Gate.io AMA with CULT DAO-To Empower And Fund Those Building And Contributing Towards Our Decentralized Future

Time: June 16th, 2022, 13:00 UTC
Gate.io hosted an AMA (Ask-Me-Anything) session with Artorias, Maester at Cult DAO in the Gate.io Exchange Community.
Official Website: https://cultdao.io/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/wearecultdao
Follow Cult on Discord and Telegram

Guest

Artorias — Maester at Cult DAO

Q&A from Gate.io

Q1: What is Cult DAO?

Artorias: Cult DAO is best described as a decentralized investment platform. The top 50 stakers can propose investment of a project, and then everyone outside the top 50 will vote to approve it or reject it. If it passes, 13 Ethereum worth of CULT is sent from the treasury to the project. 2.5 Ethereum worth of CULT is then burned. Once the project has profits to return, it buys back CULT from the open market with them, then burns half, and sends half as staking rewards.

The treasury is built organically from a 0.4% tax collected on all transactions.

Q2: What would you say is different from other investment DAOs?

Artorias: CULT is fully decentralized unlike most DAOs.
There is no team involvement in the mechanics of the proposals , not any human treasury management. The contracts have all been renounced. This means that there is no access to treasury funds through any means besides the proposals. Everything is automated until the project receives the funding. At that point they can use the funds as necessary before returning profits down the line.

There are 3 main criteria that the Guardians look for in projects.

1) They further decentralisation.
2) They are a noble or worthy cause.
3) They fight the spread of centralisation.

Most DAOs rely on taking a vote, then those in control of the treasury carry out the voted actions.

But this is not true decentralisation.

Q3: What kind of investments can CULT make? Are there limitations?

Artorias: The idea was to build a very simple proposal contract, which would allow maximum flexibility with the investments made.

In its most basic form it is a smart contract that says “Send this Ethereum address 13 eth of CULT if the majority vote to approve”.

This means it can be used for almost anything, including moving beyond the realms of crypto. The community has the final say in what does and doesn’t get approved, and because the open endedness of how the funds are used after they are released by the treasury, it does not lock anyone down to certain processes, thus meaning there are very few limitations in what can be seen as an investment.

Q4: Can you give some examples of investments?

Artorias: Of course.
We’ve had a huge range of proposals go through so far. For example we have some allocations that are working on a yield farming protocol and LP incentives, to generate steady yield to stakers.

We’ve also had purchases of other tokens, such as $BONE, and $PEOPLE, some of which are performing very well now.

We have even proposed donations, including a donation to hacker collective Anonymous, and a mental health cause called The Unminding Project.

I feel like this really gives an idea of how versatile our protocol is. We are not just a project focused on ourselves, we are a project that supports other projects in our space!

Q5: Can you discuss the project’s tokenomics? How would you say the tokenomics are designed to support the CULT token?

Artorias: CULT is very lucky in that it has 2 of the strongest assets in crypto.

The first of those is our loyal community, and the second is our tokenomics.

In tough times in the market, you need a strong community that is willing to back you and what you stand for as a project, because these are the investors that will stick with you and won’t dump at the first sign of a downtrend.

The tokenomics are designed specifically to help support the value of the CULT token over time by providing a hyper deflationary aspect to the project. Due to the fact that the treasury and investments are all made in CULT (but to the value of Ethereum), all burns also happen in CULT, so if the price is lower, it means that more CULT is burned per Ethereum, meaning that the supply dwindles a lot quicker during downtrend and bear markets like we are experiencing now.

For example 2.5 Ethereum of CULT burning at the current price is about 8x more CULT burned than it was at our all time high price.