Ukraine-DAO Investigation: White-Washing Crypto in Ukrainian Blood
Ukraine-DAO Investigation: White-Washing Crypto in Ukrainian Blood
How a Russian backed Crypto-Anarchist cartel masquerading as a charity tricked donors and framed the Ukrainian Government for a PR stunt.
It started with a fundraising party by Russian opposition and punk rock group Pussy Riot marketing the sale of a Ukrainian flag.
People sharing, dancing and singing, 7 Million raised in the biggest NFT sale ever.
What could possibly go wrong?
This article promises to give you a comprehensive picture of what exactly the Ukraine-DAO is, who is behind it and why.
Also what it isn’t and what was the Agenda behind it. Because it will become evidently clear there was and still is one.
SO, What is the “Ukraine-DAO”?
Here is what they say on their own website ukrainedao.love :
“Est. 21 Feb 2022, Ukraine-DAO is an online collective that harnesses the power of Web3 tech and community to defend Ukraine against the russian invasion.”
Notice a few things, but first, what on god’s green earth is an “online collective”? and How does “harnessing the Web3 tech to defend Ukraine” exactly work? More Importantly notice what it didn’t say, No mention of Charity or even the word fundraising.
But that was not always the case, it only came to be in such manner after the fundraising was completed, watch this statement from Ukraine-DAO and Vitalik.
Now the DAO Claims it was never a charity and was never meant to raise any money.
In essence it became retroactively something that was never advertised when the initial fundraising happened.
Now let’s talk about who is behind the DAO and who will help “harnessing the Web3 tech to defend Ukraine”!
Vitalik Butirn
Vitalik is a Russian-Canadian national, and the founder of Ethereum.
Since Satochi Nakamoto is Unknown, Vitalik is considered the Crypto figure of authority.
Reputation
Although popular among a group that resembles a cult of NFT and CryptoCurrencies, when it comes to the real world it is no good, and to western institutions and banks it is HORRIBLE.
Why?
It was hypothesized that ETH was built in 2015 with the Russian government in mind (not just the currency, the whole platform). Later, in 2017, that hypothesis was confirmed when Mr. Vitalik started a joint venture with the Russian Government directly and with VEB Bank (occasionally coined “FSB Bank” for its close ties to FSB).
I asked a simple question to someone who would know, “Can you have a joint venture with a state-affiliated Russian bank that would later be used in a sanctions evasion scheme for Venezuelan oil called PETRO after meeting Vladimir Putin?” They answered, “Anything bigger than an ice cream stand will require you to get vetted, proportionally to the size and sensitivity of the venture.” I replied, “What does vetting mean in Russian FSB language?” The answer was implied, that it’s not simply knowing your background, “it is more active than that and it is also proportional to the size and sensitivity of the venture.”
Vitalik, after meeting Vladimir Putin, also created “Ethereum Russia” with Russian state-owned VEB Bank. He attended a signing ceremony with its head Sergei Gorkov. VEB Bank is intertwined with Russian intelligence. And the Russian prime minister is, by law, the chairman of its supervisory board.
Vitalik is smart enough to know that if there is someone or some country to adopt Etherum, it would be Russia. While the US and EU already have stable, trusted and highly regulated massive financial systems, no one wants Russia’s ruble.
It is also worth mentioning that Vitalik Buterin stated he donated to Ukraine via Tornado cash for Anonymity. Yet he stated this fact to global news agencies which negates the argument in his case. At least it was a clear bid to try to legitimize a use case for crypto mixers.
The WEB3 and ETH Network that was developed is Extremely complex. WEB3 and ETH are marketed with some unattainable fantasies while in reality, 95% of the time, the only use for such complexity is an endless amount of scams, money laundering, tax and sanction-evasion schemes.
Vitalik knows this. And hence, Vitalik embarked on a PR philanthropy campaign to try to fix the reputation problem for him and for Ethereum.
Part of that effort is the Ukraine-DAO
The PleasrDAO
Here is how they self-describe on Twitter @PleasrDAO
“PleasrDAO”
a cartel of $PEEPS who aim to plz. @ownthedoge”
How did they start? It was buying Edward Snowden Pentagon Papers NFT for 5.5 million dollars decrypt edward-snowden-will-auction-activism-nft-via-live-pleasrdao-show.
