🤠 Web3 Weekly Round-up #8

Hey there, I’m Luca - lifelong startup nerd, crypto fanatic since 2016, and now keeping up with trends across Web3 is my second full-time job.

This week, we're going to do something a little different. I usually send out 5 tweets covering a variety of Web3 news from the past week, but this has been a week unlike most.

My heart goes out to the people of Ukraine for the pain and suffering they are enduring right now. Among the deep sadness I've felt over the past week, I've also been impressed by the Web3 community's support for the Ukraine crisis.

In today's edition, I'd like to highlight a handful of tweets depicting the role of Web3 following the invasion of Ukraine.

🇺🇦 #1 - NFT charity fundraise for Ukraine

A sizable group of NFT artists teamed up within the first day following news of the invasion to create the Reli3f charity project for Ukraine. This invasion feels like the first global catastrophe that’s happened during the Web3 era, and the community has responded admirably. With just 48 hours notice, nearly 40 notable artists in and out of Ukraine raised millions of dollars by selling their unique artworks.

This certainly isn't the first time an international charity initiative like this has been organized, but at such a pace and scale? This feels like something that only the Web3 community could pull off, in part due to its decentralized and global nature.

🇺🇦 #2 - Ukraine's crypto fundraise

For the first time in history, a country is accepting donations via cryptocurrency. This has several meaningful implications.

Impact: Most importantly, this creates a simple and unparalleled way for donors to give money directly to the cause they believe in. The most feasible web2 equivalent is donating to a relevant non-profit, but then we're forced to pick between organizations and decide who to trust. This way, our money goes directly to the Ukrainian government, which presumably knows how to best deploy it.

Access: The mechanics of donating money across borders is nontrivial. If you've ever tried sending money to other countries, you know how big of a headache and how costly it can be. With crypto, anyone with a wallet can send money anywhere in the world with minimal fees in just a few minutes.

Financial Hedge: Crypto certainly isn't the most stable asset, but for a country with a minor currency facing all-out war, Ukraine faces an unknown economic future. Ukraine's native Hryvnia has fallen more than 5% since the invasion, and a longer war may drive it down further. In times of economic uncertainty like this, crypto provides a a financial avenue that's not solely tied to Ukraine's economic condition.

🇺🇦 #3 - The power of decentralization

Damn.

Crypto folks love to point out the benefits of having ownership over your capital as opposed to handing it over to a bank. Most of the time, these people come off sounding like eccentric doomsday preppers because it's hard for us to imagine getting locked out of our own bank accounts like that. Yet here it is happening right in front of us. If Ukraine is too far from home for that to sink in, look no further than the Canadian trucker protest in last week's edition.

🇺🇦 #4 - Crypto scams for everything, even Ukraine

As with any other Web3 event, there are scams for this one too! This isn't the first time I've come across livestream scams like this. Usually, it's "Elon Musk live on YouTube giving you 2x the crypto you send to him," but this is a new level of messed up. These sorts of scams are very easy to set up since most just recycle old footage and act like it's happening live. If the scammers wanted to get fancy, they could create a deep fake of President Zelenskyy, and even that wouldn't take more than a couple of hours at most.

How can you protect yourself from falling for scams like this? The easiest and most common way to assess the "truth" is to check official Twitter accounts. For any Web3-related event that involves a lot of money changing hands, whether a donation to Ukraine or a major NFT project, there's usually an NFT Twitter account that you should check for updates and key information like links and addresses. In this case, Ukraine's official Twitter account had the correct crypto addresses for donations.

🎉 If you learned something new, pass this along to a few friends! It goes a long way for me, your friends, and the entire Web3 community.

💬 What do you think of crypto's role in the Ukraine invasion? Let me know by replying to the email or tweeting at me - any and all feedback is welcome!