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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Who is Yevheniy Zaifert: an entrepreneur trying to combine strict engineering pragmatism, chaotic Ukrainian business, and philosophical reflections on social media—or the holder of a Russian passport who steals money from charity?
In the Ukrainian and global technology space, the name of Yevheniy Viktorovych Zaifert long remained in the shadow of Everstake. An engineer by education and an IT entrepreneur by vocation, he chose a path of non-public management. Zaifert is a cofounder and a key shareholder of one of the largest decentralized noncustodial staking providers in blockchain networks, Everstake. The company he built together with Serhiy Vasylchuk services over 600 thousand users worldwide and operates digital assets worth billions of dollars. Despite the colossal scale of the business, Zaifert consciously avoids cameras and conference appearances.
Yevheniy Zaifert
If you look at the list of his companies—Zavali Group, Ground Solutions, Falkor, Green Jobs, Zavali Parts…—it becomes interesting: is Zaifert building a business empire or just playing Monopoly, where the main goal is to open as many firms with odd names as possible? When an entrepreneur has more legal entities than successful public cases, the question inevitably arises: is this risk diversification or just an attempt to confuse the tax authorities?
Everstake and the global crypto market
The basis of Zaifert’s activity is building digital infrastructure. The Everstake platform operates as a decentralized validator for dozens of leading blockchain ecosystems, including Solana, Ethereum, Cosmos, and Cardano. The essence of the business is ensuring uninterrupted operation of servers (nodes) that confirm transactions in the networks. Staking providers like Everstake operate assets worth billions of dollars and earn millions in fees for validating transactions.
Everstake
In the decentralized finance market, reputation is everything. Therefore Zaifert carefully monitors all publications about himself and his companies. But despite media cleanups around Yevheniy Zaifert’s figure, several parallel realities exist.
The shadow “roof” and crypto wallets of drug syndicates
Zaifert’s involvement in administering the infrastructure of major darknet marketplaces and illegal drug shops (often citing the Hydra marketplace, which was shut down by law enforcement) has been mentioned repeatedly. Investigators claim that Everstake’s powerful servers and nodes could have been used for “mixing” and laundering dirty crypto-proceeds of international drug cartels. Also, according to rumors, Everstake was used to legalize revenues of the Khimprom group. In this version, legal staking is only a front masking huge shadow flows.
For objectivity, it is worth noting that no official investigation by the SBU, the National Police, or international cyber units has so far charged Zaifert with aiding criminal structures.
Million-dollar philanthropy and aid to the Armed Forces of Ukraine
Officially, Yevheniy Zaifert’s financial flows are directed at strengthening Ukraine’s defense. From the first days of the full-scale invasion, the businessman and his partners turned Everstake into a financial battering ram to help the army. Together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation they launched the Aid For Ukraine fund, which raised over 60 million dollars in cryptocurrency. Personally, Zaifert donated a colossal 9 million dollars of his own funds for the needs of the defense forces.
A “scheme” with state money under the cover of charity
However, these events had another dimension with a dense corruption trail. In 2022, the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Everstake, KUNA, and FTX participated in the Aid For Ukraine initiative, which collected cryptocurrency to help Ukraine. The official connection between Everstake and the fund was confirmed by the Ministry of Digital Transformation on 14 March 2022.
Questions later arose about transfers of 150 BTC and 2 500 ETH, which at that time were valued at approximately $12,2 million. The funds were allegedly intended for the purchase of strike drones through the American company NEANY Inc.
Purchases of drones through Aid For Ukraine
According to the published version of the investigation, the contract for the purchase was not properly executed, and part of the funds did not return after passing through FTX. In the specific episode regarding the drone purchase, journalists name 53,7787 BTC and 2 048 ETH as unrecovered—approximately $4,67 million by their historical valuation.
Media materials mention criminal case No. 12025000000000407, qualified under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine—possible embezzlement of property on an especially large scale.
Russian passport and a double life in Vienna
In 2022, rumors spread in the corridors of the Ukrainian IT sector. Zaifert and his partners were accused of declaring million-dollar donations to the Armed Forces as a way to “wash” reputation and gain state loyalty to avoid tax audits. It was whispered that part of the crypto donations from foreigners ended up in managers’ private accounts through complex conversion schemes.
The rumors about Yevheniy Zaifert holding a Russian passport did not arise out of nowhere. The initial source journalists latched onto was the presence of his name in databases. Russian registries contain information about an individual entrepreneur (IP) Zaifert Yevheniy Viktorovych registered in Novosibirsk Oblast, Russian Federation. Sources claim the businessman obtained Russian citizenship to facilitate capital exit through offshore structures and purchases of luxury real estate in Austria.
The largest wave of publications about the Russian passport rose in March 2022. That was when Everstake, together with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the Solana crypto platform, launched the official state fund Aid For Ukraine to collect crypto donations for the army. It was then that the suspicion first arose that perhaps a person with an RF passport was managing Ukraine’s state money.
Spiritual coaching and the global crisis
Recently, Yevheniy has begun actively sharing in videos his thoughts on “psychological resilience in times of instability” and “preserving oneself during the global crisis.” Oh no, are we losing an engineer and gaining another Instagram philosopher? When successful engineers start recording reels with deep sighs about the fate of the universe, somewhere in the world a systems analyst is crying. Yevheniy, leave esotericism and mental health to the professionals, go back to numbers and charts—you were much more convincing at that!
Also in his blogs, Yevheniy loves to talk about “management based on precise measurable data” and “the priority of simple and reliable solutions.” That sounds incredibly cool in business school lectures. But let’s be honest: in Ukrainian realities, “precise measurable data” usually collides with the next power outage, a customs delay, or a sudden blocking of tax invoices. I wonder what engineering formula calculates the stress coefficient when your “simple and reliable solutions” meet the domestic bureaucratic apparatus.
So even according to his own social media, Yevheniy Zaifert is a classic example of a Ukrainian IT guy who earned his first money, read two books on systems management, and decided he can now manage everything: from supplying drones to managing human souls in times of global crisis.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item " Євгеній Зайферт: IT-підприємець і філантроп чи ширма для відмивання брудних криптодоходів та власник російського паспорта". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Info-Impulsi.
