Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has announced a $100 million donation to fund Coronavirus research projects. The funds will be directed to Crypto Relief. This prevention initiative fund was started by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal in 2021. Since then, it has been supported by the likes of Buterin, Balaji S. Srinivasan, etc.
In his tweet, Buterin said that Crypto Relief allocated $100 million to Covid research projects he wanted to fund. Nailwal and the Ethereum co-founder have now discussed and jointly come to the conclusion that these projects are high impact. Thus, they require “follow through grants.” In effect, they’ve decided to divert $100 million more to these projects.
This will be done under my entity Kanro with its multisighttps://t.co/qloGu4a4vK
where @CryptoRelief_ and I are going to disburse the funds to.— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 8, 2023
Also Read: Shiba Inu: SHIB Expected to Rise 520%, Here’s When
Vitalik’s Shiba Inu donation
Crypto Relief will add $90 million in USDC to the donation. Notably, the entire amount was generated from the sales of Shiba Inu tokens sent to them by Buterin in early 2021. The remaining $10 million will be provided by Buterin out of his own pocket. Clarifying the same, he tweeted,
“Crypto Relief has put in 90M USDC from the original SHIB donation, and I’m adding another 10M of my own funds.”
It is worth recalling that the anonymous developers of Shiba Inu sent 50% of the total SHIB supply to Buterin’s address. They presumed that the Ethereum founder will hold the SHIB tokens sent to him. Buterin, however, started sending SHIB tokens as gifts to a host of charitable causes around the world at first.
He donated a whopping 50 trillion SHIB tokens [worth around $1.2 billion at that time] to India’s COVID Relief Fund. The right after, Buterin burned about 90% of his remaining SHIB holdings. He sent 410 trillion SHIB [worth around $6.7 billion at that time] to a dead blockchain address, thereby removing them from circulation once and for all.
This time, the funds will be handed out by Buterin’s entity Kanro and will be disbursed to a Gnosis Safe wallet. The donation will support various projects, ranging from research on Long Covid, indoor air quality improvements, airborne transmission, and the development of technologies like UVC irradiation.
Shiba Inu lead developer, Shytoshi Kusama, lauded this initiative and exclaimed “Bravo!”
https://t.co/b3iu4xlk0d pic.twitter.com/usoGJyQKKa
— Shytoshi Kusama™ (@ShytoshiKusama) June 8, 2023
According to Buterin, COVID-19 and “future pandemics” will continue to be a “large risk in the 21st century.” In effect, a “global solution” that combines “frontier scientific innovation” and “on-the-ground implementation” is needed.
Also Read: Shiba Inu: Who Has ‘Burned’ the Highest Number of SHIB Tokens?