Once again, everyone seems to have underestimated just how important Ukraine is to the global economy. This is particularly true of those nations and institutions directly involved in the war tearing our country apart.

For the Russian leadership, we are, at best, a tributary state, at worst, a separatist province that rode the waves of the collapsing Soviet Union into unearned independence and sovereignty. For the European Union, we are an underdeveloped eastern European nation with little to offer other than a buffer between them and the Russians. The Americans see us as old-world folk from the wrong side of the long-lifted Iron Curtain, immigrants with strong accents, Hollywood-stylized bad guys.

For countries across central Asia and Africa, we have long been the breadbasket of the world. For China, we are a source of cereals and cooking oil, metal, ore, wood, and machinery. As food prices soar and industry grinds to a halt from Beijing to Beirut, the importance of peace in Ukraine becomes painfully obvious.

Ukraine has for so long held up so many aspects of globalized production that our contribution went unnoticed until the world woke up on February 22nd, 2022, to find it gone.

Yet, nowhere has this loss been harder felt or so quickly acted upon than in the tech and Web3 industries.

Tech and Web3 supported the Ukrainian war effort

Ukrainian engineers and developers have been the beating heart of the blockchain ecosystem since its conception. Ukrainian cybersecurity firms protect the online interests and assets of traditional and Web3 companies alike — from Air Asia to CODEX and OneLedger. Ukrainian companies are on the frontlines providing crypto solutions and pioneering anonymous Bitcoin wallet technologies.

And now the crypto-world is paying these services back in kind. In the first week of the war, the Ukrainian government and organizations supporting its fight against Russia’s invasion received more than 52 million USD in cryptocurrency donations. In just one week.

Though there were some notable, large donations from individuals like Polkadot founder Gavin Wood and the crypto-trading firm Binance, the vast majority of these donations are from ordinary, everyday crypto-users. The crypto community came out in force to support us.

According to the Washington Post’s analysis of public Ethereum blockchain data, within that first, fateful week, 46,000 people made their way into the public ledgers of the cryptocurrency world to support Ukraine.

Web3-savvy politicians and developers have come out in full force, too. Aid For Ukraine was set up by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, with support from blockchain infrastructure developers at Solana. The donation fund accepts twelve different cryptocurrencies and is powered by Everstake, FTX, and Kuna.

And it’s not only developers. Hundreds of digital artists and NFT creators supported and continue to support Ukraine’s army and people. A Ukrainian flag NFT raised 6.75 million USD for the war effort. Artists transferred their digital artwork to Ukraine’s Ethereum wallet, like Cryptopunk #5364.

Russia’s oligarchs have crypto wallets, too

While communities across the world poured their own crypto resources into Ukraine’s fight for survival, Russian oligarchs were able to side-step western sanctions and find a safe refuge for their funds in crypto wallets across the cyber-world.

The Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister angered members of the crypto community by asking for a blanket ban on Russia crypto users — an idea that goes against the founding principles of decentralized finance. Some have also argued that it is immoral to cut the Russian population off from cryptocurrency at a time when sanctions are putting disproportionate pressure on everyday Russians — who, if the number of anti-war protests is taken into account, don’t seem to support the war anyway.

Some crypto platforms have tried to compromise, Biance has offered to block the accounts of individual Russian oligarchs and leaders who have been sanctioned but will not unilaterally freeze the accounts of all Russian users:

“We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.”

Biance Spokesperson

Back in March, White House officials committed to “aggressively combatting the misuse of cryptocurrency, including to evade US sanctions” while the EU considered new measures to limit the ability of Russian asset-holders and banks to dodge sanctions.

Technological solutions do not exist in a vacuum.

As much as I and other Ukrainians have been empowered by crypto and the mobility it offers, so have our aggressors. The opportunities for Web 3 solutions, especially decentralized currencies, are incredible, but they can also be incredibly dangerous, helping those with power escape accountability and oversight.

Just as crypto offers underrepresented communities across the world access to the Web 3 revolution, it also allows the already-obscenely-wealthy to benefit from, for example, their access to more advanced computing power and traditional investment methods.

Even as we support and welcome the change crypto brings, we need to remain aware of the nuance behind these changes.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian people are saving themselves

All across the news, you see stories of destroyed schools and maternity hospitals, poor people living for weeks in bomb shelters, families losing their homes and carrying their pets across rivers, trying to physically escape.

While this coverage helped mobilize much-needed resources for the war effort, it flattens the reality of our experience.

We wear our victimhood with pride because we know what it means to make rapid, tough decisions upon which the lives of loved ones depend. We know that there is nothing passive in victimhood and survival, but we also know that stories of empowerment don’t sell papers in the same way as fear and horror.

We are also all-to-familiar with the risks taken by journalists seeking to hold war criminals accountable for their actions, to document the very real horrors that have become commonplace in this war.

But, as much as we understand the raw horror of war, I think we will be forgiven for our frustration. We are more than what this war has made us, and we always were.

Ukrainians are strong, digitally-mobile pragmatists. Crypto donations may be saving the Ukrainian government and army, but Ukrainian people are saving themselves, crypto wallets in hand. I know because I am one of them.

Thanks to crypto, I am strong, independent, and financially sovereign. I am an individual in my own right; my physical and financial well-being is no longer tied to good or bad luck, peace, or war.

Ukrainian people feel strong right now: We are proud of our army; thankful to the heroes working in both the front and back “offices” of this fight, but also of ourselves.

Because we, the people, are a powerful, decentralized organism in our own right. Ukraine is more than just a vast talent pool for Web3 developers. It is one of the most crypto-savvy countries in the world. Over 5.5 million people, 12.7% of Ukraine’s population, own cryptocurrency.

Even before the COVID pandemic, Ukrainians were at the forefront of defining and designing the crypto market. When I first got involved, I had no idea of the scale of Ukrainian influence in these new and emerging industries full of buzzwords and rapidly-shifting rules, norms, and practices. When you’ve grown up exploited by corrupt banking systems or with the threat of war looming constantly overhead, this digitalised world suddenly makes an awful lot of sense.

In a physical world that was separated by COVID, lockdowns, fear, and distance, the crypto community remained connected. In the Ukrainian crypto community particularly, we were working to help expand beyond the small circle of tech-savvy people and trying to promote the mass adoption of blockchain across the country. And look at the results.

I may still be trying to process what this means for me, my family, and my country — invaded by a foreign dictator — but I feel strong; Ukraine feels strong.

Nastya Adamova is Co-Founder and COO at BABsLabs, one of the only marketing agencies in the world to focus explicitly on marketing women- and global majority-led projects. She’s also just set up the Bad Ass Bitches [in Tech] publication with Catie Romero-Finger.

An Injustice!

Web 3 May Be the Solution to War And Peace was originally published in An Injustice! on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.