Crypto Fundraising for Ukraine (Updated)
Crypto Fundraising for Ukraine (Updated)
Using Web3 tools crypto community raises millions of dollars in donation
Updated March 21, 2022
The crypto community has been quick to mobilize support for Ukraine after Russia invaded the country on Feb 24th. A number of volunteer driven initiatives cropped up leveraging web3 tools to organize, collect and manage crypto donations. To date over $100 million have been raised in crypto. The government of Ukraine Crypto Fund has raised over $60M. Initially the government had put out a plea for crypto donations on Twitter by sharing wallet addresses. With the help of Aid For Ukraine (a collective of crypto companies) they now have an official website with a tracker showing funds raised
Ukraine government’s official Twitter handle put out a plea for crypto donations soon after Russia invaded the country
Initially Ukraine Government was accepting donations only in BTC, ETH and USDT but in response to the enthusiasm from the larger crypto community to donate, the Ukraine government is now accepting donations in many other cryptocurrencies
Unchain.fund, a crypto fundraising campaign was set-up by folks from the blockchain community to support humanitarian needs of Ukrainians. The campaign organizers set up a multi signature wallet as a way to build trust in managing the donations. Unchain.Fund is raising money for a number of charities in Ukraine who are local and directly involved in providing relief. To date the fund has raised over $6M.
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova banded with members of the crypto community to start a decentralized autonomous organization called Ukraine DAO. The DAO is mobilizing donations by auctioning an NFT of the Ukrainian Flag through party bid (people can bid for NFT as a group thus encouraging contributions of every size) and also accepting direct donations at UkraineDAO.eth. The group has raised over $6.5M.
An NFT collection called RELI3F was put together by NFT promoter Andrew Wang collaborating with over 30 influential NFT creators who donated their art to fundraise for Ukraine. The collection was quickly sold out raising over $1M in 30 seconds, committing 100% of the funds from the primary sale of the collection towards Ukraine.
Endaomonet a platform for donating crypto assets to nonprofits started a community fund called, Support Ukrainian Sovereignty. They have identified 7 nonprofit organizations in Ukraine to whom they’ll channel the funds.
Jack Butcher, Founder of Visualize Value and a prominent name in the NFT space created a collection of 1000 NFTs called, Sovereign donating all proceeds to Endaoment’s Ukraine Sovereignty Fund.
Binance a cryptocurrency exchange donated $10 million to help with the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and also started a crypto crowdfunding campaign.
Time magazine’s web3 community initiative launched an NFT collection called Make Art Not War directing 100% funds raised from the sale of NFTs to relief efforts in Ukraine. The art pieces for the collection has been donated by 59 TIMEPiece artists and are taking zero royalties from primary and secondary sales to direct as much funds possible to Ukraine.
Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange is distributing over $10 million directly to affected clients. Kraken clients who created an account from Ukraine prior to March 9, 2022 will be eligible to receive $1,000 in bitcoin.
The Bored Ape Yacht Club that launched the coveted collection of 1000 Bored Ape NFTs donated $1million to Ukraine government.
The response from the crypto community has been phenomenal. It’s been great to see how the community quickly self organized online to raise funds and made use of web3 technologies designed to facilitate online collaboration, trust and transparency in fund management.