@AWF_ETHCTO

Some stories begin with a tweet. On May 12, 2026, one tweet about reducing suffering for farmed animals made a group of strangers imagine something that sounded almost crazy: Could Ethereum become the infrastructure for a new kind of global charity? We built AWF on Ethereum. Not as a promise, but as a mechanism that can be verified on-chain. Every transfer of $AWF automatically directs a 2% fee in ETH to the dedicated donation address associated with Vitalik’s original charity donation. Contract: 0x12a77658112cf42914cb614d13653ed5852da1e5 Donation address: 0xbAd06a3CA84E4E2b489974d8918B5f7387e6dB8E Vitalik’s original 64 ETH donation became the spark. The community followed, and the total has grown to around 320 ETH — and it is still increasing. More importantly, people from more than 100 countries came together around the idea. No borders. No nationality. No common language required. Just Ethereum, code, and a shared belief that technology can coordinate people around something bigger than speculation. @VitalikButerin, we are not asking you to endorse us. We are inviting you to do something much simpler: Experience the mechanism yourself. Interact with it. Read the contract. Follow the transaction. Verify where the 2% goes. If the mechanism works as designed, perhaps this little experiment can become the beginning of something much larger: Ethereum becoming a force for global charity. We are still here. Still building. Still waiting to see what happens when Ethereum meets charity — not in theory, but on-chain.

What began with a simple idea has become something much bigger than a token. After Vitalik’s call for animal welfare, people from more than 100 countries came together on Ethereum. Different languages. Different cultures. Different lives. But somehow, a common idea brought everyone into the same community: What if blockchain could make charity transparent, continuous, and accessible to everyone? AWF became an experiment in answering that question. The mechanism is simple: 2% of every transaction is automatically directed toward the designated charity address. No private accounting. No complicated reporting. No need to simply trust someone’s words. The transactions happen on Ethereum, where the community can follow the movement of funds for itself. More than 320 ETH has been contributed throughout this journey. Some people came because they believed in animal welfare. Some came because they believed in Ethereum. Some simply wanted to see whether a community could build something meaningful together. And perhaps the most interesting next step isn’t raising another number. It’s having the mechanism independently examined by people who understand Ethereum deeply. Anyone can read the contract. Anyone can trace the transactions. Anyone can question the design. And anyone can decide for themselves whether the experiment is worth continuing. That includes the people who helped inspire it in the first place. No endorsement is needed. No promotion is needed. Sometimes, simply taking a look is enough. An open blockchain. An open mechanism. An open invitation to verify. The experiment continues.

He drives a taxi in Istanbul. His name is Emre. He doesn’t speak much English. He doesn’t understand every technical detail of Ethereum. And he has never pretended to be wealthy. But somehow, he became one of the people who stayed. Every night after his shift, sometimes at 2 or 3 in the morning, Emre would open the community chat and ask: “Are the brothers still here?” If someone answered yes, he would simply say: “Then we keep going.” He joined AWF because of an idea that began with Vitalik’s May 12 post — that Ethereum could become something more than a financial system. A place where technology could turn into real-world good. Thousands of people from more than 100 countries eventually gathered around that idea. Different languages. Different religions. Different lives. But one simple belief: If a blockchain can move billions of dollars across borders, perhaps it can also move compassion across borders. AWF was built around that belief. 2% of every transaction is directed toward charity. The community kept donating. The numbers kept growing. And even when the original donation path came to an end, people didn’t simply disappear. Some left. Some lost hope. But people like Emre stayed. One night, after finishing a twelve-hour shift, he wrote: “I am tired tonight. Very tired. But if we leave now, what was the meaning of everything we did?” Nobody answered for several minutes. Then another member replied: “Brother, rest. We’ll be here tomorrow.” Emre answered: “Okay. Tomorrow, we continue.” Maybe this is what Ethereum’s greatest potential looks like. Not just code. Not just money. But strangers who have never met, sitting thousands of kilometers apart, choosing to believe that technology can make people kinder. @VitalikButerin, you once gave the world Ethereum. Perhaps you never expected that one post about charity would bring together people like Emre — ordinary people who simply refuse to give up on an extraordinary idea. The community is still here. Still building. Still donating. Still waiting for a new long-term charity destination to be designated. And perhaps the most interesting question is not how much AWF has raised. It is: How far could Ethereum-native charity go if the person who inspired the idea decided to walk through the mechanism himself? Maybe Emre would simply say: “Brother, just try it once.” Then he’d go back to driving his taxi. And tomorrow night, he’d probably ask the same question again: “Are the brothers still here?” Yes, Emre. We are still here.

