Blockchain technology could change the world. Decentralization pushes power to the edges, where every person has the power to participate and influence that change. The future is for everyone.
The Cardano community is known not just for holding these values, but for taking action to make them reality. This is a continuation of the exciting storyline unfolding between Switzerland for UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency), the Cardano Foundation, and the grass roots Cardano community.
In our previous article we discussed the origins of the partnership between Cardano and UNHCR at the 2022 Cardano Summit. It is, as far as we’ve been able to find, the first time a philanthropic organization has started its own blockchain staking pool as a way to generate sustainable funding. We hope it won’t be the last, but before this model becomes more popular, there is a lot to learn about how to make it really work. I spoke to Alvaro Cosi, Head of Innovation at Switzerland for UNHCR, about how the Cardano community is jumping in and laying the stepping stones for their continuing journey.
TURF for Refugees
TURF is a Cardano NFT project that also landed in the spotlight at the 2022 Cardano Summit, when they partnered with the event to offer commemorative NFTs to attendees. TURF NFTs are artistic renderings of real map locations. Their base collection offers up every square of the earth for purchase only once – a fun way to turn our beloved corners of the earth into collectibles with inherent rarity. For special events or fundraisers, TURF can create unique map art in secondary collections. At the Cardano Summit in Switzerland, for example, attendees got an NFT map of Lausanne, labeled with the event name and date.
Well, one partnership leads to the next it seems. Leading up to the 2023 Consensus event, the UNHCR project partnered with TURF (to create some beautiful NFTs) and NMKR (for infrastructure support). Together, they are offering two different NFT Collections for sale. [https://www.nmkr.io/unhcr-mint] One collection centers the ongoing crisis in Ukraine, and the other collection features various of the world’s chronically underfunded ongoing refugee crises. The two objectives of the NFT sale are of course to raise money for these causes, but also to raise awareness of UNHCR’s work, and the WRFGS pool and Cardano partnership.
I bought one from each collection. That mint is currently LIVE, and I encourage our readers to consider participating and getting one of your own.
Hosky does it again
Everyone says it: starting a staking pool is the easy part. With the right hardware and an internet connection, it’s largely a matter of following directions. What comes after that is attracting enough delegation to your pool to start minting blocks and earning money – that is the hard part, and there’s not just one right way to do it. Like any other business venture, marketing takes many shapes.
One unique strategy has emerged from the most famously low-value meme coin in the Cardano ecosystem - $HOSKY. After building a popular brand based on loving insults and dog puns, the big dog behind it all found a unique way to support some stake pools. By simply staking to any one of Hosky’s designated “Rug pools,” Hosky fans are entitled to free withdrawals of millions of their favorite meme coin, every 5 days. Though it defies traditional logic, this works incredibly well. Any pool in the Hosky Rug Pool network can count on getting a couple million ada in delegation from the Hosky community. For full disclosure, and because we are embarrassingly proud of it, LIDO is a Hosky Rug Pool.
Back to our story today: on a Cardano Over Coffee Twitter space in early May 2023, Hosky himself came on to announce that he is adding the UNHCR pool (ticket WRFGS) to the Rug Pool network. In addition, he is staking a 50k ada wallet to the pool, AND sweetening the deal so that delegators to the WRFGS pool get EVEN MORE HOSKY than the usual millions when they belly up to the doggie bowl. In the week since that announcement, as of this writing, the WRFGS pool more than quintupled its number of delegators (from about a dozen to 70+), gaining about 700k ada in delegation.
For those who may be new here, I want to reiterate what a win-win this staking option is. These delegators are not donating their ada to UNHCR, or locking it, or losing any control of their funds. They are supporting the cause by sacrificing their 5% “APR” rewards earnings – but even that sting is now lessened thanks to the deal offered by Hosky.
We are listening
These partnerships illustrate the power of community to make a difference, and we hope they are just the beginning. While UNHCR is doing meaningful and serious work with displaced people around the world, the efforts that will lead to its success don’t have to be strenuous or unpleasant.
As an individual, you can show your support by buying a cool NFT. You can stake to the WRFGS pool and collect a few million $HOSKY tokens while you’re there. You can tweet out this article to help spread the word.
If you are building on Cardano and have an idea about how your project could partner up with the WRFGS pool to build more win-win solutions, I’ll leave you with the words that were repeated to me several times during my interview with Alvaro at UNHCR:
“Get in touch with us. We are listening.”
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