Alona Shevchenko is the Co-founder & Operational Lead of Ukraine DAO. The UkraineDAO is a DAO organized to help Ukrainian organizations and people to fight the war against Russia. The UkraineDAO has donated over $7 million, including to the Ukrainian government and NGOs. They have organized both online and offline to serve Ukraine, showing how charity, war relief, and evacuation efforts can be organized through DAOs. The Ukrainian flag NFT auctioned by Ukraine DAO is the tenth most expensive NFT ever sold, showing how non-fungible tokens can solve real-life problems. Ukraine DAO has been featured in many major publications, including Forbes, Fortune, ABC, Billboard, Coindesk, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Economist, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Alona is a qualified translator (Diploma in Translation), Member of the Chartered Institute of Linguists. She is fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, English, and French. Before co-founding the Ukraine DAO, she participated in various crypto projects and DAOs, including the Free Ross DAO, where she was a regular contributor, and Grwth Lbs, where she focused on community and partnerships. We begin our conversation by discussing the current state of Ukraine and why Ukraine will win the war with Russia. We discuss a variety of topics including UkraineDAO, the realities of the war, DAO governance, the power of web3 and crypto in times of war, and much more. We discuss how leading up to the War with Russia, Ukrainians were negatively portrayed by Russian media and propaganda. Alona expresses that Western governments and intelligence organizations purposely ignored these signs for political reasons. Alona explains why people should refer to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia as a war and not a crisis. We discuss how the failure of the traditional banking system has impacted ordinary Ukrainian citizens and how crypto provided financial rails to many Ukrainian citizens. Our next conversation topic centered around how and why she got involved with the Free Ross DAO. Alona shares the backstory of founding UkraineDAO. We discuss how the DAO formed organically and was a grassroots movement. Alona discusses her relationship with Dmitriy Buterin and Vitalik Buterin and how they have helped her build UkraineDAO. We discuss what is unique about the UkraineDAO. We discuss the governance dynamics of DAOs and ways to improve the current governance structure of DAOs. Alona explains how Holacracy works and why the UkraineDAO has implemented it in their governance model. We also discuss why UkraineDAO does not have a token. Alona discusses how UkraineDAO is the first DAO to be accepted at a state level and is widely seen as a fantastic thing by noncrypto native people. Our final discussion topic centered around the importance of cultural fit in an organization and how this is the guiding principle for UkraineDAO.
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