In September 2021, enterprise blockchain and crypto solutions company Ripple launched the Ripple Creator Fund, a $250 million initiative committed to providing creators with the financial, creative and technical support needed to create nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and other tokenization projects on the XRP Ledger.
On Oct. 18, Ripple disclosed the second wave of creators to receive funding for their NFT projects through Ripple’s Creator Fund. This round of funding was awarded to independent creators focused on building functional use cases in gaming and the Metaverse, as well as music and media on the XRP Ledger. This round of recipients included companies like 9Level9 Productions, Anifie, Capital Block, NFT Avatar Maker, NFT Master, SYFR Projects and ThinkingCrypto.
Speaking with Cointelegraph, Markus Infanger, vice president of RippleX Growth, shared that Ripple chose projects that brought life to tokenization use cases — in particular, projects that provide functional utility, such as access rights, ticketing and phygital items. According to the vice president, Ripple looked for ideas, teams and visions that best aligned with bringing innovation and creativity to NFTs that go beyond digital art.
Infanger also shared that, although Ripple’s Creator Fund is open to all types of NFT projects, each wave of funding has a theme. He shared:
“This wave is focused on entertainment and media, specifically music. We want to provide support to indie creators with the technical, financial, and co-marketing support necessary to engage with their communities through NFTs.”
Infanger confirmed that Ripple’s Creator Fund has received over 4,000 applicants to date.
Ripple is investing $250 million in creators within the Web3 Industry because it believes that a tokenized future can transform the creator economy, create new business models and deepen creators’ relationships with their communities.
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The vice president also shared that Ripple is prioritizing NFT projects because “We see a tokenized future quickly becoming reality. In fact, the World Economic Forum projects that 10% of the world’s GDP will be tokenized by 2027—just five short years from now!” He added that Ripple’s Creator Fund can help accelerate adoption by attracting a broader community of creators to participate in and benefit from NFTs.
He said Ripple has taken a “no smart contract needed” approach to make it easier and faster for any developer to access all essential NFT functionality natively on the XRP Ledger through basic API calls, including minting, burning, exchanging and assigning royalties.
Ripple hopes to position the XRP Ledger as a premier platform for minting and managing NFTs, and a place where creators and developers can continue to explore utility in NFTs through use cases such as asset ownership and interactive experiences that will help bring about a tokenized future.
Interest in Ripple’s Creator Fund comes around the same time that the company is engaged in a legal battle with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). On Sept. 29, Cointelegraph reported that Ripple Labs had scored a victory in its continuing legal battle with the SEC after U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres ordered the release of documents written by former SEC Corporation Finance Division director William Hinman. The documents relate predominantly to a speech Hinman delivered at the Yahoo Finance All Markets Summit in June 2018.