A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) has been established to assist Ukrainian troops fighting the Russian military.
A crowdfunding campaign initiated by members of the investment group PleasrDAO, the NFT studio Trippy Labs, and the Russian art collective Pussy Riot has already collected over $3 million in Ethereum-based tokens.
The initiative is inspired by other politically minded crowdfunding DAOs like AssangeDAO (favoring detained WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange) and ConstitutionDAO, which attempted (and failed) to purchase an original copy of the US constitution at public auction.
The government of Ukraine has also joined the campaign by asking people to give cryptocurrency to support the resistance following Russia’s invasion.
Alona Shevchenko, who was born in Eastern Ukraine and now lives in London, created the Twitter account for UkraineDAO a few days before President Vladimir Putin announced the invasion – “just in case,” she told CoinDesk.
“I messaged my PleasrDAO pals when I started getting messages from my friends in Ukraine saying that their cities were being bombed. Then, a lot of amazing individuals got involved and helped me out.”
On Friday, Shevchenko returned from a protest of 10 Downing Street to find that UkraineDAO had organized a Zoom call for her. “UkraineDAO self-organized extremely rapidly,” she said.
Shevchenko has previously raised money via a crowd-sourcing campaign. She currently works as the operations and community lead for FreeRossDAO, which seeks to channel cryptocurrency toward imprisoned Silk Road creator Ross Ulbricht.
The ultimate goal of the UkraineDAO is to provide support for Ukrainian soldiers, who have been injured or killed in action. The organization wants to contribute to a Ukrainian nonprofit called Come Back Alive, which was just banned from the fundraising platform Patreon for violating the site’s terms of service. The project has raised around $6.9 million in bitcoin donations.
Come Back Alive was previously taking U.S. dollar donations for the Ukrainian military and, in a letter announcing its decision to block the crowdfund, Patreon cited portions of the organization’s website that it said “implies financing and training military personnel.”
According to the letter, the firm has refunded all donations – something that is difficult to do with crypto.
The DAO has now decided to purchase (from itself) a one-of-a-kind NFT of the Ukrainian Flag with the donated funds, which it will do this weekend. Bids are fractionalized and submitted via PartyBid, which is a group NFT purchasing service. You may also donate to the group that wins the auction and get a set of ERC-20 tokens based on how much you put in (in this case, $LOVE tokens).
The problem is exacerbated by the fact that $LOVE may be worth something; a contribution to UkraineDAO is just as charitable as an investment in $LOVE tokens, which can be purchased and sold on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap.
It’s also conceivable that the PartyBid may lose a bid for the country’s flag NFT if a whale appears at the last minute. If you’re a PartyBid user who thinks the funds should go to UkraineDAO, it might be time to shop around.
If Come Back Alive wins the group bid and if there’s room in its budget for more donations. It’s a competitive giving campaign, not a cumulative one.
The DAO has also pledged money to the NGO Proliska and has suggested it might give to the Red Cross. However, Shevchenko believes that the funds are best put to use in a military capacity.