He praised Ukraine’s willingness to embrace digital assets and blockchain technology, citing the country’s high crypto adoption rate of 17% of the population.
Ukraine’s adoption of blockchain technology started before the war, with President Zelenskyy signing a digital asset law. This created a safe haven for cryptocurrencies with a bit of regulation, allowing the country to take advantage of blockchain technology. The government created nine wallets to accept donations in various cryptocurrencies like Ethereum, Polkadot, and Solana, which helped raise around $50 million in the first few weeks.
The government also used various technologies like NFTs for fundraising, with Pussy Riot’s NFT of the Ukrainian flag raising $7.1 million. The money raised through cryptocurrency donations was used to fund the war effort, and it is estimated that the amount raised is between $70 million and $200 million.
Moreover, blockchain technology is being used to document war crimes in Ukraine. This is done through a project developed by the University of Southern California, Starling Lab at Stanford, and Hala Systems, a tech-driven social enterprise. The project uses blockchain to create a decentralized system for collecting digital evidence that is submitted to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.
To ensure the evidence is permanent and not tampered with, Starling Lab collects information from sources like Telegram and adds details about when and where it came from. They then make a digital fingerprint of the data by “hashing” it, and post the hash values to seven different blockchain protocols to create a verification key. Using a public blockchain ensures the information is recorded on many computers at the same time, making it challenging to change the data later.
This use of blockchain technology could revolutionize the way war crimes are documented and prosecuted, potentially increasing accountability and promoting justice. The permanent and tamper-evident record of evidence created by blockchain technology ensures that no one can alter the information later, making it harder to dismiss evidence on suspicion of tampering.
In conclusion, blockchain technology has brought several positive changes to modern warfare, with its potential to increase transparency and accountability, and improve the way war crimes are documented and prosecuted.
