The lion’s share of donations has come from trading fees for a newly launched memecoin called $GIGGLE, launched by an X user known as RUNE.
Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s edutech venture, Giggle Academy, managed to amass over a million dollars in public donations within half a day, thanks mainly to a memecoin.
Giggle Academy’s donation address showed a balance of over 1,311 BNB (BNB) worth over $1.3 million at the time of writing, according to the BNB Smart Chain scan tool BscScan, after opening for donations on Sunday.
A large portion of the donations came through a memecoin called “Giggle,” which was launched by the Giggle Fund, which has been sending trading fees charged for the memecoin to the Giggle Academy as BNB.
Giggle Academy said all donations are being used for community building, creator incentives, ecosystem development, plus product promotion. The project’s concept paper proposes a system where teachers can contribute educational material and offer rewards for the best performing, allowing the next to “rise to the top.”
An X user under the handle RUNE originally asked CZ if the project would accept tokens as donations, citing examples of Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who donated $1 billion worth of Shiba Inu coins to a COVID-19 relief fund in India in 2021.
CZ addressed in an X post that any memecoin-related donations will be converted or sold for major altcoins, adding that they “appreciate the donations, but please don’t complain about the selling pressure later.”
However, RUNE later clarified that “memecoin doesn’t work like that” and instead charges a fee in BNB and sends the token as a donation, so “No one is affected.”
BscScan shows the fund has made up 967 transactions out of the nearly 10,000 total to Giggle Academy since launching.
Meanwhile, Giggle Fund’s transaction count is up over 470% in the last 24 hours, according to DEX Screener, with volume of $2.8 million and its description pegging itself as a “donation coin that directly donates to GiggleAcademy.”
Giggle Academy’s concept paper outlines its goal to provide free education for Kindergarten to year 12 students in non-traditional educational courses such as negotiations, finance, blockchain, and AI, focusing on kids who live in poorer or developing countries.
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The paper also explains that it’s not intended to replace the existing education systems, but will also teach more traditional subjects such as maths, reading, writing, science, but avoid history and religion because of “Too much potential debate on a global platform.”
