Crazy.  Are people really donating? Or is a lot of it OP sending money to himself trying to get others donate also?

--OP shows no real knowledge of the technology just copies and pastes info about zkSNARKs
--has presented no code or anything tangible
--self moderated topic
--anonymous
--shows no previous work

Just look at his post history.  There is no indication that he is any kind of developer or has any low level knowledge of cryptocurrencies.

Has there ever been a legit coin that started off like this and asked for donations before even presenting anything tangible?  I would love to know if there has.

I'm sure this will be deleted...

Did University of Sydney release their technology?  I definitely can't find any news regarding that.