Perhaps like nothing else before it, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has proved why interoperability in crypto is the need of the hour. As supporters send coins to Ukraine’s administration and pro-military NGOs, government officials found themselves on the receiving end of diverse crypto-assets – including NFTs.
The question is – How to deal with the sheer variety?
Ukraine in the EU-niswap
The Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine, Mykhailo Fedorov, thanked Uniswap for its “donate to Ukraine” feature which would help donators change their assets into Ether. On the minister’s request, Uniswap added the donation app to its homepage.
1/ Update: The ?? Donate App is now linked from the Uniswap home page. https://t.co/liqYXtQoM2 https://t.co/7MJDFM0eUL
— Uniswap Labs ? (@Uniswap) March 2, 2022
At press time, a Uniswap V3 transfer cost an average of $17.14.
Is the grass greener here?
It’s time to take a closer look at Uniswap’s condition at the moment. Weighted sentiment for Uniswap has been negative throughout most of February. In March, however, a huge spike took sentiment from -0.99 to 0.367.
Source: Santiment
This came on the heels of UNI’s price performance, which was trading at $9.89 after a rally of 28.91%.
What’s more, development activity on Uniswap began to rise again after dipping to a low in late February. It remains to be seen if Uniswap’s involvement in Ukraine’s fundraising causes will further boost investor interest in UNI and the network as a whole.
For now, the resuming growth and the price rally are positive signs for both devs and investors.
Source: Santiment
When fundraising isn’t just fun
Ukraine’s call for crypto-donations did not go in vain as users all over the world sent in Bitcoin, Ether, and USDT to the addresses shared by Ukraine’s official Twitter account.
However, controversy erupted after Polkadot founder Gavin Wood promised to donate $5 million – if the account shared a DOT address. Many criticized Wood and claimed he was trying to generate press for DOT, while others pointed out the expense involved in swapping assets.
Finally, a DOT address was posted and Wood donated a little more than 298,367 DOT, worth roughly around $5.7 million at press time. All said and done, though, the incident highlighted the need for fast and affordable interoperability tools when making crypto-donations. This is where Uniswap and its ETH transfer options want to fit into the picture.
On that note, a report by Arcane Research stated,
“So far, more than $24 million of crypto has been donated to Ukraine, but this number is likely an underestimation since countless smaller NGOs are collecting funds.”
