MUNCH: one year on!

9 min readApr 26, 2022

A year in DeFi is a long time. Looking back over a remarkable year with the MUNCH project.

We have seen memes rise and fall, mainstream acceptance start to gather pace, and technology adapting to fit better use cases, every day. In this year, MUNCH has played a major part in this evolution.

By the simple action of automatically diverting transaction fees to a more stable store of value, MUNCH technology started the era of more stable and sustainable micro-cap projects and set the standard for transparency and accountability in the space.

Since this development, the technology has been used countless times by other donation-based projects and projects looking to raise funds for their development, helping DeFI and Web3 evolve from the theoretical to the practical.

This has enabled real, community-based investment in ideas — the very thing DeFI is designed for.

As MUNCH turns one year old, we look back on our developments, how the project has adapted, and the plans to push the project forward in the next year.

Timeline:

A year in review: launch and GiveWell donation

As an unknown project, when MUNCH launched, we needed a charity that was already set to receive crypto donations — as well as meeting our standards for trust, accountability, and effectiveness.

We chose GiveWell because of their essential humanitarian work and record of transparency. Over the hectic few weeks after the launch, the concept of MUNCH, as well as the transparency of the project was verified, with over $2.7 million being donated.

Hear from GiveWell about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Research saving funds for The Yellow Brick Road Foundation

With our credentials established and a growing community, we wanted to give a smaller charity the exposure to help with the constant pressure of fund raising that localized charities experience.

The Yellow Brick Road Project is a charitable foundation and community whose mission is to fund research to identify, understand, treat, and ultimately cure those impacted by HNRNPH2 related disorder. Only a small number of children are affected by this disease so fundraising is a never ending struggle.

YBRP also had a very specific funding goal. To continue their research project, they needed? to raise $100,000 before July 2021 or their first research project would be discontinued.

In just a matter of weeks, donations from MUNCH amassed over $300,000, blowing past their funding goal.

This donation from the MUNCH community meant that not only could the research project be continued, but there would be additional funds to continue to fund initiatives to raise awareness and identify more individuals with HNRNPH2 mutations and connect families impacted by the disease.

Hear from The Yellow Brick Road Project about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Helping deliver basic rights with charity: water

After seeing the power of MUNCH, the community voted to put our efforts towards a wider global crisis, one that affects millions.

Anthony from charity: water shared a compelling messaging of how MUNCH’s funds could help people suffering from a lack of access to clean water.

Charity water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries.

MUNCH’s donation of over $200,000 resulted in the funding of 23 water projects that will bring clean, sustained water sources to entire communities.

Hear from charity: water about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Keeping track with the new Hodlers’ dashboard

With a growing community, we decided to build a central hub to show all the crucial information related to MUNCH. This gave every holder a way to see the latest news, key stats, and ways they can support the project.

This unique dashboard also allows each holder to see how much their transactions have donated directly to each charity. With the Hodlers’ dashboard, we gave every member of MUNCH a way to be more involved in the project and see the impact of their actions.

Making it official with The Giving Block Partnership

It was at this time MUNCH connected with The Giving Block to create an official partnership with a major hub for charities to start to receive crypto donations.

The new agreement connected The Giving Block’s community of crypto-ready nonprofits with MUNCH, which allows users to easily donate to causes they care about. The partnership also enables new nonprofits to accept Munch donations directly and create a profile on The Giving Block’s fundraising platform.

This expanded our reach and will help crypto donations become more established for any charity.

Read the news coverage of our announcement here.

Opening the Charity Circle to the world of DeFi

As well as donating transaction fees, The MUNCH Charity Circle gave us a way to enable other DeFi and crypto projects to divert funds to vetted and accredited charitable projects.

Either through sending one-off donations or diverting set portions of transactions to the MUNCH contract address, DeFI projects could now choose to give back to causes that matter and capitalize on exposure to our community — creating a win-win scenario.

This established MUNCH as the leader in the crypto donation space. We utilized our relationships with effective and well-known charities to attract other projects and connect them to causes to generate even more donations to great causes.

