UDAX Launches Officially After Six-Week Pilot at Berkeley
UDAX just flipped the switch. The decentralized exchange platform, fresh from a six-week pilot at UC Berkeley, is now live for the public. No more sandbox—this is the mainnet.
The Berkeley Beta: A Controlled Burn
For over a month, a select cohort of Berkeley students and researchers stress-tested the platform. They weren't just trading testnet tokens; they were probing the protocol's limits, from its novel order-matching engine to its on-chain settlement layer. The pilot wasn't about hype—it was about breaking things before real money got involved.
Architecture Built for the Next Wave
UDAX sidesteps the traditional custodian model. Assets never leave user-controlled wallets, and trades settle directly on-chain. It cuts out the intermediary, aiming for a system that's transparent by design and resistant to the single points of failure that plague legacy finance. Think of it as a direct challenge to the 'trust us' black boxes running Wall Street's back-end.
A Calculated Debut in a Skeptical Market
The launch comes at a time when the crypto sector craves substance over speculation. UDAX's academic grounding is its sharpest differentiator—a deliberate move to distance itself from the 'move fast and break things' startups that left a trail of broken wallets. It's a platform built by quants, not just marketers. Of course, in an industry where even the most elegant code can't always fix human greed, the real test begins now. Let's see if the traders care as much about the Merkle trees as the money.
UDAX debuts after a six-week pilot cohort at Berkeley
According to Ripple, the first iteration of UDAX launched in fall 2025 as a pilot cohort hosted at UC Berkeley. The program was a product of a collaboration between Ripple engineers and a multidisciplinary group of Berkeley faculty and lecturers.
Over six intensive weeks, nine startups worked alongside mentors to develop their concepts into solutions for market deployment. The program began with a launch summit held in Berkeley, where founders were introduced to the XRP Ledger’s architecture and the Ripple ecosystem.
It all concluded with a closing summit and demo day at Ripple’s San Francisco headquarters, featuring words of encouragement from Ripple co-founder Chris Larsen and CTO Emeritus David Schwartz, placing the startups in front of XRP Ledger developers, Ripple executives, and representatives from 13 venture capital firms.
One of the several startups involved in the program is WaveTip. This platform provides instant tips for Twitch streamers, which completed its transition to the XRP Ledger Mainnet during the accelerator and is now available through the Chrome Web Store.
X-Card, another startup that converts physical collectibles into liquid digital assets, onboarded more than $1.5 million in inventory during the six-week period. The team also secured partnerships with merchant communities and thousands of collectors, according to program disclosures.
UDAX helped BlockBima, which is developing automated climate-risk microinsurance products for vulnerable communities, triple its active user base. The teams worked with mentors, including Andrea Barrica, to sharpen their pitches enough that they could appeal to investors.
Ripple reported that participating teams hit an average 67% increase in product maturity and a 92% average increase in fundraising confidence after the program.
Moreover, the accelerator also supported institutional finance and cross-border capital Flow projects like CRX Digital Assets, which used UDAX for exporting Brazilian credit products and increased its tokenized asset volume from $39 million to $58 million.
Stablecoin-based financial services Blockroll launched stablecoin-backed virtual cards for African freelancers in global markets.
“Blockroll will use RLUSD as the institutionally accepted stablecoins to streamline remittance settlements from Sub-Saharan Africa’s leading source, and enable financial access use cases such as stablecoin-backed debit cards that work globally.” Sadiq Isiaka, Blackroll, CEO commented. “This also unlocks world-class wealth-building opportunities for African users, including stablecoin yields and tokenized US stocks.”
Other teams addressed infrastructure and compliance challenges. WellArrive refined its platform into a dual-sided marketplace model after working with legal and corporate affairs mentors. Spout finalized a complex equity tokenization model and secured meetings with venture capital firms, while Mintara Labs worked to validate its go-to-market strategy for crypto-bank insurance.
UC Berkeley and Ripple’s partnership grows
The California University, Berkeley’s College of Engineering announced the launch of a new Center for Digital Assets in conjunction with Ripple Labs last October, Cryptopolitan reported. At the time, UCB stated that the research center WOULD be used to study how blockchain and digital twin technologies can capture, value, verify, and exchange physical assets in digital form.
Ripple’s University Blockchain Research Initiative contributed $1.3 million in Ripple USD, the company’s US dollar-backed stablecoin. A 2025 report from the International Data Corporation estimates that worldwide data volumes will reach 175 zettabytes, with some projections mentioning 181 zettabytes.
“Digital content has been part of our human experience and economic systems for decades,” said Tarek Zohdi, associate dean for research at Berkeley Engineering and the center’s faculty director. “The overall mission of the center is to foster pioneering research, education, innovation, and entrepreneurship within the broader digital asset technology landscape.”
UCB engineers are also studying the “twinning” of physical assets, making replicas that can be analyzed, tested, and assigned present and future value to be traded onchain.
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