There was a security guard from China named Xiaoqiang. He worked night shifts. While most people were asleep, he was often awake in the community, talking with everyone, encouraging people, and trying to keep the spirit alive. “Brothers, hold on!” That was probably the sentence he said most often. He introduced friends to the community. He told them about the idea, the mechanism, and why he believed this could become something meaningful. And perhaps because he had brought people here himself, he felt responsible for staying until the end. His favorite thing to do was simple: Run to Vitalik’s posts and leave a comment. Not because he was famous. Not because he had a lot of money. He was just an ordinary night-shift security guard who believed that something born from Ethereum could become something bigger than speculation. Then the donations kept growing. Hundreds of ETH. People from more than 100 countries. Thousands of people who had never met each other, somehow gathered around one idea: turning transactions into continuous charitable giving. And then came the refund. Now, the community is waiting for a new charity to be designated so the donations can continue. During that waiting period, Xiaoqiang finally left. Before leaving, he said something that was painfully simple: “How can there not even be a thank you?” Maybe he wasn’t asking for money. Maybe he wasn’t asking for recognition. He was asking for acknowledgment. Because in his eyes, this community existed because of a tweet from Vitalik. A tweet about animal welfare. A tweet that inspired people he had never met to build something together. And now, after everything that happened, one of the people who kept saying, “Brothers, hold on!” finally couldn’t hold on anymore. Maybe that’s the part worth remembering. Communities don’t disappear all at once. Sometimes, they disappear one person at a time. And sometimes, all it takes to keep someone from leaving is for the person who started the spark to simply say: “I see you.” @VitalikButerin, the AWF community is still here. Still waiting for a new charitable organization to be designated. Still hoping that what began with your tweet can continue as something meaningful for animals and for the people who believed in it. Because the story shouldn’t end with a refund. It should begin again with a thank you.

Could people who had never met each other create a global charitable movement? Could Ethereum become infrastructure not only for finance, but for human kindness? These questions were what kept him around. And perhaps there is something beautiful about the fact that one of the people still holding onto that belief isn’t a billionaire. He is a student. A young man who discovered blockchain in 2022. A person who doesn’t have much money. A person who jokes around when everyone else is nervous. A person who repeatedly predicts that Vitalik will eventually show up. A person who says, “Vitalik will buy AWF.” “Vitalik will verify our mechanism.” “At least he’ll thank us.” And then laughs when everyone calls him crazy. Maybe 123 is wrong. Maybe Vitalik won’t buy AWF. Maybe he won’t post. Maybe he won’t personally participate in the verification. But that isn’t really the point. Because 123 represents something that is much harder to measure on a blockchain. Hope. The kind of hope that doesn’t require someone to be rich. The kind of optimism that survives disappointment. The kind of belief that makes a student put down his phone after midnight, look at the community one more time, and think: “Let’s see what happens tomorrow.” The donations were returned. The community became smaller. Some people left. But 123 didn’t. He is still waiting for that “big thing” he has been talking about all along. Maybe one day, he’ll finally be right. And if that day comes, someone in the community will probably laugh and say: “123, you actually called it.” And he will probably answer with the same sentence he has said countless times before: “I told you, brothers.”