Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, co-founder of Binance, has successfully raised over a million dollars in public donations for his edutech initiative, Giggle Academy, in less than half a day, primarily thanks to a memecoin.
At the time of writing, Giggle Academy’s donation address reflected a balance exceeding 1,311 BNB (BNB), valued at over $1.3 million, as per the BNB Smart Chain scan tool BscScan, following the initiation of donations on Sunday.
A significant share of these donations originated from a memecoin named “Giggle,” which was introduced by the Giggle Fund. This fund has been directing trading fees associated with the memecoin to the Giggle Academy in BNB.
Giggle Academy asserted that all donations are allocated towards community development, rewarding creators, ecosystem enhancement, and product marketing. The project’s concept paper proposes a model wherein educators can share educational content and receive rewards for top performances, enabling the next to “rise to the top.”
Giggle Fund introduced shortly after user inquiry
An X user, known as RUNE, initially inquired CZ if the initiative would accept tokens as donations, referencing instances like Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s $1 billion donation of Shiba Inu coins to a COVID-19 relief fund in India in 2021.
CZ responded in an X post that donations related to memecoins would be converted or sold for major altcoins, cautioning that they “appreciate the donations, but please don’t complain about the selling pressure later.”
However, RUNE subsequently clarified that “memecoin doesn’t function that way” and instead assesses a fee in BNB and transmits the token as a donation, ensuring “no one is adversely affected.”
BscScan indicates the fund has completed 967 transactions out of nearly 10,000 total to Giggle Academy since its inception.
Additionally, the transaction count for Giggle Fund surged over 470% within the last 24 hours, according to DEX Screener, with a trading volume reaching $2.8 million, describing itself as a “donation coin that directly contributes to GiggleAcademy.”
Giggle Academy aims to provide free K-12 education
The concept paper from Giggle Academy highlights its mission to offer free education to students from Kindergarten to year 12 in innovative subjects such as negotiations, finance, blockchain, and AI, particularly targeting children in impoverished or developing regions.
Related: AI and blockchain are revolutionizing traditional education systems
Furthermore, the paper clarifies that the program does not intend to supplant existing educational frameworks but will also encompass conventional subjects like math, reading, writing, and science, while deliberately excluding history and religion to avoid “excessive debate on a global scale.”
CZ has previously set an ambitious target of educating 100 million or even 1 billion children in the coming years.
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