Pledge Utility Coin is a new crypto project helping to facilitate the giving and receiving of charitable donations through the blockchain. First launched in late 2021 on the back of collective interest from a business-related WhatsApp group, PUC has since generated a significant amount of attention and hype through several token airdrops and Telegram AMA sessions. The founders are seeking to bridge the gap between would-be donors from all over the world and local communities in need of support. The timing of the project is also worth noting, as charities have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, supply issues, staffing and operational uncertainty.
Why charity?The nonprofit industry is highly fragmented, and the PUC goal is to aggregate this industry through innovations in the blockchain space. Another aspect of crypto that makes the charity space a huge untapped potential is blockchain’s ability to make instant payments across international borders. Many of the inequalities that charitable giving aims to solve are cross-border in nature. While a number of large charities essentially now function as institutional international organisations with large hierarchies, small and medium-sized foundations and initiatives working on the ground alongside the communities they are helping often lack the funds to make a real impact. This is where Pledge Utility Coin comes in and, with a list of partners that already covers West and East Africa, the US, Germany and the UK, the opportunities to shake up the charity sector are enormous.
Smart contracts and smart chains for charityInitially, Pledge Utility Coin will send charitable donations to specific nonprofits registered with the service on the basis of transaction fees and using a proprietary smart contract. Fees of 1% to 4% are charged on each PUC transaction, with up to 13% of the fee going to a nonprofit nominated by the user and selected from the whitelist. This means that token holders will be able to passively donate to their favourite causes. The donation model will eventually be followed by a mainnet – a cryptocurrency-powered crowdfunding platform – which will include proprietary smart chains and unlock the possibility of up to 90% of transaction fees being donated to charity.
A tokenomic model based on accountability and trustAs for PUC tokenomics, the maximum coin supply is 1 quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) PUC tokens, which are issued in line with the BEP20 token standard. 300 trillion of these, or 30% of the total token supply, will be set aside for liquidity. Most of the tokens held in trust by the project itself will be locked prior to the presale (See more details at https://whitepaper.trypledge.org).These tokens will continue to be locked for the post-token sale, as a means of demonstrating the founders’ long-term commitment to the project. The tokens actually purchased in the presale, (20% of PUC’s maximum supply is earmarked for this), will not be locked. A further 10% of the token supply will be reserved for dev & marketing, while the charitable donation set aside in the tokenomics plan stands at 20%. After the listing, the monthly unlock rate for the liquidity, charity and dev & marketing allocations will be 1%, 2% and 2% respectively. Any changes to this plan will be listed in the most current whitepaper at: https://whitepaper.trypledge.org
The whitelist presale that anyone can participate inThe roadmap got underway in Q4 with the completion, acceptance and audit of the smart contract that forms the core of the Pledge Utility Coin ecosystem, for deployment in early 2022. It was the airdrop, however, which marked the first concrete step in terms of active promotion and efforts to build a community of early adopters. Launching in the second quarter of 2022, it rewarded various actions that help to build PUC’s online presence. These include following PUC’s pages on Facebook (NASDAQ:FB), Twitter (NYSE:TWTR), Instagram and LinkedIn, and sharing the presale whitelist on social media. Participants can be rewarded with around 90,000 PUC for each action taken, as well as 100,000 PUC for a referral.
Following hot on the heels of the airdrop is the presale, which is set to launch in Q2 2022, along with listings on crypto data aggregators CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko, as well as decentralised exchange PancakeSwap, which is built on top of the BNB Smart Chain. Further along the roadmap are the launch of the aforementioned crowdfunding platform and listings on mainstream exchanges, including Binance, Bittrex, Kraken, Kucoin and Poloniex, as well as integration with e-commerce stores. The creators will also run a number of campaigns throughout the initial stages of the PUC journey. One example of a campaign that is currently ongoing is an NFT auction of a custom PUC logo, with 100% of the proceeds to be donated to Ukrainian war refugees. To register for PUC’s whitelist go to https://whitelist.trypledge.org