Ukraine Cancels Proposed Airdrop After Receiving Record Donations
The country initially announced an airdrop was “confirmed” for donors but canceled the plan 29 hours later
Ukraine’s Mykhailo Fedorov | Source: World Economic Forum
key takeaways
- Over $12.5 million in digital asset donations were sent to Ukraine’s crypto wallets on Wednesday after the country announced a pending airdrop
- “Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon,” the country’s vice prime minister tweeted
After what would have been a first-of-its-kind donor incentive, Ukraine has canceled an airdrop for contributors to its crowdfunding campaign.
The highest volume of donations for Ukraine occurred on Wednesday, with $12.5 million donated across over 35,000 Ethereum transactions, all after the announcement of an “airdrop” surfaced, according to Elliptic data.
The country initially shared that an airdrop was “confirmed” for anyone who contributed to its crypto donations by 11 am ET on Thursday, Blockworks previously reported. Airdrops involve businesses or crypto projects providing free tokens or NFTs to their communities as a way to encourage adoption — in this case, to increase donations to the country.
But, Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov backpedaled early Thursday morning, about 29 hours after Ukraine made the initial announcement.
“After careful consideration we decided to cancel [the] airdrop,” Fedorov said in a tweet. “Every day there are more and more people willing to help Ukraine to fight back the [aggression.] Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens.”
Rumors arose in the crypto community that the Ukrainian government might have been planning to release Peaceful World, WORLD, tokens, in the airdrop for people who donated to its crypto crowdfunding campaign, according to reports by CoinDesk.
Etherscan data shows that the tokens were sent to Ukraine’s crypto wallet address and although about 1 million WORLD tokens were sent to Uniswap, seemingly through Ukraine’s wallet, a third party potentially triggered the transaction without Ukraine’s involvement.
There has been no confirmation by Ukrainian officials of any association with the token.
In total, over $46 million has been sent to Ukraine’s crypto wallet addresses across 96,000 cryptocurrency donations. Its total crypto donations rose 53% day-over-day from $30 million to $46 million, Elliptic data shows.
Other crypto-focused organizations have banded together to raise money as well — UkraineDAO has raised over $6.3 million, according to on-chain Etherscan data.
Ukrainian staking service firm Everstake also launched a Solana-based donation platform called Aid for Ukraine in collaboration with the country’s government and others in the crypto community. The platform has raised about $1.45 million, at the time of publication.
Ukrainian government officials were not available for immediate comment on Thursday.
This is a developing story and may be updated if new information becomes available.
Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.
