Cult.DAO is the latest decentralized autonomous organization to create a stir. What’s behind the mysterious crypto sect?
The Manifesto
In simple terms, Cult.DAO can be best described as a venture capital fund run by Anonymous. The decentralized autonomous organization was founded in January 2022 by a man who goes by the pseudonym Mr. O’Modulus.
Preferring to retain their privacy, the people behind the project have not disclosed much about themselves, but Mr. O’Modulus stated to have undergone a political transition from libertarian to environmental socialist to “full-blown anarchist”. On Cult.DAO’s Discord server, he shared a library of books ranging from Animal Farm to Das Kapital.
Today, Mr. O’Modulus says that he does not endorse any political leaning anymore. In the Cult.DAO Manifesto, which is essentially the project’s whitepaper, he shares the reason why he backed away from politics:
Political infighting exhausted and wasted all noble causes. Anarchism and libertarianism are supposed to be opposite ends of the political spectrum, but they in my view are the only sides of the spectrum that can agree on a universal truth. Humans need freedom.
Radical decentralization
Cult.DAO takes the term decentralized autonomous organization seriously. For this reason, nobody holds the private keys to any of the funds managed by the DAO. They are entirely controlled by smart contracts, which are non-upgradeable.
The smart contracts automatically send out investments worth 13 ETH each to any project that has submitted an investment proposal upon a successful governance vote. In order to be eligible for investment, proposals must fight against centralization, further the cause of decentralization, and directly benefit a noble cause. To quote the Manifesto:
The purpose of CULT is to empower and fund those building and contributing towards our decentralised future, our society is built to make it as difficult as possible to break away from societal, economic and other norms. We give funding to those who are ready to break the chains and have an idea that can change our world.
The top 50 holders of the CULT governance token have a special role as designated guardians. Guardians are allowed to submit governance proposals on behalf of projects interested in receiving an investment, but may not vote on the proposals themselves. Mr. O’Modulus stated that, after a one-time marketing campaign, he will quit Cult.DAO and leave the organization in the hands of the guardians and the community.
CULT tokenomics
The cult price has taken some wild swings lately. Temporarily, the price has multiplied by a factor of 400 since March 24, but is now down by more than 70% compared to its all-time high on April 02.
CULT receives the vast majority of its trading volume on Uniswap, where it is one of the largest markets, but is also listed on some smaller centralized and decentralized exchanges. On several days, WETH/CULT was the largest trading pair overall on Uniswap.
Due to a 0.4% tax levied on all transactions, this large trading volume supports the investment purpose of Cult.DAO. The treasury collects these trading fees and sends out 13 ETH every time an investment proposal passes. For each passed proposal, 2.5 ETH worth of the CULT is additionally sent to a burn address.
The first investees that successfully submitted an investment proposal were Metis DAO, ThreeOh DAO, Falcon 9, vEmpire DDAO, and WoofWork. Furthermore, there is a collaborative yield farming initiative with Inverse Finance.
When submitting an investment proposal, the investee agrees to use a portion of their own token supply to buy CULT at a pre-defined vesting schedule. These CULT are then sent back to the treasury, which burns half of the tokens received and distributes the other half to CULT stakers. The Cult.DAO DApp estimates an APY of 47.2% for staking.
At the time of writing, 1.8 trillion CULT have been staked, which makes up for 45.6% of the circulating supply. Out of the initial supply of 6.6 trillion CULT, 1.6 trillion have already been burned. At current prices, the CULT token has a market cap of 85 million USD. The treasury owns 829.1 ETH worth of CULT, which is enough to fund the next 53 investment proposals.
“I AM RYOSHI!”
Cult.DAO has a vocal community, which calls itself the Cult Army. The official Cult.DAO Twitter channel is close to hitting 50,000 followers and the Discord server currently has over 8,000 members. While having a social media brigade is of course a staple of every memecoin, the Cult Army shares the same idealism laid down in the CULT Manifesto.
Oddly, one community member found out that there seemingly is a connection between Mr. O’Modulus and the Shiba Inu founder Ryoshi. The most compelling evidence is that Cult.DAO minted ten named NFTs, whose initial letters spell out the words “I AM RYOSHI!”.
Shiba Inu (SHIB) is of course known for being the one token to rule them all in 2021, with a monstrous price multiplication by a factor of 400,000 from year-start to year-end. Together with Dogecoin, SHIB created hype for dog-related meme tokens, many of which ended up getting rug-pulled.
Although it is unclear whether Mr. O’Modulus really is the founder of Shiba Inu, or if he just laid a false trail as a clever marketing stunt, this revelation likely triggered the CULT pump seen after March 24. The Twitter user who found out the connection has since deleted his account, though.
Conclusion
So, is CULT worth an investment? As always, do your own research and do not take any of this as investment advice.
All that can be definitely said is that, like so many other meme tokens, CULT runs mostly on hopium and idealism. However, there is a decentralized VC fund with solid tokenomics behind it, which seems – as of now – to be working as intended.
