OPERATOR TO REVIEW BEFORE PRODUCTION: (1) "Who started it": the post says UltraDAO was started by Sterling Cooley. No public source we could read says who founded it (the Frontiers paper lists him as employed by Ultra DAO), so confirm the wording, and the founding year if you want one added. (2) The Alzheimer's claim: the post says, in our own voice, that we argued publicly that ultrasound could be part of the answer to Alzheimer's and dementia. Link the original announcement or post, and confirm the wording; the site cannot say "cure". (3) Martin Shkreli and "Bazelord": neither name appears in the post, because no public source connecting either of them to UltraDAO or to ultrasound could be found. To name them, supply a link to each post or article you mean; we can then add one attributed sentence per person with a short quote. (4) "A large-scale attempted social cancellation": the post describes this only as our experience. Supply links (posts, articles, reports, platform actions) if you want it described in more detail. (5) Confirm the line about the critics having a fair point in the section "What the critics got right". Remove this block once each item is settled.
UltraDAO is a research organization for ultrasound neuromodulation, the use of low-intensity sound to influence the nervous system. It is organized as a decentralized autonomous organization, a DAO, with an ordinary company underneath: UltraDAO LLC, a Wyoming DAO corporation. It makes hardware, the PULSE module that turns a US PRO 2000 into a programmable instrument, keeps a library of frequency programs you load from your phone, and helps fund research into whether any of it works.
This is the longer story: where UltraDAO came from, why it was set up the way it was, the backlash when it said out loud what it hoped ultrasound might do for Alzheimer's and dementia, and what it has built since.
Where it came from
UltraDAO was started by Sterling Cooley, and it grew out of more than a decade of his hands-on work with ultrasound. By his own published timeline, he began ultrasound engineering research in Berkeley in 2013, and in 2014 was hired by the University of Arizona and Dr. Stuart Hameroff to build ultrasound hardware for research into neural and consciousness stimulation. That thread still runs through our work: our research page credits Hameroff and Roger Penrose's work on microtubules and consciousness as a major influence.
The same timeline lists ultrasound work on the vagus nerve from 2017, and a turn toward neurodegeneration in 2024, when he started an Alzheimer's research group. That turn is where UltraDAO's focus on memory and cognition comes from.
Why a DAO
The reasoning is on our IP-NFT page: in medical research, the people who take the biggest risks, the early adopters and the test participants, usually receive the least of the reward. We wanted a structure in which the people who fund, test and use the work can hold a real stake in it.
A DAO does that by recording ownership as tokens rather than entries in a private ledger. UltraDAO has two, both bought with KAS on the Kaspa network: $ULTRA, which you spend to flash frequency programs onto a device, and UXDT, which is voting stock in UltraDAO LLC. The token page and our earlier post What a DAO Structure Buys a Research Effort go into the detail, including the honest limits of an early experiment.
The first piece of research put on chain this way was an IP-NFT on Molecule's platform, "Monitoring Improvements in Voice Using AI After Ultrasound Treatment", built around voice data from people with Alzheimer's or dementia after ultrasound stimulation.
The Alzheimer's claim, and the backlash
From the start, we said publicly that we believed ultrasound could be part of the answer to Alzheimer's and dementia, and that a non-drug approach deserved a serious look. We still think the question is worth asking. Academic groups are asking it too: in December 2025 the University of Queensland reported a 12-person pilot that found its ultrasound treatment safe and well tolerated in people with Alzheimer's, while saying it was too early to tell whether it works.
Saying it out loud came at a cost. From our side, what followed felt like a large-scale attempt to shout the project down: a wave of ridicule and hostility online, some of it from accounts with very large audiences, aimed at the idea that anything other than a drug could be worth studying for dementia. We understand why people are wary. Families affected by dementia have been sold false hope before, and scepticism is the right first reaction to any new claim in this area.
What the critics got right
The fair version of the criticism was simple: ultrasound for dementia was unproven. That was true, and it is still true. Where we disagreed was on what to do about it. The answer to "unproven" is not to stop asking the question; it is to test it properly, in the open, and publish what you find, including the parts that don't flatter you. That is what we set out to do.
What UltraDAO did anyway
- An IRB-approved study, completed and published. The Ultrasound Memory Study ran with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, led by Dr. Helané Wahbeh, and its write-up was published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience on 28 September 2026 as an open-label, uncontrolled feasibility pilot. The authors report that home use was well tolerated and call for a sham-controlled trial; they also state plainly that the design cannot show cause and effect. We summarised it in The Ultrasound Memory Study Is Complete.
- Conflicts disclosed, analysis kept independent. The paper discloses Sterling Cooley's role at Ultra DAO and states that he took no part in screening participants, assessing outcomes or analysing the data, which was collected by the IONS team.
- Hardware that ships. The PULSE module is on sale in the US, and loads signed frequency programs from your phone over NFC. You can read how it works in Meet PULSE.
- A frequency library and an app. Programs live in a library you own and can gift (see Owning, Gifting, and the Frequency Marketplace), and the UltraNFC app on your phone is how you load them.
- Ownership on chain. The research IP-NFT on Molecule, and the two UltraDAO tokens on Kaspa, described in $ULTRA and UXDT.
Where it goes from here
The next step is the one the IONS investigators named: a larger, properly controlled trial. That is the bar any claim about ultrasound and the brain has to clear, and helping to fund studies that can clear it is the reason UltraDAO exists. If you want to follow along, the research page and this blog are where we will report it, the good news and the bad.
This post is informational only. It is not an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any token or security, and it is not investment, legal, or tax advice. Nothing here is an invitation to vote or to transact. UltraDAO devices are wellness and research instruments, not medical devices, and nothing here is medical advice.