Edward Snowden is currently in Russia and allegedly cooperated with the Russians regarding his activities. businessinsider.com/ex-spies-say-snowden-is-working-with-russia.
The “collective” use certain terminology as part of their brand. For example, the CEO is called “pleaser in chief,” the token they have is called $peeps and so forth.
The company that invested in them is A16z. Crypts Investment also made a similar investment in “Friends with Benefits” DAO.
Leonid Radvinsky
Owner of OnlyFans, the most Successful entrepreneur in the Adult entertainment industry in history. Ukrainian for a father who practiced the same trade that he passed on to his son in Odessa in the 90s taking advantage of Ukrainian women in the post-Soviet Union economic crisis, along with (His father) showing pro-Putin sentiments. For example:
“Oct 27, 2017
1:52PM ET
I told all of you Do not bet against Putin Oil is going up.” investing.com/members/SavelyRadvinsky/comments
Reputation
Publicly almost None, meaning neither good or bad since publicly he does not exist, due to a reputation of suing and censoring any negative media written about him.
In reality his reputation is -100%. A few examples would be bribing Meta Officials to label female models on Instagram as terrorists in an effort to increase traffic to OnlyFans. (Notice he plays the long game and a great chess player, it also worked.)
How about selling fake passwords for pedophiles since he noticed a high unmet demand? Young Leonid would sell access to “illegal” and “hacked” passwords to secret underage porn websites and also celebrities’ leaked porn. forbes.com/history-of-onlyfans-billionaire-owner
Of course the passwords he sold were fake. But the money he took was not, and no pedophile would ever report being scammed out of money after not receiving promised pedophile material.
Along with a long list of models waking up to disappearing account balances on OnlyFans and thousands of strike-down requests submitted to Google.com when they do complain so that he hides those complaints. forensicnews.net/onlyfans-faces-allegations-of-fraud-theft
insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents
Generally not really a nice guy who is big on philanthropy. If Leonid pays a dollar it is only for a good reason that benefits Leonid.
His reputation needed a lot of work, so he saw donating a few million dollars to Ukraine-DAO through OnlyFans as a smart idea. But forget about the PR campaign, Leonid has more than one billion dollars in frozen fiat currency (billion with a b).
vice.com/onlyfans-suspicious-activity-reports-leo-radvinsky
Banks hate Leonid since charge backs when dealing with the porn industry are so common, along with other accusations regarding OnlyFans that I will not mention here. Leonid in turn hates banks back and is on a multi-pronged plan to undermine the whole banking system by increasing crypto adoption and backing Ethereum.
One aspect of this plan to free his empire from banks regulation and any regulation is his investment on Elixir.
lr.com/post/leo-radvinsky-an-elixir-evangelist
Elixir is an open source coding language that he also hopes can one day make him independent of tech giants.
Who knows, his plan might even involve developing his own internet or a dark web alternative that would allow him to produce, sell, market and profit from any content he wants with no regulation.
Ukraine-DAO helps him in his goals on many fronts and that’s why out of hundreds of Charities this non-charity of questionable character was his favorite.
Doctor Bitcoin (Mark Alexander Hopkin)
justice.gov/doctor-bitcoin-pleads-guilty-illegal-cash-crypto-scheme
There are experts in every industry. When it comes to block chain money laundering, Dr. Bitcoin (yes he has a Ph.D. in bitcoin) is arguably the best mind in the world.
Although he did a really good job in his money laundering Scheme involving a Nigerian scam (not using the word “allegedly” since he is currently in prison after being convicted of that crime).
Now why is Dr. Bitcoin, one of the founders of the Ukraine-DAO, a leading expert in money laundering? I will leave that to your imagination.
Free Ross-DAO
Most of the above founders are connected already on many levels, but it is safe to say FreeRoss-DAO is the parent of the Ukraine-DAO.
Ross Albright is currently serving 2 life-sentences for many activities around his Silk Road website on the dark web.
A website that changed the way drug trafficking is done. Other than that Ross Paid for an assassin to kill someone and asked for footage to confirm the murder (luckily the murder didn’t happen although he thought it did).
For this reason Ross is the champion of all the groups above. After all, they are involved in one business or another that is either illegal or highly scrutinized by banks. In all cases they all hate the establishment.
