On April 25, 2021, for helping and as a contribution to the COVID-19 pandemic rescue fund in India, the Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin has declared and donated 100 Ethereum tokens (ETH), as well as 100 Maker tokens (MKR) which combined in total, is worth about USD 606,110, i.e., amounting to approximately Rs. 4.5 crores in Indian currency. As proof of donation, Buterin has published the donation links on its independent Ethereum platform named EtherScan, showing a transaction of 100 Maker Coin (MKR) and 100 Ethereum Coin (ETH) being donated to the said relief fund. This said donation done by Vitalik Buterin is donated from his individual capacity and assets.
Vitalik Buterin, on his Twitter handle, also posted the links as proof of donation. He also expressed gratitude towards Sandeep Nailwal, the Founder of an Indian tech company, Polygon, for organizing the COVID-19 Pandemic rescue fund and expressed gratefulness towards Balaji Srinivasan (Indian-origin technology investor and entrepreneur) for signal boosting the campaign. In return to Buterin’s gesture, Sandeep Nailwal showed gratitude through his reply tweets for Buterin’s donation and contribution. Also, he declared that the relief funds donation received will be planned and used to obtain food/meal, oxygen and may probably even accommodate the vaccine’s cost for deprived and underprivileged people. He also tweeted that all the spending will be published publicly for complete transparency of the funds received and spent.
Somewhat similar to this, the Ethereum Foundation had also made significant donations of approximately 1,125 Ethereum tokens (ETH) last year to UNICEF, i.e., in 2020. The said donation was approximately worth USD 262,000, which amounted to rupees 1.9 crores at the time. Even in 2019, the Ethereum Foundation had donated in the form of Bitcoin and Ether approximately USD 150,000, which amounted to rupees 1 crore at the time to UNICEF’s experimental crypto fund. This said Crypto Fund was utilized by UNICEF to make investments worldwide and lessen the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in countries including India, China, Turkey, Argentina, and others. An example of said donation is one such Indian startup named StaTwig that is currently working on a project described on its website as a Vaccine Ledger, where this vaccine ledger can be utilized for unit-level traceability of inoculations or vaccines, cold chain supervising, uncovering of expired products, and others.
