UNHCR

Overview

Blockchain for Refugees is a charity fundraising programme that lets ADA holders donate their staking rewards while keeping their coins¹. You delegate your ADA to a stake pool called WRFGS, pointing your coins at it as backing without handing them over, and every reward that pool earns is passed on to UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency¹. The coins stay in your own wallet the whole time¹.

Blockchain for Refugees uses Cardano staking and is a joint effort between Switzerland for UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency's national partner for Switzerland and Liechtenstein², and the Cardano Foundation³. Of the money raised, 80% is unearmarked and goes to UNHCR's field operations, so it can be directed at crises that attract little funding, and 20% goes to UNHCR's innovation programmes¹.

Key Features

• Donate the staking rewards, keep the coins. The WRFGS pool's margin is set to 100%⁴, and those rewards are donated to UNHCR¹, so a delegator gives away the staking rewards on their ADA rather than the ADA itself.
• Your coins never move. Delegating does not transfer or lock your ADA: it stays in your own wallet, and you can withdraw it or point it at a different pool at any time¹.
• A published rule book for the donated funds. Switzerland for UNHCR's treasury policy keeps the donated assets only with counterparties supervised by FINMA, the Swiss financial regulator, namely Taurus AG and Sygnum Bank AG, and converts them into Swiss francs at least once a year⁵.
• A stock-exchange route for people who hold no crypto. The Cardano Impact for UNHCR product, launched with the Cardano Foundation⁶, is issued by issuance.swiss, trades on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticker CASL, and is bought through an ordinary brokerage account⁷. The staking rewards it generates go to UNHCR rather than to the investors who hold it⁸.
• Recognition from an industry body. INATBA, an international association of blockchain organisations and regulators, named the impact-staking model behind the pool its Most Exciting Project in Sustainable Innovation⁹.

What to Expect

The staking path is four steps, laid out on the Blockchain for Refugees page: set up a supported wallet, buy ADA on an exchange, send it to that wallet, then open the wallet's delegation centre and choose the ticker WRFGS¹. Yoroi, Nami, Eternl and Daedalus are the wallets named there, and the page recommends testing a transaction with a small amount of ADA before sending a large sum¹.

Registering a Cardano stake key for the first time costs a refundable deposit of two ADA plus a small network fee; delegators who already have one pay only the network fee¹⁰. After that the rewards arrive on a five-day cycle with no further action from you, and they land with the pool rather than in your wallet, which is the point¹.

Anyone who would rather not hold crypto reaches the same destination through a broker. The Cardano Impact for UNHCR product carries a 1.5% fee, is physically replicated and fully collateralised, and trades in US dollars, euros and Swiss francs⁷.

Staking is not the whole of it. The collaboration has also produced charity NFT drops with Cardano artists and studios, including an edition with the Italian painter Fabio Giampietro through the art house Valuart and a Kind Hoofs collection with Goat Tribe, with proceeds routed to UNHCR through the same pool¹¹. A community ambassador programme sits around the pool as well¹².