If the argument of good uses for block chain is to be made it wouldn’t make sense to make the above party the champions of such an idea since they have proven otherwise by their own actions.
Ray Pax Youssef
Cofounder of Paxful.com and Free RossDAO (and by proxy Ukraine-DAO.)
It is no secret what Ray Youssef business model at Paxful is.
Paxful’s (a crypto exchange) Main revenue stream was selling bitcoin vouchers and coupons to Adult performers at Backpage.com after it (again) got kicked out of Visa and Master Card and switched to a crypto-only model and Pax filled that void.
Ray was arrested with his cofounders for pointing an Ar15 at his neighbors in Florida. When law enforcement arrived they confiscated 500 rounds of Ammunition, a box of hashish, and another box of cocaine.
wsvn.com/news/local/police-arrest-3-accused-of-wielding-assault-rifle-atop-south-beach-condo
Allegedly Ray Pays any entity in order to take any article about this incident down and he personally blocked me after I did so before (no he didn’t pay me) .
After listing the Founders above, I would love to input some of my own experience.
I witnessed the beginning of a cult-like organization that rose out of the Ukraine cyber war scene. It is led by Alona Shevchenko, a Ukrainian Russian speaker who later adopted a brand of far-right extremism. She went on to siphon donations away from multiple Ukraine aid charities while embarking on a crusade to discredit all Ukraine supporters, dox fighters, send death threats, operate an espionage operation to monitor anyone who discredits her, and all of that raised a lot of question marks about her true intentions.
Back to Ray Paxful. Out of all the parties involved he is the most anti-establishment, the one with closest ties to Russian entities with some of his Favorite books, “The Secrets of the Federal Reserve” by Eustace Mullins and “THE CROWD: A Study of the Popular Mind” by Gustave Le Bon to name a few. He also operates a big branch of Paxful in Russia.
www.wsj.com/articles/as-calls-to-leave-russia-continue-some-u-s-tech-firms-opt-to-stay
Interestingly, Ray from Paxful traveled from NYC to London to meet Alona. The meeting happened on 20th Feb 2022. Ray represented FreeRossDAO.
Hours later after meeting him Alona Shevchenko published an open letter on FreeRossDAO on Feb 21 2022, calling the group to action. The letter was Russian-friendly and called for peace in general with a moderate tone.
48 hours pre invasion, actors involved in FreeRossDAO came together fast. Since no one knew Alona Shevchenko, Pussy Riot was key to helping her.
Pussy Riot did the marketing, and the Ukrainian flag NFT sold for almost 7 million dollars. But the bulk came not from the general public but mainly from Leonid Radvinsky and Vitalik Buterin, and for a good reason.
More background on Alona Shevchenko:
Alona Victorovna Shevchenko was born in 1993 in a small village in eastern Ukraine. Grew Up with Russian as her native language to a family who owned a trucking business. She graduated from Dnepropetrovsk university in English and Russian studies. Around 2015 she moved to the UK where she worked as a translator for legal documents written in Russian.
According to Alona, around 2020 she suddenly quit her job due to them labeling her “anti-establishment” and a “poor performer.” Shortly after leaving her job she gets into Pussy Riot’s circle with Nadia which was not surprising given that Alona lived in Brighton and spoke Russian. Soon Pussy Riot may have introduced her to FreeRossDAO where she became a spokesperson. She then moved to a very expensive flat in central London although she claimed her salary was 1300$ per month according to one block chain transaction that was later recorded.
No one knows how she exactly made a living for those two years. But what is publicly available is her involvement with a crypto org called GRO protocol DAO. It was a startup that raised 7 million dollars in venture capital. The idea was to leverage stable coins through some sort of fractional banking. The GRO protocol issued a crypto currency called $GRO. It spiked at more that 100 million$ before crashing by 99.9%. Allegations of pump and dump abound, although that is not uncommon in crypto.
In February 2022 she claimed to have been informed by intelligence services that Ukraine will be invaded. On 15 February 2022 she creates a new wallet that will later be her official wallet and received 1325$ from FreeRossDAO. The transaction was sent by an affiliate of the pleasrDAO.
