Raised US$20 million for daughter’s medical expenses in three hours, MIRA’s Christmas miracle with “Web3 Waterdrop Funding”

Author: Ray's New World , BlockBeats

"If you could press a button and cure a child's brain tumor at the cost of immediately ending your own life, then every parent would not hesitate to be the first to press the button. But the cruelest thing is that there is no such thing. Button." Mira's father Chen Siqi wrote on Twitter. The calm and loving words reveal his helplessness and confusion.

The story behind the death button

On September 23 this year, Chen Siqi's daughter Mira was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor called craniopharyngioma. Although this tumor is benign, it is located in a very dangerous area of ​​the brain. If Mira is not careful, she may become ill and unable to take care of herself due to this brain tumor.

Chen Siqi has been actively cooperating with Dr. Todd Hankinson of the University of Colorado, the only one in the world who studies this brain tumor, and obtained a biweekly intravenous injection trial for her daughter to inhibit the growth of the tumor. However, there is currently no complete cure for this tumor, and research on this rare disease requires a large amount of financial support. So this Christmas, Chen Siqi started his web3 "Shidichi" journey.

Chen Siqi started posting on Twitter, calling on netizens to donate to the Hankinson Laboratory. A campaign to save the girl Mira was launched on Twitter, with former Uber CEO Ronak, hellopatient co-founder Alex and many other big figures supporting Mira.

The sky seemed to hear Chen Siqi's helpless cries in the corner, and saw the tears he secretly wiped away behind the door. In just 3 hours after Chen Siqi posted, she quickly raised 75,000 US dollars through gofound.me. As of now, Chen Siqi has raised US$224,000, which is still 25% away from its goal of US$300,000.

Web3 water drops reappear

However, this story that seems to be a reappearance of Shuidichou in the circle of friends on Twitter has actually just begun. In addition to raising funds through Web2, Chen Siqi also did not forget to include her Solana and BTC addresses.

Mira’s story could not have spread in the crypto industry without the efforts of two men.

One is Shaw who is still preaching in China. After learning about Mira's experience, Shaw donated $100,000 in $degenai tokens to Chen Siqi's wallet to help their family tide over the difficulties. The other is the Dev who created the token at pump.fun, Waddles . After seeing Mira's deeds, Waddles donated 50% of $MIRA tokens to the father who was running around to treat his daughter. Where there is attention, there is money flow. With the support of Web3 and Web2 celebrities such as Shaw and Ronak, MIRA achieved an increase of nearly 60 times in less than 3 hours.

So who is Chen Siqi and why does she receive Shaw's attention? Chen Siqi is the founder and CEO of Runway, a start-up company funded by a16z. In addition, Chen Siqi also served as CEO of SandVR (a16z) and product president of Postmates (later acquired by Uber). It is precisely because of his professional experience that he has so many "big boss" platforms.

At the same time, Bio Protocol has also paid attention to this scientific donation event and believes that decentralized scientific funding will become the main use case of encryption in the next cycle. In real life, rare disease research is rarely funded, and the incidents of pump.fun and MIRA further pushed the Desci narrative to a climax.

With the interaction between Bio Protocol and Shaw, MIRA has become a representative Meme of the Desci concept.

Dad Chen, who walks on a tightrope: How should donations be disposed of?

Although there is a large amount of money, how to handle this donation is also a problem. Obviously, Chen Siqi was also at a loss. Once the funds are processed, not only can we raise funds for our daughter, but we can even further expand the development direction of Desci. If it is not handled well, it will not only cause public outrage, but it is also likely that people will not pay for similar cases just like when Judge Wang Hao said, "Why should you help me if you didn't touch it?"

Therefore, Chen Siqi handled it very carefully. As early as 4 hours ago, Chen Siqi announced his intention to sell 10% of the supply sometime today to donate to Hankinson Laboratory, and the remaining part will be retained, accounting for 5% of the total supply. He will not sell any more tokens unless announced 24 hours in advance. In terms of fund handling, Chen Siqi also began to solicit opinions from netizens on Twitter whether to sell part of her positions, and announced that all new incoming funds would be donated to the Hankinson Laboratory for tumor research.

Although the story of Chen Siqi and Mira has received mixed reviews on Twitter, the blockchain has used its own transparency and widespread participation to prove the feasibility of on-chain donations and fundraising, and the flow of every fund can be seen under the public's gaze. guaranteed. Perhaps on-chain donations will be a ray of hope on the eve of the large-scale application of Web3.