The cryptosphere has finally got the much-needed global attention in the Ukraine Russia war. Many blockchain networks, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have come forward to support the war efforts of the Ukrainian government.
While supporting a good cause, the NFT and crypto industry is also becoming an effective platform to support war-torn nations when the conventional banking or financing system fails. Ukraine has long been known to adopt the latest in digital technology like cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
The country had already legalized cryptocurrencies in September 2021. Also, a globally popular crypto industry analysis agency named Chainalysis put Ukraine in the top 5 of 20 nations that adopted cryptocurrencies and NFTs. Hence, it is visible that the Ukrainian government took the right decision to legalize cryptos during peacetime, and now the crypto community is returning the favor.
The Ukrainian government claims that they have raised almost $100 million from NFT and crypto donations as of March 9, 2022. Though Ukraine officially started to accept cryptocurrencies in the form of Tether and Bitcoin, soon they increased their capacity.
Hence, they started accepting donations in more than 70 cryptocurrencies like SOL, DOT, DOGE, Ether, and so on. Kuna, the largest crypto exchange in Ukraine, partnered up with the Ukrainian government to facilitate such massive crowdfunding in world history.
There are numerous DAOs and decentralized finance projects (DeiFis) that work silently to collect donations for Ukraine in cryptocurrencies and NFT sales. Some of the popular projects are as below:
1. Unchain
Unchain is the most popular platform that accepts donations in cryptocurrencies to support the humanitarian needs in Ukraine during the Russian invasion. It has been set up by crypto enthusiasts Alexey Bobok, Alexey Meretskyi, Rev Miller, and Oleg Kurchenko. Its cryptocurrency wallet has 11 multisig signers who oversee the donation distributions.
As of April 15, 2022, Unchain has raised $9,655,687 as donations for Ukraine. The donation funds flow in segments like food, migrant support, communication, psychological support, medicine, direct aid, and protective equipment.
Unchain lets you donate through wallets like BSC, BITCOIN, Harmony, ETH, NEAR, IoTeX, celo, Polygon, Terra, Avalanche, Moonbeam, Moonriver, Solana, and OKEX.
2. Forza Ikonia
Forza Ikonia is a renowned incubator that supports NFT projects. It assists content creators, brands, influencers, and artists to develop their own NFT projects that will ultimately flourish in its Metaverse.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Forza Ikonia has been working with various charities to raise funds for Ukraine in cryptocurrencies. For example, it works with Amnesty International and Doctors Without Borders for humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Stand With Ukraine is an NFT project incubated at Forza Ikonia. The collectors and investors minted the NFTs on the Polygon sidechain of the Ethereum blockchain. There are 43,287,512 NFTs, each dedicated to one citizen of Ukraine. As per the project whitepaper, all the proceeds from this NFT project will go to Ukrainian charities.
When you trade these NFTs on secondary NFT marketplaces, 10% royalty will also go to the charities. The official website offers the NFTs for sale for $10.
3. Bored Ape Yacht Club
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) community has stepped in to support Ukraine through crowdfunding. They donated approximately $1 million in ETH. Donations went from crypto wallets containing the Bored Ape Yacht Club ecosystem NFT. Seeing this generosity of the BAYC community, the BAYC developers have also matched the initial donation with another $1 million in ETH to the Ukrainian government’s cryptocurrency wallet.
4. Reli3F
The successful completion of the NFT projects by Reli3F shows that Web3 is powerful enough to handle various digital needs in the future, including donations for humanitarian causes. Reli3F Web3 initiative has partnered up with several crypto artists and content creators to launch RELI3F UKR – Drop 1 and RELI3F UKR – Drop 2 NFT projects.
A total of 57 artists have donated their NFT artworks for sale. These artists are from different parts of the world, and hence this is also an international initiative. The primary sale of these NFTs has raised $1 million in 30 seconds. The Reli3F team has donated all the NFT sales proceedings as donations to Ukraine.
5. Holy Water
Holy Water is a Ukrainian digital tech product development startup. It has developed some popular apps and games like interactive stories game My Fantasy, blockchain game Web3, and romantic books app Passion.
Holy Water has also stepped foot in crowd fundraising to support Ukraine’s civilians and military during the Russian invasion. It has united more than 500 Ukrainian artists, including globally renowned names such as Tiberii Silvashi, Pavlo Makov, Waone Interesni Kazky, and many more.
These famous artists are donating their artwork for tokenization and NFT minting. Collectors can mint the NFTs during the drop and trade the digital assets on secondary NFT marketplaces.
The NFT drop contains 80 unique artworks and 120 editions of each of these paintings. The NFT project aims to donate $1 million equivalent in ETH to the official cryptocurrency wallet of the Ukrainian government.
6. UkraineDAO Flag NFT
The UkraineDAO project is a collection of 10,000 Ukrainian flags NFTs on the Ethereum network. The project has collected over $6.7 million to exclusively support the Ukrainian military to defend the country against invaders.
Trippy Labs, Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, and members of PleasrDAO partnered up to develop the UkraineDAO project. The NFT project transfers the donations to the Ukrainian military through the Come Back Alive organization.
