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The Cryptonomist interviewed David Bchiri of XRPL Commons during the APEX Developer Summit organized by the Ripple ecosystem in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago.
What’s XRPL Commons role in the Ripple ecosystem?
We are a foundation incorporated in Paris. We launched 6 months ago, in April with this idea of having a physical space to become a hub for developers and entrepreneurs. We have 3 pillars we focus on: education so spreading the word about the Ripple ecosystem, corporate adoption which is my vision for mainstream adoption and organizing the community. We are a team of eight to run this program from Paris and then the goal is to replicate it in other regions. In education we do it in different ways.
First of all we have a free classroom in our HQ so we host training about developing. Every class can also be found online. We also do partnerships with universities. According to a report, in France by 2025 there is gonna be a skill gap in the blockchain space of about 10000 people so there are incentives for universities to train on these skill sets. Our idea is to train teachers so they can teach.
What about improving Ripple adoption?
On the adoption part we have someone in charge of the corporate education department for opening conversations with executives like CEOs, CFOs, CTOs to turn the noise down around NFTs and cryptos and check what they can really expect from the blockchain as a company. Usually they want to use the blockchain to recreate a layer of trust. We have conversations with very different industries from food companies to banks and insurances. We have more plans with hedge funds, etc. Our plan is not to be focused on the financial sector only.
Every brand that has value in authenticating where a product comes from like champagne, what they are selling is really the fact that it comes from one place, so it’s important for them to track where the product comes from. Or it’s important to track products on the secondary market to understand if the product is original and how to have royalties. These companies have already invested in the blockchain industry with someone internally who educates the company. 80% of their job is to educate before having a product.
How are you helping the community?
We are building a community but it already exists. It has a culture, some codes. It’s mainly composed by core developers that are building on the protocol or that see a benefit in using the XRP ledger. We are trying to create a sense of belonging. We have a few projects and we want to address the whole value chain for the developers. There are few supporting programs for developers like the XRPL grant program or the XRPL accelerator.
We’ve just launched the Aquarium: it’s a program of 12 people for 12 weeks. We host them in our HQ in Paris to help them to turn their ideas into prototypes. Then they can apply for the grant program. One of the programs will be on DeFi for developers to create new dApps on XRPL. Also, the public institution in France that prints passports and IDs is studying blockchain and so I think it’s a good time to be focused also on decentralized ID solutions.