Helping those most in need alongside Save the Children

By helping Save The Children, the MUNCH community directed funds to urgently needed areas, helping one of the world’s most experienced and effective charities maintain and add to the progress they have made against this remarkable challenge.

Hear from Save the Children about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Fighting back with The Manny Pacquiao Foundation

Manny Pacquiao is more than an inspiration as an athlete. He is an eight-division world champion and has won twelve major world titles. But, since his boxing career, he has devoted himself to public service and donated more than one-third of his career earnings to charity.

Connecting with a charity with this powerful a profile enabled us to show a brand new audience the power of DeFi to reshape how we think about resources.

Hear from The Manny Pacquiao Foundation about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Creating joy with Gamers Outreach

Smaller causes can be overlooked. Charity donations are often focused on causes with the most significant direct impact. But, what this can lead to is an unbalanced concentration of funds in certain causes.

Gamers Outreach is a charity that empowers hospitalized families through play. Their goal is to ensure every hospital is able to provide kids with activities to add some fun and normalcy alongside their care by providing hospitals with games consoles.

While smaller charities face constant pressure to fundraise, the support from the MUNCH community enabled Gamers outreach to provide more than 20 portable gaming units in hospitals.

Hear from Gamers Outreach about how they are utilizing these funds here.

Building bridging technology

Using the Binance Bridge service, we gave MUNCH holders a way to convert crypto assets on the Binance Chain/Binance Smart Chain for MUNCH and exchange between the ETH and BSC blockchains.

One of the advantages of listing on the Binance network is that investors can take advantage of far lower fees than are currently charged on the Ethereum network, using Uniswap.

Creating the bridge allowed MUNCH to reach a wider audience on the BSC chain and help cut the fees, making smaller investments possible.

Introducing the arbitration bot — Sir Arbsalot!

With multi-chain buying now possible, we were able to develop an automated way to profit from price differences between the two chains.

Enabling MUNCH to raise funds by automating cross-chain buying and selling to generate value from the difference in price across the chains.

This is an automation that enabled MUNCH to gather funds for the development of the project, used to fund more external developers for new technology.

Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation

As with all crypto projects, MUNCH is susceptible to the volatility of the market. So, while transaction volume and price action are impacted, we continue to work to form partnerships and opportunities with charities and other projects.

We connected with the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation to start a stream of crypto donations as we developed the next phase of the MUNCH project.

The goal of the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation is to fund research that will ‘Power cures that reduce the percentage of children who perish from cancer until that number reaches zero.’

Fiat to crypto: gateway to the world

Open up thecurrently complicated world of DeFi to a wider audience

With a 7-step process to buy on Uniswap, it means users need some prior knowledge and a centralized exchange account to get started. The process is then complicated, unintuitive, prone to error, has high fees, and doing it incorrectly can result in the loss of funds.

This is a major barrier to entry for any crypto but especially newer coins. Crypto needs a way for mainstream to enter, without the risk and complexity of the current process.

Fiat to Crypto is fast, simple, on-chain and supports the MUNCH tokenomics. It is a way for any project to make buying fast, easy, and accessible — while maintaining the principles of DeFi.

As well as making it easier for people to join MUNCH, this service will also be offered to other projects to raise funds for the ongoing development of MUNCH.

A committed community

Lastly, one of the greatest achievements of the MUNCH project is the community of people we have managed to bring together.

People giving up their time to spread the message of MUNCH, contributing their artwork and ideas, finding partnerships, our community is our greatest strength.

MUNCH is and always will be a community-driven project. We rely on the power and imagination of everyone to help us continue to develop.

We want to thank everyone for their help, support, and involvement over the last year and look forward to rewarding your support over the next year.

Next steps

For MUNCH to develop on this remarkable year, we need to ensure utility, value, and adoption to fuel the transaction volume that makes this possible.

To do this, we are excited to be offering a range of services and partnerships that puts MUNCH at the center of the DeFi technology universe.

We will explain the exciting new direction of MUNCH and our next steps in an upcoming post.

Stay tuned for another groundbreaking year!