Crypto Savants Bred in Ukraine Send a Lifeline Back Home
Startups and entrepreneurs with ties to Ukraine are organizing relief efforts and mobilizing support in response to an increasingly dire situation.
Volunteers sort donated provisions in Lviv, Ukraine in the kind of relief efforts being supported by the crypto community.
Photographer: Erin Trieb/BloombergIllia Polosukhin is the kind of transnational, tech-savvy entrepreneur who has helped build Ukraine’s reputation as a breeding ground for crypto talent. A native of Kharkiv, he attended Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute before moving to Silicon Valley to work as a software engineer with an expertise in artificial intelligence. Later, he helped create a blockchain that is now widely used in the crypto world.
All the while, Polosukhin has kept up ties to his home country, including Ukrainian developers who are using his blockchain, the NEAR Protocol, to build platforms like non-fungible token marketplaces and virtual games. Now, with Ukraine under siege and many in the country’s crypto community in flight, Polosukhin is pitching in on relief efforts, helping to raise money and awareness as part of a broad, grassroots movement in the industry.