Vitalik Buterin Donates $4 Million in USDC to Develop Pandemic Detection Tool

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has donated $4 million in USDC to the Australian University of New South Wales (UNSW) to develop a pandemic prevention solution.

The institution has converted the cryptocurrency into 5.3 million Australian dollars. The funds will be used to further develop EPIWATCH, an Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) tool for the early detection of pandemics.

Professor Raina MacIntyre of the UNSW Kirby Institute has been developing the solution since 2016. EPIWATCH uses massive amounts of online data and artificial intelligence to detect early signals of epidemics.

According to the statement, the tool is much faster than official healthcare systems, but does not replace them.