7. 2.5MINT
2.5MINT is a non-profit organization that wants to assist businesses and individuals to adopt Web3 technologies. It has recently launched an NFT project featuring the Ukrainian flag and aims to help NFT owners showcase their support for Ukraine on digital platforms like social media or metaverse.
The NFTs will showcase creative 3D flags of Ukraine, and developed on the Polygon blockchain. It is a sidechain of the Ethereum blockchain. You do not need to pay anything to mint the NFTs. You’ll need a Wintermoon Web3 wallet to mint the NFTs for free.
8. Vandalz for Ukraine
The heavyweight boxing world champion Wladimir Klitschko and contemporary artist WhIsBe founded the Vandalz for Ukraine NFT project through a historic collaboration. There are three editions of Vandalz NFTs, and these are priced at three different price points of 4 ETH, 0.4 ETH, and 0.04 ETH. Wladimir started the project in partnership with OpenSea, and the primary mint started on March 9, 2022.
All the NFT sales and royalty proceeds will go to renowned NGOs and charities like UNICEF Ukraine, Ukrainian relief funds, and Red Cross Ukraine. The donations aim to provide humanitarian aid to Ukrainian civilians.
9. ArtWaRks_Ukraine
Several Ukrainian art historians, IT entrepreneurs, media creators, and artists have partnered up to launch an NFT project that’ll showcase artworks from prominent bureaucrats, technocrats, and artists. The ArtWaRks_Ukraine project is now available on OpenSea for secondary NFT purchases and lists 63 NFTs, and is priced at 0.07 ETH when writing this article.
10. Meta History Museum of War
The Ministry of Digital Transformation of the Ukrainian government has launched its own NFTs to collect funds that’ll go straight to efforts in defending the nation’s sovereignty from the invaders. The NFT drop is known as the Meta History Museum of War which will be a digital museum of NFTs related to the Ukraine war.
The NFTs will represent a piece of history of this modern war on Ukraine by Putin’s Russia. Apart from a historical event, the NFT will also include visual illustrations by international and Ukrainian artists. The Web3 DAO Fair.xyz is the developer of this NFT project by the Ukrainian government.
11. Upland
Upland is an NFT metaverse and racing to become the most dynamic metaverse. It is also trying to become the largest blockchain-based economy in the global metaverse market. The Upland metaverse has been created by mapping the real world where you can build your dream property or company and trade your digital assets.
Uplandme, Inc., the owner of the Upland metaverse has also come forward to support the humanitarian cause of Ukraine through Relief Efforts for Mykolayiv, UA campaign. They’re planning to support Ukraine and donate funds to them by auctioning digital assets like Block Explorer sale, Marble Hill Property sale, Structure Ornament sale, and so on.
12. Ukrainian News Portals
Top 3 Ukrainian news agencies Novoye Vremya, Hromadske, and Ukrainska Pravda partnered up with Vault for content monetization which will go to humanitarian aid in Ukraine. Vault is a content monetization platform that helps creators to drop NFTs and earn money. The platform is based on the Solana blockchain.
The aforementioned media houses and Vault.fan are together running a campaign called Keys for Kyiv. It offers you exclusive press reports of the Ukraine war. When you purchase a key using SOL token, you get to support the media personnel staking their life to bring you ground reports.
13. NFMT – “Never Forget” Memory Token.
NFMT is a proposed memory token, or a meme token standard, drafted by our own CEO Taras Filatov. Taras, a Ukrainian himself born in Kharkiv, has done a first commit to the Github repository of the project on 8th May 2022, on Victory in Europe, or World War 2 remembrance day.
To recite his own words:
WW2 Remembrance Day (Victory in Europe) today.
Over 1.3m (!) Ukrainian soldiers have died in the battles against the nazists during WW2.
Ukrainian Army is now fighting to fulfill that “Never Again” – to protect Europe and the World against another catastrophe driven by a crazy dictator and a brainwashed nation.
NFMT standard is different from a typical NFT in that users are allowed and even encouraged to mint copies of tokens of other users, and also that charity donations and royalty payments are handled automatically by the smart contract. This creates a platform or a medium allowing content makers and social network users to launch meme- and sticker- driven donation campaigns to support the cause that is dear to their hearts.
UPD 1st June 2022:
We have now written a blog post covering the “Never Forget” Memory/Meme Token project in detail: https://www.dappros.com/202206/nfmt-never-forget-memory-token/
Also the project is live and available in github for all interested to copy and build their own NFMT based campaigns with: https://github.com/dappros/nfmt
Final Thoughts
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs have been trending for a couple of years now. But, the way crypto enthusiasts, developers, artists, and investors have come to the aid of Ukraine amid violent attacks from Russia, is proving that blockchain and cryptocurrencies have a larger role in defending and rebuilding a nation.
Moreover, people around the world are feeling more positively about the crypto industry due to its utility in the humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. When the conventional liquidity and monetary support system is in crisis, cryptocurrencies and NFTs can come to humanitarian relief.
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