Polkadot's Gavin Wood will donate $5 million to Ukraine, if they release a DOT address

More and more people are donating to the Ukrainian side of the conflict since Russia’s decision to invade the neighboring country. Most of these donations are channeled through traditional fundraising and donation means, but significant amounts of funds are also coming through crypto payments.

As CryptoSlate reported on Friday, while Ukraine’s Defense Ministry says it cannot officially receive crypto donations, NGOs in the country are accepting crypto to help with the conflict. A non-governmental organization that supports the Ukrainian military reportedly received around $4 million in donations from Bitcoin alone.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has sparked an outpouring of support on Twitter and millions of dollars in cryptocurrency donations. As of Sunday morning, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, nearly $17 million had been raised, including $1.86 million from a collection of NFTs.

In all likelihood, these numbers have increased over the weekend and will continue to do so, and an increasing number of people in the crypto space are lining up to help the Ukraine war effort.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has broken his silence on Twitter about Russia-Ukraine pointing Twitter users to UkraineDAO, co-founded by Pussy Riot, Trippy Labs and PleasrDAO members.

A former partner of Vitalik, Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of Polkadot, also took to Twitter regarding donations to Ukraine, in a way that perhaps didn’t work out so well.

In a response to the official Ukraine Twitter account, which posted Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) addresses for donations, Dr. Wood simply replied, “If you post a DOT address, I will personally contribute $5 million.”

If you post a DOT address, I will personally contribute $5 million.

— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) February 27, 2022

The post has raised some eyebrows and also a lot of criticism. Wood has also promoted Subsocial, a Ukrainian crypto project that accepts donations in a host of different cryptocurrencies related to the Polkadot system, including DOT tokens. Subsocial is building “The underlying architecture for the social networks of the future, connected to @kusamanetwork and @Polkadot With the support of @web3foundation, according to his Twitter bio of him.

It seems to some that Dr. Wood is being selective and conditioning his eventual donations.

Most based in Ukraine @subsocial The team has been building the donation functionality on their platform to @Moles/@kusamanetwork Tokens only go into a Subsocial controlled wallet currently, but a less reliable solution is on the way… 💙💛 https://t.co/Dy51wWfwvV

— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) February 27, 2022

Some of the critics are calling Wood’s tweet “a product placement taking advantage of a major global conflict with a $5 million price tag.”

people responding to those who criticize this tweet because it is “donating” 5M

It is not a donation if it has conditions.

It is a product placement that takes advantage of a major global conflict with a price tag of 5 million.

Sorry, but you should convert to ETH if you really want to donate.

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

Although most are encouraging such a generous donation, if Wood accepts it, others less critical also point out that Wood may want to avoid capital gains taxes by paying DOT tokens and not converting them to, say, ether (ETH), which would be a taxable event.

Why should you have to pay hundreds of thousands in max earnings if it takes them two minutes to create an address?

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