Ukraine to issue airdrop to all crypto donors ahead of snapshot

Ukraine has today become the first government to announce a cryptocurrency airdrop since El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender in 2021. The snapshot will be taken tomorrow at 2 pm Kyiv time on March 3, to reward donors. At present, it is unclear which blockchains will be eligible for the Ukraine airdrop. There are several official Ukraine crypto addresses including Bitcoin, Ethereum and Polkadot. 

Airdrop confirmed. Snapshot will be taken tomorrow, on March 3rd, at 6pm Kyiv time (UTC/GMT +2 hours).
Reward to follow!
Follow subsequent news re Ukraine’s crypto donation campaign at @FedorovMykhailo

— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) March 2, 2022

An airdrop involves sending either coins or tokens to wallets as a reward. Often, airdrops form a part of a marketing campaign to launch new projects, promote key milestones, or issue a new token to replace an existing one. A snapshot is taken of the blockchain at a specific time, and all included wallets addresses are sent the rewards. 

In this instance, it appears Ukraine will be sending a reward in the form of either an NFT or token to all wallets that have donated before the snapshot cut off time. However, without knowing which blockchain they are referring to, it is unknown as to which donors will receive the airdrop.

Ukraine Government Wallets

The official Ukrainian Bitcoin address has received 213 BTC to date, with a total of 9387 transactions since February 24th. The address has also sent an equal number of BTC to what looks like an exchange wallet.

There have been over 19,000 transactions on the country’s Ethereum wallet, and the government sent over $6.5 million ERC20 tokens to the Kuna exchange on Feb 28.

Ukraine transferred ~$6.5M worth of crypto out of their Ethereum address to local exchange @KunaExchange

(ETH, USDT, USDC and DAI)https://t.co/0nsAidBFQd pic.twitter.com/dZIP1w711A

— Jane Manchun Wong 🇺🇦🇭🇰 (@wongmjane) February 28, 2022

Their Polkadot wallet has received a similar amount of $6.1 million, with the majority coming from Gavin Wood. However, there have only been 865 transactions from this address.

What the Ukraine Airdrop may contain

Currently, there is no information as to the nature of the airdrop reward. They may only be taking a snapshot of one of their donation addresses. If Ethereum is the chosen blockchain, then it may be possible that the reward could take the form of an NFT. This would likely result in over 20,000 minted NFTs.

It is undoubtedly an exciting approach to fundraising and shows that Ukraine is well versed in the cryptosphere. There is plenty of time for donations to accrue in the next 24 hours before the snapshot is taken. Furthermore, Ukraine has not stated any limitation on the donation size required to qualify for the airdrop, so the number of eligible wallets could grow exponentially. 

According to their Twitter announcement, Mykhailo Fedorov will be posting further updates on Ukraine’s crypto donation campaign.