On 20 February 2022 Alona met Mohamed Azab Youseff, the founder of Paxful the crypto exchange peer to peer marketplace along with being the key figure in FreeRossDAO.
Youssef is a very interesting character, having voiced support for Russia, refused to pull out from Russian markets and still holds a very large footprint on the Russian crypto scene. On February 12th he tweeted a tweet suggesting that if Russia was cut from swift, bitcoin adoption will increase, he also tweeted that Russia posed no threat to Ukraine, on his timeline he has pictures in Russia with a Russian flag around his neck in russia’s world cup.
It remains an open question what the meeting between him and Alona was about but 24 hours later Alona publishes an open letter on FreeRoss blog saying she loves Russian literature and her problem is with Putin not Russians. She conveyed a message of peace in general.
Then 24 hours later (48 hours before war even started) Alona puts out a call for a dao as a charity to benefit Ukraine. She contacts her friends at Pussy Riot, pleaserDAO and FreeRossDAO, and they start a team effort to create the first Ukrainian decentralized autonomous organization.
Alona was relatively unknown at that time but she might have been connected to Nadia from Pussy Riot which gave legitimacy to the initiative. Pussy Riot led an effort to raise funds using an NFT they created of a Ukrainian flag that sold for a whopping 7 million dollars.
It is unknown how Alona was connected to Vitalik but they seem to have had a connection even before 2022, in fact the first tweet from Alona's account ever was about the Ethereum fork, her account name itself is called Cryptodrftng in anticipation for the yet to happen (at that time) Ethereum split .
During the party bid fundraiser for the NFT auction a bid for 5 million dollars worth of ETH was placed by Leonid Radvinsky himself. His bid is recorded on the block chain but did not go through, and later he canceled the bid but then sent 4 million$ to an unknown address.
Shortly after, OnlyFans sent 500 ETH and Leonid personally sent another small amount using another wallet connected to him .
coindesk.com/onlyfans-donated-500-eth-to-dao-supporting-ukraine
After the successful fundraiser, the NFT became the most valuable to be ever sold and made headlines everywhere largely due to Pussy Riot involvement.
3.5 million dollars were sent from Ukraine-DAO to “come back alive” a reputable org, 1 million to the Ukrainian army and another sum to an LGBTQ org in Ukraine, about 500,000$ remained.
Here is where severe issues start to arise, Alona accused Pussy Riot of trying to steal her achievement because she is Ukrainian and kicked them out of the DAO.
Pussy Riot wanted to make sure the money was disbursed before they leave but Alona told them they need to leave because they are Russian. Pussy Riot went public and said they didn't have a prior agreement that the money remaining in the DAO wallet will be given to Alona.
For some reason Pussy Riot withdrew and deleted their tweets. Soon after, a vote was held to issue Alona 5000$ per month as a salary. Although the DAO is supposed to require 3 votes to pass a motion, “Crypto Steve” gave the permission somehow and so far Alona got paid 55000 from Ukraine-DAO alone.
Alona developed a brand, and it was based on extreme nationalism, this was not the case before the war since most of her friends were Russian and she stated 2 days before the war she loved Russian literature and has no problem with Russians.
freerossdao.org/2022/02/21/open-letter-on-the-war-in-ukraine-from-alona-frd-community-lead-2
During the war of aggression and genocide Russia is committing, Alona realized an extremist approach will do good financially.
She started to form close relationships will a Nazi far right fringe in Ukraine, and unlike her letter 2 days before war she suddenly realized she hates all Russians and have always done so.
The DAO mission changed from fundraising to a tool to counter misinformation in a bid to justify her salary and develop a brand.
She operated a group of devout followers who would look into all twitter accounts of western supporters for Ukraine, she would then attack them if she finds a mildly controversial tweet, for example if someone is advocating to allow Russians to escape mobilization Alona would label that as an offense and say “Russians should not pollute other countries”. Although some countries may adopt that position for national security reasons out of extra precaution Alona would go as far as adding that account into a list and called it a “Russian foreign asset list.” These lists included the Red Cross, BellingCat, the Telegraph and another 165 mostly pro-Ukraine Twitter accounts or just random institutions.
With time her actions started to resemble that of a cult so I started to tweet about what I see and that this is cultish behavior.
