Blockchain startup Ripple has announced a new initiative to support projects and companies in the blockchain and digital assets space.

Dubbed “Xpring” (pronounced “spring”), the initiative will “invest in, incubate, acquire and provide grants to companies and projects run by proven entrepreneurs.” With this initiative, Ripple seeks to support entrepreneurs and developers with their XRP-related projects.

“Every entrepreneur will use the digital asset XRP and the XRP Ledger, the open-sourced, decentralized technology behind XRP, to solve their customers’ problems in a transformative way,” according to Ripple’s announcement.

Ethan Beard, former Director of the Facebook Developer Network, will lead the initiative and Ripple’s developer program as the company’s new Senior Vice President.

“Blockchain and digital assets have the ability to solve important problems and XRP – with it’s speed, scalability and demonstrated real-world use case – is a great tool for startups and entrepreneurs to build businesses around,” said Ethan Beard, SVP at Ripple.

Xpring has already offered support to a number of entrepreneurs including Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects; Stefan Thomas, inventor of the Interledger Protocol (ILP), creator of BitcoinJS, co-founder of TxtBear; Thomas McLeod, co-founder and CEO of Omni; and Bart and Brad Stephens, co-founders of Blockchain Capital.

XRP/USD is currently trading at 0.7389 levels at the time of writing (Bitstamp).