Ukraine’s government has scrapped its plans to airdrop a “reward” of tokens to people who’ve donated cryptocurrencies to its official digital wallets.

Instead, it says it will sell NFTs (non-fungible tokens) as an alternative means for raising funds following last week’s invasion from Russian forces.

“After careful consideration we decided to cancel airdrop,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister for digital transformation, posted from his official Twitter account today. “Instead, we will announce NFTs to support Ukrainian Armed Forces soon. We DO NOT HAVE any plans to issue any fungible tokens.”

Ukraine’s initial announcement regarding the tokens prompted a flood of donations from those possibly hoping to take part in a historic airdrop. Just speculating, but perhaps some donors sensed a potentially lucrative opportunity as an added perk to the sense of goodwill and charity.

In any case, Ukraine’s official wallets quickly garnered another US$9 million after the airdrop announcement, adding substantially to the US$33 million or so of crypto already donated over the past week.

Here’s how the flood of extra donations played out according to a chart from blockchain analysis firm Dune Analytics (with one observer’s edits)…

The “snapshot” of eligible donor addresses had been due to take place today. But perhaps Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation was put off by potential scammers attempting to front-run the airdrop and profit from secondary sales of bogus airdrop tokens.

For instance, a suspected scam coin called “Peaceful World”, trading under the ticker WORLD, had at one point today reached more than US$500,000 of sales volume on the decentralised exchange Uniswap. According to reports, its creators attempted to make it appear as if the token was issued from Ukraine’s official public Ethereum address.

 

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