About half of the crypto donation campaigns for Ukraine were scams, says blockchain research report

• About half of Ukraine crypto donation campaigns were scams, a new report.
• TRM analyzed data from 50 distinct campaigns for Ukraine humanitarian relief or military support.

Millions of dollars worth of crypto donations have flooded into Ukraine since Russia invaded last month, but about half of the purported humanitarian campaigns were scams, according to a new report by blockchain research firm TRM.

Based on data TRM collected from 50 distinct crypto-donation campaigns to send funds to humanitarian or military efforts in Ukraine, "obvious scam" campaigns comprised about half of them.

TRM researchers noted that the surge in global attention and people's eagerness to donate to Ukraine created an opportunity for scammers to promote fake fundraisers. Organizations used mock-campaign names like Support Ukraine, Ukraine-Fund, and Ukraine NOW to lure donations.

"Most of these scams were quickly identified as such by researchers and hosting providers, and their sites were taken down," TRM wrote. "They raised anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to a couple thousand, before being taken down."

The report highlighted which indicators they used to identify sham donation campaigns. Twitter revealed many of these, with things like unverified accounts managing campaigns, bot-like activity, or the deletion of a Twitter handle hours within launching.

Meanwhile, a new report by Atlas VPN found that crypto blockchain hackers have stolen almost $700 million in just three months this year. Just this week, a hacker exploited popular play-to-earn game Axie Infinity for over $600 million in tokens.

TRM documented over $135.7 million in cryptocurrency sent to Ukraine between February 22 and March 28, with novel campaign types emerging like those conducted on Twitter or Discord, or through the minting of non-fungible tokens.