Desperate times require desperate measures. The famous saying seems to hold true even for NFTs as Ukraine becomes the first country to announce their official NFT collection as part of an effort to raise funds for their war effort.
It’s been a week since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked military assault on Ukraine, targeting major cities and attempting to cut supply networks in order to isolate and starve out the country.
The Russian army had been preparing for a potential conflict for months based on previous intelligence knowledge. Furthermore, Russia has much more resources than Ukraine, putting the latter at a considerable disadvantage.
The asymmetry of power has led the Ukrainian government to seek funding from every source possible to survive the war that Russia is waging against them.
The Ukrainian Government’s Crypto and NFT Involvement
The announcement came from Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s Vice PM, and details are yet revealed. The campaign is just one of many that the Ukrainian government has launched. Recently they managed to raise more than $270 million in bonds to support their war effort.
This is not the first time that the Ukrainian government will be involved with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies, since in early campaigns, they pleaded for financial assistance through crypto. As a result, the Ukrainian government received more than $50 million in bitcoin, ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.
The move towards NFTs makes a lot of sense considering the massive popularity of the quirky non-fungible tokens, which at the moment have a market revenue of around $40 billion.
The exact way the NFTs will be distributed is yet to be determined. Some speculate that they will be given a reward for donating in the same way airdrops were promised in the previous campaign. Others speculate they will be given in auctions, resulting in more competition and more overall funds raised for the Ukrainian government.
The Ukrainian government has pledged to raise as much funding as possible and to be transparent with where the donations from cryptocurrencies are going. Michael Chobanian, president of the Ukrainian Blockchain Association, claims that more than $14 million have been invested into the war effort.
Support From The NFT Community
It’s not just the Ukrainian government pleading for help in the current situation, many people sympathetic to the struggles of the Ukrainian people have donated part of their financial assets to support them and have encouraged others to do the same.
For example, Uniswap, a crypto exchange platform, has made an option that allows you to transform tokens into ethereum and donate them to Ukraine.
The support for Ukraine shows the bravery and empathy people have to stand against Russia. For instance, recently, a CryptoPunk worth more than $200 000 was donated to the Ukrainian government. Another example comes from the co-founder of Ethereum, Gavin Wood, who donated more than $5.8 million to the Ukrainian government.
But the move to support Ukrainian also takes the form of many organizations, such as many decentralized autonomous organizations raising funds for Ukraine. One such example is Pussy Riot, backed by Russian activists, which has raised more than $6.5 million through the sale of NFTs for the cause.
