Announcing the Winners Creating Real-World Impact on the XRP Ledger
Tags: xrp, xrpl
Published: 2022-08-09 17:22:07

Exciting news for the XRPL community 🚨In May, Devpost and Ripple teamed up for another hackathon. Aimed at developers interested in building apps to improve lives in the real world using [XRP Ledger (XRPL)](http://www.xrpl.org) SDKs and APIs, entrants competed in [XRPL Hackathon: Creating Real-World Impact](https://xrplimpact.devpost.com/) for a chance to win up to $50K in prizes!

Hackathon judges included University of Cape Town professor Co-Pierre Georg, AnChain.AI Director of Product Francesco Piccoli, Ripple software engineer Mayukha Vadari, X33 Labs’ leader developer Adam Kagy, Ripple developer advocate Marco Neri and myself. 

After a week of tough decisions (and many projects!), we’re excited to announce the hackathon winners and their XRPL projects:

**Grand Prize and Best Economic Use case: [EntryX – Grants Access](https://devpost.com/software/entryx-grants-access)
Created by:** Chris Winkler (Austria)
**What it does:** EntryX is an electronic device that enables everything from a one-time workout at the gym to access to Airbnb/hotel rooms and parking in a parking garage with a single XRP transaction. For around $12 (hardware cost), anyone from consumers to large enterprises can use the XRPL to make their life easier or scale their business. By scanning a QR code, consumers save a lot of time and energy and companies gain customers and lower their costs.
**Inspiration:** Bring companies more customers while making people's lives easier using mechatronic and software engineering. 
**Tech accomplishments:** The device can be used in a cluster of 100 hotel rooms today and as a standalone device in a gym tomorrow–it's built to last for decades, can be reused indefinitely and brings the benefits of the XRPL into the everyday lives of Average Jane and Joe.
**Winnings:** $20,000 in XRP and a 30-minute virtual meeting with Ripple engineers to discuss the project

**2nd Place and Best Sustainability Use Case: [XRP Donation App](https://devpost.com/software/xrp-donation-app)
Created by:** Pak Wai Choong (Malaysia)
**What it does:** This app aims to address the pain of the open-source project maintainers to receive donations for the work they put in for the open-source project. Therefore, we have built a Github Custom action called XRP Donation Action for developers to easily integrate it with their Github workflow. Once added, the custom action will watch for key events such as Pull Request and XRP transfer to update the state (label) accordingly. This will give the contributor and donor visibility of the current donation state.
**Inspiration:** Develop something that is trustless, yet easy for developers to connect with the work they are doing using the power of blockchain to make all payments/donations transparent.
**Tech accomplishments:** The ease of use, low transaction cost, and no third-party commissions for the service make this idea impactful to the open-source community. 
**Winnings:** $10,000 in XRP

**3rd Place: [TheBettermint](https://devpost.com/software/give-xrp-charitable-donation-xapp-fgbapq)
Created by:** Evan Hudson, Julian Kingman, interc0der x, William Mekemson, Pablo Padillo-Anthemides (United States)
**What it does:** TheBettermint’s back-end platform enables automated and programmable NFT services, capable of generating unique tokens representing donations and awarding them when certain conditions are met, such as specific donation amounts, fundraising initiatives and causes, or which of the 17 UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goal categories the donation aligns with. TheBettermint’s open-source codebase and registry enables similar application architectures, providing unparalleled opportunities for synergistic collaboration in the developer space.
**Inspiration:** Develop an open-source tool for the XRPL community capable of making a real-world impact by partnering with the developers of the Give XRP charitable crypto donations app.
**Tech accomplishments:** The automated, programmable NFT minting utility of TheBettermint open-source platform, as well as open-source tools such as the XRPL PayBot, AutoFunder, Address Manager—all of which are potentially useful for the XRPL developer community. 
**Winnings:** $7,500 in XRP

**Best Social Justice Use Case: [Mandla Money SMS Wallet](https://devpost.com/software/mandla-money-sms-wallet)
Created by:** Julian Kanjere (South Africa)
**What it does:** We have developed an SMS wallet that allows users in low-tech/low-resource environments to send and receive digital assets over SMS. In order to do so, we assume the role of a trusted custodian and make use of xrp tags to allow users to send assets to one another using their cellphone numbers as tags. Alternatively, instead of using a recipients cell number, they can make use of the recipient's Mandla ID which is generated when they first register.
**Inspiration:** Provide cheap and quick distribution of relief aid to disaster victims, as well as distribution of social welfare and everyday transacting in communities that are otherwise excluded from the digital economy. It can even be used for cross-border remittance using a XRP or a stablecoin.
**Tech accomplishments:** The ability to send and receive XRP asset over SMS using a cell number or a system generated user ID (a Mandla ID); send and receive the FOO asset (issued asset) over SMS; and ultimately send and receive the [XAGO.ZAR](https://testnet.xrpl.org/accounts/rKLVzfiwLQPGjwd8m5t3b3qSSymwVF1g4z) stablecoin in our wallet. 
**Winnings:** $2,500 in XRP

Congratulations to the winners and the more than 400 developers from 20+ countries who participated in this hackathon! Your incredible work and ideas contribute to solving real-world problems, including supporting underrepresented groups and helping social good causes with XRPL technologies. 
To learn more about developing on the XRPL, visit the tutorials page on XRPL.org to start building today.