No, the 'Peaceful World' Token Is Not Ukraine's Secret Airdrop

UPDATE (March 3, 13:32 UTC): The headline was changed based on new information that the peaceful world token drop was a spoof. After the initial publication of this article, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation announced that the planned airdrop had been canceled.

Ukraine’s official crypto donation wallet appears to be holding nearly 7 billion peaceful world tokens in what might be the token that will be used in the country’s first crypto airdrop.

Ethereum blockchain explorer Etherscan shows 7 billion peaceful world (WORLD) tokens were created on Wednesday, March 2 at 22:15 UTC and sent to Ukraine’s official crypto donation wallet address.

The Ukraine wallet then appeared to send nearly 1 million Peaceful World tokens to a wallet that used the tokens to seed a liquidity pool on decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap. Blockchain analysts, however, said a third party could trigger the transaction and the Ukraine wallet never directly interacted with the peaceful world tokens.

Approximately two hours later, Ukraine’s wallet appeared to send 1.03 peaceful world tokens to 30 wallet addresses corresponding to the 30 wallet addresses that first sent cryptocurrency funds to the official Ukraine Crypto Donation wallet on Feb 26. The transactions appear to be a preliminary test airdrop.

As of press time, the Ukraine wallet owned 99.98% of the total Peaceful World tokens outstanding.

Ukraine has so far raked in over $40 million in cryptocurrency donations over the course of five days from supporters of the country’s effort against Russia.

On Wednesday morning, Ukraine tweeted “airdrop confirmed” and promised a “reward” to those who have made cryptocurrency donations to the country.

Ukraine has remained tight-lipped regarding details of the airdrop, including what tokens donors would receive and in which quantities.

The mere tease of the airdrop has prompted an influx of microdonations on the Ethereum blockchain as crypto users attempted to game the airdrop.

Additionally, Ukraine is no stranger to Uniswap – the decentralized exchange earned praise from Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov when it added a feature that made it easier to swap cryptocurrencies to ether and donate the funds directly to Ukraine.

However, Ukraine’s track marks on the Ethereum blockchain point to this peaceful world token as the likely candidate for the country’s much-anticipated airdrop.

CORRECTION (March 3, 10:22 UTC): Corrects to say the wallet appeared to send the tokens. Original version said the wallet proceeded to send. Adds blockchain analyst explanation on possible process.

UPDATE (March 3, 12:32 UTC): Adds "appears to" in dek, first paragraph.