It is clear that if you dont conduct an ICO, then where does the team get the money for the listing. I need to say thanks to them that they were able to get on a Cryptopia!
It is necessary to have an ICO to start with a new project, since it is the only way to raise funds to start investing in it.
Not necessarily, XDNA is built to last and with the future in mind.
Running an ICO has two risks, it may fail to gather enough funds and the team disappears, or it may gather too much funds and the team might decide to grab the easy money and disappear.
It's hard to gather just as much funds as needed to encourage the team to keep going.
XDNA preferred to go with a small premine (0.7%) and a 1% dev fee from every block. This way it is in the team's benefit to support the project and keep working even with low payment, because a higher value on their project will increase their payment.
This way of project funding is also safer for investors, since investors' and team's goals align.