The utility and governance token of the Maritime DAO ecosystem. Earned by seafarers through verified ShipCheckAI inspections. Used to govern the fleet. Held by people who do the work — not by passive investors.
The Token
$MARGOT is the utility and governance token of the Maritime DAO ecosystem. It exists to pay seafarers for ShipCheckAI inspection work, and to give the people doing that work — together with the wider community — governance rights over future fleet decisions, protocol parameters, and DAO treasury allocations.
The token has no fixed price, no peg, no yield promise, and no asset backing. Its value emerges from network usage — the demand for verified vessel inspections — and from the governance utility it provides. Maritime DAO LLC does not publish a NAV per token and does not maintain any reserve fund as backing.
$MARGOT is classified as a Title II crypto-asset under MiCA (Regulation EU 2023/1114) — meaning it is a utility/governance token, not an asset-referenced token, not an e-money token, and not a financial instrument under MiFID II. The Maritime DAO fleet bonds are a separate regulated EU offering documented in a separate business model document. The two instruments are operationally, legally, and economically segregated.
Seafarers, marine surveyors, and port workers earn $MARGOT for completing verified ShipCheckAI inspections. Bounties range from 15 $MARGOT (Tier 1 photo verification) to 750+ $MARGOT (Tier 4 classification-grade survey). Independent contractor work — not employment.
1 token = 1 vote on future fleet issuances, ShipCheckAI protocol parameters, DAO treasury allocations, and fee schedules for new bond series. Time-lock your tokens (1, 2, or 4 years) for a voting weight multiplier up to 2.5×.
Stake $MARGOT to access higher inspection tiers. Tier 2 requires 1,000 $MARGOT staked. Tier 3 requires 10,000. Tier 4 requires 50,000 plus classification-society credentials. Slashing applies for fraud — quality bond, not yield.
Every verified inspection builds your on-chain reputation score. Reputation determines bounty eligibility and payout multipliers (up to 1.5× for Expert tier). Reputation is non-transferable — yours alone, portable across ship operators.
Ship operators post bounties in $MARGOT. Maritime DAO is the anchor customer for its own fleet; third-party operators onboard from Q3 2027. Treasury holds inspection-pool tokens to bootstrap demand during the protocol's first three years.
2% protocol fee on every bounty (0.5% burned, 1.5% to treasury). Inspector slashing: 50% burned, 50% to dispute pool. 10-year linear release from the Inspection Reward Pool. Net long-term supply trends below 10B from burns.
Regulatory Position
$MARGOT is a Title II utility token under MiCA. The economic substance of the token matters — under MiCA Article 2(4), classifications cannot be circumvented by labelling. This section is the operational fence that keeps the token genuinely a utility instrument.
$MARGOT IS
$MARGOT IS NOT
The Bond–Token Firewall
Maritime DAO operates two distinct financial instruments. The marketing, legal, and economic structures are kept strictly separate. This is the operational protocol — see white paper §8.4 for the formal version.
Looking for the bond product?
The Maritime DAO Fleet Bonds are documented separately. They are senior debt instruments with asset-anchored coupons and par buyback at maturity — a different product for a different audience. Contact the team for the bond business model document.
ShipCheckAI
Four tiers of inspection work, gated by stake and certification. Bounty values are illustrative ranges — exact amounts set per-bounty by the posting operator within protocol-defined bands.
Tier 1 · Field Operator
Hull condition photos · Equipment serial-number capture · GPS-tagged check-ins
Tier 2 · Trained Inspector
Sensor data capture · Fuel sampling · Charter handover survey · Ballast sampling
Tier 3 · Senior Surveyor
Drydock readiness · Hull condition · Safety audit · SOLAS / MARPOL compliance
Tier 4 · Classification-Grade
Pre-purchase inspection · Class-grade hull · Structural integrity · Due-diligence report
Commercial ship inspections are expensive (€2,000–€5,000 for a pre-purchase survey), infrequent, and concentrated in a handful of classification societies. ShipCheckAI distributes inspection work across a network of staked, reputation-tracked seafarers and marine surveyors. Bounties are posted on-chain, executed against a defined scope, verified through peer review and AI photo analysis, and paid in $MARGOT.
$MARGOT per verified inspection
Tier 1 base bounty. Higher tiers earn proportionally more. Tokens arrive in your wallet within 72 hours of report verification — the typical peer review window.
30-50% cheaper
Distributed inspector pool + AI verification cuts cost vs classification-society rates. Operators get more inspections per budget.
Standards-aligned
SOLAS / IMO / class-formatted report templates. Output is suitable for charter handover documentation and PSC preparation.
Portable career
Your on-chain reputation is yours — portable across any ship operator using ShipCheckAI. No platform lock-in.
Offline capable
Works at sea, in port, anywhere. Reports sync to IPFS / Arweave with on-chain hash anchor when connectivity returns.
How it works
Bounty posted on-chain
Ship operator posts inspection bounty: vessel ID, location, scope, deadline, $MARGOT reward, minimum tier required.
Inspector accepts & stakes
Eligible inspector (matching tier) accepts the bounty. Tier-dependent stake locked in escrow as quality bond. Slashable for fraud.
Inspection & report
Inspector executes inspection. Report uploaded to IPFS / Arweave with timestamped, GPS-tagged photos and sensor data. Hash anchored on-chain.
Verification (48–72h)
AI photo analysis + 3–5 peer attesters (random selection from reputation pool) review the report. Supermajority releases payment.
+15 $MARGOT · verifiedReputation grows
Successful inspections add to your on-chain reputation score. Higher reputation = bounty priority + up to 1.5× payout multiplier.
Example: Tier 2 active inspector · 12 inspections / month · 12 months
Illustrative. Bounty values shown as $MARGOT amounts only — Maritime DAO LLC does not publish a token price or fiat equivalent.
