Nexus

Inspiration

Travel is often a fight or flight experience. We’ve all heard personal stories of people stranded in a foreign city at 2:00 AM because a flight was canceled and their card was declined, or faced with technological complications. Current systems are reactive, so they force the traveler to handle the crisis alone. We wanted to build a proactive system where Lockton's support isn't just a phone number, but a sovereign digital guardian that helps you Plan -> Approve -> Travel -> Handle Issues -> Return.

What it does

Nexus is an AI and XRPL-powered travel assistant that manages a corporate budget and identity on-chain.

-Pays on-chain using XRPL Payments with embedded Memo fields that store city, booking type, and booking ID directly on the ledger, making every transaction a self-documenting, tamper-proof receipt

-Verifies identity using XLS-40 Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Presentations no centralized authentication required

-Enforces corporate spending policy through XRPL Hooks that reject out-of-policy transactions at the protocol level before they settle

-Issues NFT destination badges on Solana Devnet of one unique SPL Token per city visited, permanently recording the traveler's itinerary on a second chain

-Emergency travel funding via XLS-66 LoanSet borrowing against an XLS-65 Single Asset Vault when the travel budget runs short

How we built it

-Frontend: React Native + Unity

-Backend: FastAPI + async Python, xrpl-py 4.x, solana-py

-Voice: ElevenLabs STT, Conversational AI with webhook tools connected to local tunnel

-XRPL: XLS-40 DID/VP identity, XLS-65 Single Asset Vault, XLS-66 LoanSet, Hooks for policy, Payment with Memo fields for on-chain booking receipts

-Solana: SPL Token as NFT receipt per destination city, devnet airdrop for zero-config demo

-Tunnel: localtunnel (basically a way to connect the endpoint of Python-backed to ElevenLabs for getting context of travel plans) for ElevenLabs webhook connectivity during demo

Challenges we ran into

We explored creating in Meta Quest 2 for the first time, which required creating an entire 3d world in Unity, which was entirely manual, so Claude couldn't help ):

Another hurdle was the XLS-65/66 amendments. These features are very new, so getting devnet for the lending protocol and trying to figure out how to link the Python script was difficult

Keeping the mobile dashboard in sync with live XRPL transaction state was hard to integrate.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Moving from a simple voice command to a validated on-chain loan in under two seconds.

Creating a react native app was new for us, but we managed to create and integrate APIs for maps, hotels, and flights.

Creating a 3d world with some functional elements to visualize the travelling tracking experience.

Implementing a Verifiable Presentation (VP) flow that allows a hotel to verify a traveler's status without the traveler ever providing their name or passport to the backend.

Cross-Chain Orchestration: Successfully bridging the stability of the XRPL with the high-velocity rewards of Solana.

What we learned

Each person in our team targeted a specific aspect of the project, learning about creating in Unity, XRPL integration, and exploring react native for the first time.

-XRPL's amendment ecosystem (XLS-40/65/66) is production-ready and underexplored — Hooks give programmable policy without smart contract overhead

-Combining two chains (XRPL for payments/identity, Solana for NFT receipts) creates complementary strengths

-ElevenLabs Conversational AI's webhook model is powerful but tricky to use but the outcome of that is very satisfying.