An NFT of a Ukrainian flag has been auctioned off for 2173.64 Ether (US$6.4 million) as part of an effort by the Russian punk rock protest band Pussy Riot and others to help the people of Ukraine.

The flag was sold this morning on the NFT marketplace Zora, with 3,271 contributors polling their funds for a joint bid on PartyBid, a platform that allows people to pool their capital to bid on NFTs.

The plan is to now to airdrop “LOVE” tokens representing fractional ownership of the NFT to everyone who donated.

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, the livestreamer “OhShinny,” OnlyFans and the Jadu coding community all made significant contributions, according to the UkraineDAO.

The LOVE tokens are supposed to be a symbol commemorating the donor’s contribution, with no purpose beyond that, according to UkraineDAO.

“We discourage anyone from trading the coins for utility and to maintain them in their wallets as a reminder of our world’s ongoing humanitarian needs,” the website says.

The funds raised will go to the Return Alive Foundation, which has connections to the Ukrainian military.

Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolonnikova, “Trippy from Trippy Labs” and members of the PleasrDAO were among the activists who organised the auction, bringing the idea to fruition in just five days.

At first they were going to auction off art to support Ukraine, but then decided to settle on a symbol of the Ukrainian people rather than a particular aesthetic or work of an individual artist.

Tolonnikova told Reuters was only natural to use crypto to raise the funds.

“Lately, we’ve heard that Ukraine had a lot of troubles with their banking system, because obviously they’re in a state of war,” she said. “So crypto obviously has much more layers of protections against that. It’s permissionless and it’s borderless.”

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