripple's University Digital Asset Xcelerator (UDAX) made its Brazilian debut through a partnership with Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) and the University of California at Berkeley, graduating nine startups building on the XRP Ledger with measurable commercial and technical progress. The eight-week program concluded with a Demo Day at FGV's campus, drawing approximately 100 participants including investors, academics, and blockchain industry representatives.

Program Results by the Numbers

Participants reported an average 83% increase in product maturity over the eight-week cohort — the metric Ripple used to capture technical readiness for market. Investment readiness grew by 53% on average, and founders reported a 33% increase in confidence in their business models. Average growth in active users or paying customers was 15%.

UDAX Brazil Cohort — Key Metrics

Duration: 8 weeks | Startups: 9 | Demo Day attendees: ~100

Avg product maturity increase: 83%

Avg investment readiness growth: 53%

Avg business model confidence growth: 33%

Avg active user/customer growth: 15%

Onchain transactions generated (Levery cohort alone): 44,000+

Standout Startups

Levery — led by Cristiano Policarpo and Ingrid Gomes Launched a sandbox environment for financial institutions to test RLUSD stablecoin liquidity, permissioned pools, institutional wallets, swaps, and tokenized asset infrastructure on the XRP Ledger. Eight institutions participated; more than 44,000 on-chain transactions were generated. Levery grew its client base from seven to twelve organizations during the eight-week program.

VS1 Finance — founded by Nikoloz Beradze and Mikheil Didebulidze Building corporate bond tokenization infrastructure on XRPL within central bank-supervised frameworks, initially in Georgia with expansion planned into Central Asia and the Gulf region — a market with approximately $100 billion in annual bond issuance. VS1 was cited in Messari's State of XRP Q1 2026 report among early fixed-income tokenization platforms on XRPL. The company has completed its first central bank-approved platform demo and is targeting its first regulated RWA tokenized issuance for Q3 2026.

Kapitale — founded by Anderson Pereira Developing receivables tokenization infrastructure on XRPL, focused on increasing transparency and programmability in Brazil's receivables financing sector.

BillPay — led by Glaucio Silva, Daniel Franco, and Rosangela Doehl Repositioned during the program from an international payments solution to specialized infrastructure for collection and settlement between Brazil and Paraguay, validating its strategy for that payment corridor and strengthening its partner network.

The Academic Partnership Behind It

UDAX is an extension of Ripple's University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI), which partners with universities globally to connect academic research with commercial blockchain development. The Brazilian edition added FGV Center for Digital Finance professors Jéfferson Colombo and Fernando Chague alongside USP Professors Marcos Simplício and Leandro Maciel as mentors, with support from FGV EESP, FGV Ventures, and FGV Crypto.

"Academic research on digital assets has been moving slower than the market it studies. UDAX closes that gap by putting our faculty and Brazil's most promising founders in the same room to turn rigorous research into real companies," said Jéfferson Colombo, Director of FGV Digital Finance, in remarks from Ripple's blog.

Why Brazil, Why Now

Brazil is among the largest crypto markets in Latin America by volume and has taken an active regulatory posture on digital assets — the central bank has been running a digital currency pilot (Drex), and the receivables financing market that Kapitale targets is a proven high-volume sector where tokenization offers immediate efficiency gains. Ripple's decision to launch UDAX here first in Latin America reflects the region's combination of regulatory openness and builder density.

VS1's Q3 2026 regulated RWA issuance, if completed on schedule, would represent one of the earlier live deployments of central bank-supervised tokenized bonds on XRPL — meaningful validation for OnRampDLT-style issuance infrastructure targeting similar markets.

Source: Ripple official blog (ripple.com/insights), July 13, 2026. Messari State of XRP Q1 2026.