When a glacier collapsed in Nepal on August 26, triggering floods that killed hundreds and devastated entire districts, the crypto industry’s response came in the form of smart contracts instead of just sympathy tweets. Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal launched nepalrelief.org on September 4, creating a verified pipeline for cryptocurrency donations to flow directly into Nepal’s Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund.
The platform had already raised roughly $168,000 by launch day.
How the donation pipeline works
The system runs on Polygon’s Open Money Stack, which handles the messy plumbing of accepting tokens across multiple blockchains and converting them into something Nepal can actually use. Donors can send funds from various chains, and the infrastructure handles routing, bridging, and conversion into USDC on either Ethereum or Polygon.
All donations land in a public USDC wallet (0xA891BB5abf91aBf1796074a1303E75754054f1823D) that anyone can audit on-chain. Every transaction is verifiable, which addresses one of the oldest criticisms of international disaster relief: nobody ever knows where the money actually goes.
The conversion from crypto to Nepalese rupees is handled by Engage Nepal, a US 501(c)(3) organization led by Scott DeLisi, who previously served as US Ambassador to Nepal. Partners Coinme and Cross River Bank facilitate the bridge between digital assets and traditional banking rails, ensuring the funds reach the government’s relief account in local currency.
The scale of the disaster
The flooding triggered by the glacier collapse was catastrophic by any measure. Reports indicate between 750 and over 1,200 people lost their lives across multiple districts, including Rasuwa, Nuwakot, and Dhading. Critical infrastructure, bridges, roads, hydropower facilities, was either destroyed or severely damaged.
The crypto industry’s broader response extended beyond Polygon’s platform. Blockchain for Impact pledged an initial $100,000 to support relief efforts. Ripple contributed $300,000. The Solana community raised approximately $166,946 through auctions.
Nailwal’s track record with crypto relief
This isn’t Nailwal’s first time building crypto infrastructure for disaster response. During India’s devastating COVID-19 wave, he co-founded the India COVID Crypto Relief Fund, which raised over $400 million in crypto donations at its peak valuation.
The Nepal initiative appears to have learned from those earlier challenges. By standardizing on USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the US dollar, the platform avoids the problem of donation values fluctuating wildly between the time someone donates and the time the funds are converted. The choice of a 501(c)(3) as the intermediary also provides US donors with potential tax deduction benefits.