The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection has been vocal about its support for the brave people of Ukraine. The project donated $1 million to the country of Ukraine’s official Ethereum wallet address on Tuesday.
The NFT collection’s Twitter account shared the information along with an Etherscan transaction link showing that it sent 388.999 ETH (a little over $1 million) after being inspired by its community members’ contributions.
NFTs are unique tokens that exist on a blockchain such as Ethereum and signify ownership of an asset. The BAYC was among the first NFT collections to reach a floor price—or minimum “buy-now” price per NFT—of over 50 ETH.
Since then, the BAYC has become a cultural symbol in the NFT space, with celebrities like Eminem, Steph Curry, Jimmy Fallon, and many others “aping” into the collection.
Currently, the BAYC is the second-largest NFT collection of all time based on marketplace OpenSea’s rankings, having registered over 417,000 ETH ($1 billion) in secondary sales.
The BAYC donation to Ukraine comes after a number of other Web3 communities—from DAOs to memecoin holders to NFT collections—announced projects and initiatives centered around contributing to Ukraine relief.
To date, Ukraine has received well over $88 million in cryptocurrency donations alone, according to data collated by Merkle Science, and the government currently has about $7 million in Ethereum in its wallet.
Crypto contributions turned out to be one of the most efficient ways to get the money across to the ones in the conflict zones, avoiding the lengthy transaction processes in the banks.
