Ukrainian Government Endorses AidForUkraine DAO

AidForUkraine, a decentralized autonomous organization that aims to support Ukraine’s defense efforts, has launched. It is backed by the Solana Foundation, the Everstake Pool (a staking platform focused on Proof-of-Stake blockchains), and the the Ukrainian government. 

War Crowdfunding

The government of Ukraine now accepts donations in Solana tokens.

A decentralized autonomous organization called AidForUkraine has launched in collaboration with the Solana Foundation and Everstake (based in Ukraine) and with Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. The nation’s Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov shared the DAO’s Solana address earlier today. 

Yesterday, NATION launched, which is a platform for DAOs built in Solana’s ecosystem, upon which the AidForUkraine DAO is also built. Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of the Solana Foundation, is a high-profile supporter of the AidForUkraine DAO. 

Sergey Vasylchuk, CEO of Everstake and a Ukraine native, told Crypto Briefing that donations to the DAO would go towards the “most urgent needs, medical, humanitarian and military as well” and that the crypto would be converted to a special account “opened by [the] Central Bank.” Pressed for clarification, Vasylchuk explained the funds would be moved from the DAO to a centralized exchange—where it would be converted to Euros or USD—before being deposited in the central bank. Vasylchuck shared that just over $403,000 had been raised at press time.

There has been a flurry of donations to Ukraine for many months now, but they have ramped up heavily since the invasion began last week, with $29 million in crypto donations alone as of yesterday. While the Ministry of Defense was legally unable to accept crypto donations initially, the country’s official Twitter profile has since shared crypto addresses requesting donations. Today, the government asked for Polkadot donations. 

AidForUkraine is not the first decentralized autonomous organization to sprout up in support of Ukraine. Last week, UkraineDAO was announced with the immediate goals of purchasing and issuing NFTs of the Ukrainian flag to raise funds to support Ukrainians who are suffering. 

Vice Prime Minster Fedorov drew criticism yesterday for requesting that major crypto exchanges freeze accounts of “ordinary” Russian citizens. Both Kraken and Binance denied his request, as did Coinbase. 

As of today, the United Nations reports more than 536 Ukrainian civilian casualties, with more than 136 dead, including 13 children. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned BTC, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.