Raising 20 Million Dollars for Daughter's Medical Bills in Three Hours: The Christmas Miracle of 'Web3 Water Droplet Fundraising' MIRA

The donation narrative was replayed yesterday, Solana’s Christmas miracle.

Writing: A Ray’s New World

“If you could press a button to immediately end your own life in exchange for curing a child’s brain tumor, every parent would strive to be the first to press the button without hesitation. But the cruelest part is that such a button simply does not exist,” wrote Mira’s father, Chen Siqi, on Twitter. His calm and loving words reveal his helplessness and confusion.

The Story Behind the Death Button

On September 23rd 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 not careful, Mira may suffer from illness and be unable to take care of herself due to this brain tumor.

Chen Siqi has been actively collaborating with Dr. Todd Hankinson, the only researcher at the University of Colorado studying this brain tumor, to secure bi-weekly intravenous injection trials for her daughter to inhibit tumor growth. However, there is currently no complete cure for this type of tumor, and substantial funding is needed for researching this rare disease. So, this Christmas, Chen Siqi embarked on her web3 “Drip Fundraising” journey.

Chen began posting on Twitter, calling on netizens to donate to Henkinson’s lab. A campaign to save the girl Mira launched on Twitter, with former Uber CEO Ronak, hellopatient co-creator Alex and other bigwigs standing for Mira.

It seems that the heavens have heard every helpless cry from Chen Siqi in the corner, and seen every tear she wiped away behind the door. In just 3 hours after Chen Siqi’s post, a rapid fundraising of $75,000 was quickly raised through gofound.me. As of now, Chen Siqi has raised $224,000, 25% away from her $300,000 goal.

Web3 Drop Crowdfunding Reappears

However, such a story that seems to be reproduced on Twitter by a circle of friends has only just begun. In addition to raising funds through Web2, Chen did not forget to attach her Solana and BTC addresses.

Mira’s story was able to get out of the circle in crypto because of the efforts of two men.

One is Shaw, who is still evangelizing in China. After learning about Mira’s situation, Shaw donated $100,000 worth of $degenai tokens to Chen Siqi’s wallet to help their family through this difficult time. The other is Waddles, the developer behind pump.fun who created the tokens. After seeing Mira’s story, Waddles donated 50% of the $MIRA tokens to this father who had been working tirelessly to treat his daughter’s illness. Where there is attention, there is funding. With the support of Web3 and Web2 celebrities like Shaw and Ronak, MIRA achieved an increase of nearly 60 times in less than 3 hours.

So who is Chen Siqi, and why did she receive Shaw’s attention? Chen Siqi is the founder and CEO of Runway, a startup company funded by a16z. She has also served as the CEO of SandVR (a16z) and the Chief Product Officer of Postmates (later acquired by Uber). It is precisely because of her professional experience that she has attracted so many ‘big shots’.

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

Under the interaction of Bio Protocol and Shaw, MIRA has become a representative meme of the Desci concept.

Chen Dad, who walks on the tightrope: How should donations be handled?

Despite having a large amount of funds, how to handle this donation is also a problem. Obviously, Chen Siqi is also at a loss. If this funding is handled well, it can not only raise funds for her daughter, but also further expand the development direction of Desci. If not handled properly, it will not only cause public anger, but also may be like the judge Wang Hao’s question ‘Why did you help if it wasn’t you who caused it?’ People will no longer pay for similar cases.

As a result, Chen Siqi’s handling was very cautious. As early as 4 hours ago, Chen announced her intention to sell 10% of the supply sometime today to donate it to the Hankinson Lab, and the rest would be kept, accounting for 5% of the total supply. He won’t sell any more tokens unless announced 24 hours in advance. And in terms of fund processing, Chen Siqi also began to ask netizens for their opinions on Twitter, whether to sell part of their positions, and announced that all the newly entered funds would be donated to Han Jinsen’s laboratory for tumor research.

Although Chen and Mira’s stories have received mixed reviews on Twitter, the blockchain has proven the viability of on-chain donations and fundraising with its own transparency and broad participation, and the flow of every fund can be guaranteed under the public gaze. Perhaps on-chain donations will be a ray of light on the eve of the mass adoption of Web3.