Ukraine to Launch NFT Collection to Aid War Effort

Digital assets like cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have been helping Ukraine since the start of the war. Now the country’s deputy minister of digital transformation, Alex Bornyakov, said he wants the country to launch its own NFT collection.

The minister said the collection of digital art would fund the country’s war efforts. 

“NFT collection would be like a museum of the Russian-Ukrainian war. We want to tell the world in NFT format,” he said.

Each token would carry a piece of art representing a story from a trusted news source. The collection, according to Bornyakov, is expected to be “cool, good-looking, and it takes time.”

“We don’t use this fund to buy weapons at this point. We’re buying night-vision goggles, optics, helmets, bulletproof vests,” he told The Guardian.

According to Bornyakov, the funds collected by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine were used to buy 5,550 bulletproof vests, 410,000 packed lunches, thermal goggles, and medicine, among other things. Crypto donations for Ukraine have exceeded $60m.

“Crypto-assets proved extremely helpful in the facilitation of funding to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Huge thanks to everyone who donated to the Crypto Fund of Ukraine,” he tweeted on March 11. “Each and every helmet and vest bought via crypto donations are currently saving Ukrainian soldiers’ lives.”

The digital war started “years ago”

The digital war between Ukraine and Russia, according to Bornyakov, “didn’t start 14 days ago. It started eight years ago, and they were constantly instantly attacking us with DDoS attacks, defacing websites, or stealing our databases.”

Hackers called Anonymous have claimed to have disabled a few Russian media websites with denial of service (DoS) attacks while Meta, formerly Facebook, had allowed users to talk about Vladimir Putin’s violence on its platforms. 

Russia, however, called Meta an “extremist organization” and subsequently banned its activities in Russia.

“Most of their weapons are disabled. At this point, after two weeks. So this is what I’m calling positive results,” said Bornyakov, describing social media as one of the Kremlin’s weapons in the conflict.