Alona in turn doubled down, she changed her Twitter category to “Spiritual leader” and changed her profile name to “the Cult of the Ukrainian armed forces.”
With time she and her group’s developed to become even more extreme, she started recording spaces, monitoring who liked which tweet and organizing all of that in files. Out of the 15 most famous space hosts for supporting Ukraine she attacked 15 of them.
She would ask to speak and talk for 30 minutes and if she was interrupted she would ask her followers to black list an individual and start a relentless campaign against them. Throughout the months Alona cashed in on every disaster, war and revolution. Including the more recently formed IranDAO launched around the time of the Iranian Revolution, and then the TurkeyDAO after the earthquake, although she failed to mention the earthquake victims until a full 5 days after launch.
Alona had an initiative called “Ukraine-DAO Trucks,” where she said she will raise money to transport aid between Poland and Ukraine. She raised 32,000$ on the block chain alone but she later refused to provide receipts.
Alona would create disagreements using her team and then when engagement rose higher, she would insert a link to her “buy me a coffee" link in order to solicit donations using the traffic.
With time supporters got tired of infighting and hundreds of them left Twitter entirely. Most spaces either disappeared or cut down.
Alona and her team tried to dox at least one Ukrainian Foreign Legion fighter and one Ukrainian Territorial Defense fighter due to a vendetta about one of her relationships.
One of her cult followers would call employers of her enemies and report that they are harassing a Ukrainian woman. He operated 36 accounts and was recording up to 5 spaces simultaneously using 5 devices. He later threatened physical violence to a few Ukraine supporters.
The cult extremism started to change from a half joke to a full-on extremist cult. Alona organized a session to pray in her name that is still available on Twitter. Rumors about a pledge of allegiance to her circulate and according to former cult members do exist.
Those who leave the cult are excommunicated and blocked by all other members no matter if they are friends or not.
What is well known and proven is that Alona made close to 100,000$ out of donations publicly while championing a far right extremist cult. A lot of questions remain unanswered.
Conclusion
What do all the actors have in common ?
Is it clear what the goals of this group is now? It has everything to do with Crypto adoption, white washing a questionable reputation (being generous) and dark illegal activities focusing mostly on payment processing and very little to do with having a positive impact on Ukraine.
In essense Alona Shevchenko disinformation campain againt hundreds of Ukrainian supporters led to the creation of Hundreds of enemies that in turn started to investigate her behavior and uncovered all this Scheme.
If it wasn’t for the damage caused to Ukraine reputation by her campaign, Ukraine-DAO creation would have been a net positive since her attacks and enemy creation brought enough attention to all the criminal activity above.
Like Putin’s war of aggression that backfired in every way possible, the Campaign launched by the Ukraine-DAO crypto anarchists syndicate to clean up their reputation ended up hurting their reputation 10 fold.
A Request for Authorities and Ukrainian Government officials
I hereby request the Ukrainian government and the ministry of digital transformation to cut all ties with this suspicious entity, Ukraine-DAO. It is nothing more than a cartel of dark web crypto anarchists involved in a whole spectrum of criminality. It is trying to wash its dirty reputation with the blood of Ukrainians all while doing more harm in the information space and tarnish the good will of Ukraine.
I am confident that the Ukrainian government will make this attempt unsuccessful.
Ukraine with its heroes and great people deserve better than this, such is our faith and love for you and your people.
I also call for an open investigation of Leonid Radvistky activities listed above.
I request the investigation of Ray Pax for defrauding consumers and his role aiding BackPage.com and other illegal activities.
I urge the investigation of Vitalik Butrin for his role in breaking previous sanctions and his ties to the FSB.
The investigation of Alona Shevchenko for her ties to all the above parties, Vitalik Buterin, financial misconduct and spread of misinformation in coordination with her associates—notably Walter Lekh, Jr. from Lviv—for his role embezzling money from a Ukrainian Charity and aiding Alona in other ways.
NOTE FROM AUTHOR
This Investigation lasted for 6 months. I had hundreds of other Ukraine supporters’ help through sharing their findings and experiences. None of Us worked or works for a professional investigation organization and all the Information above is already public. But this Investigation ties all the pieces together.
If you appreciate such work please subscribe to support this channel and cover any potential legal fees as a result.
сла́ва Украї́ні!