Polkadot’s Gavin Wood to donate $5M to Ukraine, if they post a DOT address

More and much radical are donating to the Ukrainian broadside of the struggle since Russia’s determination to invade the neighboring country. Most of these donations are funneled done accepted means of fundraising and donations, but important amounts of funds are besides coming successful via crypto payments.

As reported by CryptoSlate connected Friday, portion Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense says it can’t officially person crypto donations, NGOs successful the state are taking crypto to assistance with the conflict. A non-governmental enactment supporting the Ukrainian service has reportedly received astir $4 cardinal worthy of Bitcoin donations alone.

Russia’s penetration of Ukraine has led to outpourings of enactment connected Twitter – and millions of dollars successful crypto donations. As of Sunday morning, according to the blockchain analytics steadfast Elliptic, astir $17 cardinal had been raised, including $1.86 cardinal from 1 NFT collection.

In each likelihood, these numbers person accrued during the play and volition proceed to bash so, and an expanding fig of radical successful the crypto abstraction are lining up to assistance the Ukrainian warfare effort. 

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin broke his Twitter soundlessness astir the Russia-Ukraine pointing Twitter users to UkraineDAO, co-founded by Pussy Riot, Trippy Labs, and members of PleasrDAO.

An aged spouse of Vitalik’s, Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and laminitis of Polkadot, besides took to Twitter successful regards to Ukraine donations, successful a mode that possibly didn’t play retired arsenic well.

In a effect to the authoritative Ukrainian Twitter account, posting Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) addresses for donations, Wood simply replied “If you station a DOT code I’ll personally lend $5m.”

If you station a DOT code I'll personally lend $5m.

— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) February 27, 2022

The station has raised immoderate eyebrows and besides a clump of criticism. Wood has besides promoted Subsocial, a Ukrainian crypto task accepting donations successful a big of antithetic cryptocurrencies related to the Polkadot system, including DOT tokens. Subsocial are gathering “The underlying architecture for the societal networks of the future, connected to @kusamanetwork and @Polkadot Supported by the @web3foundation, according to their Twitter bio.

It looks to immoderate that Wood is being selective and is conditioning his eventual donations.

The mostly Ukraine-based @Subsocial squad person been gathering donation functionality into their level for @Polkadot/@kusamanetwork tokens. Just goes into a wallet controlled by Subsocial currently, but a little trust-bound solution connected its way…💙💛 https://t.co/Dy51wWfwvV

— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) February 27, 2022

Some of the critics are calling Wood’s tweet “a merchandise placement leveraging large planetary struggle with a 5M terms tag.”

people responding to those criticizing this tweet due to the fact that helium is “donating” 5M

It’s not a donation if it has conditions

It’s a merchandise placement leveraging large planetary struggle with a 5M terms tag

I’m atrocious but helium should conscionable person to ETH if helium truly privation to donate

— pedrouid.eth 📲 (@pedrouid) February 27, 2022

Though astir are cheering specified a generous donation, if Wood goes done with it, others little captious besides constituent retired that Wood whitethorn privation to debar superior gains taxes by paying successful DOT tokens, and not converting them to, say, ether (ETH), which would beryllium a taxable event.

Why should helium person to wage hundreds of thousands successful headdress gains if it takes 2 minutes for them to make an address?

— joelaustin.eth (@carolousue) February 27, 2022