Inspector Earnings Simulator
Adjust your tier, inspection volume, and time horizon to estimate the $MARGOT you would earn through verified ShipCheckAI work. $MARGOT amounts only — no fiat equivalent is shown by design.
Your tier
Total inspections
—
over horizon
Total $MARGOT earned
—
incl. rep multiplier
Reputation level
—
end of horizon
Governance voting power
—
1 token = 1 vote
Monthly earnings trajectory
Compare tiers — same volume over 12 months
| Tier | Stake required | Base bounty | Inspections | $MARGOT (base) | $MARGOT (with rep) |
|---|
Simulator output is illustrative. Bounty values are protocol-defined ranges. Actual earnings depend on inspection availability, demand, reputation, and tier unlock. $MARGOT amounts only. Not financial advice. Not an investment offering.
Token Economics
Total supply 10,000,000,000 $MARGOT. Fixed at genesis. Supply expansion only by DAO 75% supermajority vote with 30-day timelock — and requires a corresponding white paper amendment notified to the NCA.
Sinks & sources
Bounty fee burn
0.5% of every inspection bounty payment is permanently burned. Steady deflationary pressure proportional to protocol activity.
Inspector slashing
Inspectors who commit fraud or material failure have staked $MARGOT slashed — 50% burned, 50% to dispute jurors and verifiers.
Time-lock removal
Tokens locked for governance multiplier (1, 2, or 4 years for 1.5×, 2.0×, 2.5× voting weight) are removed from circulating supply for the lock duration.
Treasury retention
1.5% of every inspection bounty payment flows to the DAO treasury for operational funding. Redistributable via governance — not automatically burned.
Decentralised Governance
Maritime DAO LLC is governed by $MARGOT holders through on-chain voting embedded in the Marshall Islands DAO LLC operating agreement.
In scope
Fleet decisions
Which vessel classes to issue next. Target geographies. Bond series sizing parameters within regulatory limits.
ShipCheckAI parameters
Minimum stake amounts per tier. Reputation algorithm tuning. Dispute resolution rules. Bounty pricing curves. Slashing terms.
Treasury allocations
Ecosystem grants. Partnership funding. Marketing budgets. Technology development priorities. All proposals timelock-controlled.
Future bond fees
Maritime DAO management commission, arrangement fee, Reserve ops fee — for future bond series only. Existing bonds are contractually locked.
Out of scope — permanently
Existing bond contracts
Once an SPV has issued bonds, bondholders' contractual rights (variable pass-through coupon, par buyback, Reserve allocation) are immutable until maturity.
Legal compliance
MiCA obligations, Prospectus Regulation compliance, AML / KYC, sanctions screening, EU representative duties. Imposed by law, not by token holders.
The non-circumvention principle
No vote may declare $MARGOT to be backed by reserves, redeemable at par, or yielding from any financial instrument. Such votes are null and void.
White paper substance
Material amendments require new NCA notification under MiCA Article 8(3). Token holder governance cannot bypass that process.
Governance mechanics
Voting weight
1 token = 1 vote
Time-lock: 1y → 1.5× · 2y → 2.0× · 4y → 2.5×
Proposal threshold
0.5% supply
Of circulating tokens, to submit a proposal
Quorum
10% / 25%
Standard / supermajority proposals
Pass threshold
>50% / 75%
Standard / supermajority
Timelock
48h / 30d
Standard / supermajority delay
Pathways
Maritime DAO does NOT conduct a public ICO or retail token sale. Distribution follows utility — tokens are earned through verifiable work, received through community programs, or acquired on secondary markets after listing.
Path 1 · Earn
Path 2 · Receive
Path 3 · Strategic
Path 4 · Secondary
No public ICO / no retail token sale
Maritime DAO LLC will not conduct an Initial Coin Offering. The token is not offered to the public for purchase. Distribution is via inspection work, community programs, strategic partnerships, and secondary-market trading after listing. This is a deliberate regulatory and operational choice — to keep $MARGOT firmly in MiCA Title II as a utility token, and to align distribution with users rather than speculators.
Roadmap
2024 · Complete
Maritime DAO LLC registered in Marshall Islands under the DAO LLC Act 2022. Token architecture designed. RWAmarket.place development begins.
2025 · Complete
LOTOSS project NFTs launched. ShipCheckAI v1 pilot with maritime inspectors. Initial DAO governance experiments. First operating-season feedback collected.
2026 H1 · Complete
Architecture rebuilt — bonds and token decoupled. White paper, business model, and ROI calculator produced. Counsel engagement begins.
Q3 2026 · Active
Smart contracts deployed on chosen PoS L2. Two independent security audits. White paper formally notified to home Member State NCA. EU representative appointed. Genesis distribution to team vesting and treasury.
Q4 2026 · Upcoming
ShipCheckAI protocol live with LOTOSS as anchor customer. Tier 1–2 inspector onboarding opens. First 50 verified inspections completed on-chain. First bond SPV issuance opens to investors.
Q1 2027 · Upcoming
Uniswap (L2) liquidity provision activated. First community airdrop campaign — seafarer association partnership. Inspector network reaches 200+ active. First DAO governance vote.
Q2 2027 · Planned
CTV vessel added to inspection schedule. Tier 3 (Senior Surveyor) enabled. Bounty volume scales 5×. Reputation system maturity.
Q3 2027 · Planned
First non-Maritime-DAO ship operator onboards as bounty poster. Protocol-level demand diversification. PSV vessel inspection scope developed.
2028 · Planned
Classification-grade Tier 4 inspectors onboarded. Cross-chain bridges (optional). International expansion to Asia and South America. ShipCheckAI scope extends beyond maritime (offshore wind, aquaculture).