Ripple has unveiled a $5 million expansion of its University Blockchain Research Initiative (UBRI) across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to accelerate blockchain innovation and academic development. The funding will establish new partnerships in Taiwan and Australia while reinforcing existing collaborations in South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.
Senior Vice President Eric van Miltenburg emphasized APAC’s strategic importance as a fintech and blockchain innovation hub. The initiative targets critical research domains including blockchain scalability, privacy protocols, cryptographic security, decentralized finance (DeFi), and artificial intelligence integration with the XRP Ledger.
New academic alliances include Taiwan’s National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) and Australia’s Victoria University. These partnerships aim to advance scholarly research and technical exploration of distributed ledger technology, strengthening Ripple’s educational footprint across the region.