"Science is less dynamic than the Catholic church"
Decentralized Science has seen validation in the preceding month. DeSci tokens have performed consistently better than most other tokens on Ethereum. Bio.Xyz, something between an incubator and a hedge fund for DeSci, closed its second funding round, within hours of Vitalik and CZ meeting to give the movement their blessing. This article covers a series of events related to DeSci, Ethereum, and network states; seeking to share alpha while humanizing this moment in the third scientific revolution.
Photos and words by Tristan Roberts; feel free to re-use.
The Archipelago / Edge City - Chiang Mai
My journey started in the ancient city of Chiang Mai, the capital of northern Thailand. Dating back to the 1300’s, the city has has much of its walls and its moat around its square center. It hosts a substantial digital nomad population, and for the month leading up to DEVCON 7, Chiang Mai attracted decentralists and technologists of all stripes.
Following the successful 'Zuzalu' pop up city in Montenegro a year and a half ago, the community was put to a vote: where would we congregate next? The highest scoring option was Thailand. A few months later, at DevConnect, Vitalik did not give his official blessing to one leader. Consequently, an 'archipelago' of communities were planned before and after Ethereum’s largest conference, DEVCON, was to happen. The end result was a more decentralized version of preceding ‘pop up cities’ like Zuzalu or Vitalia.
The most populous of these communities was Edge Lanna; centered around the Ping River on the east side of the city. Two floods had struck the area within the last month, and the cleanup work was mostly complete by the time I arrived at the end of October. The following day, I attended Edge's weekly town hall to get a better sense of the organization. By many metrics, their unconference style organizing was successful. Edge City provided co-working space and brunch to its attendees, but left most of the schedule open for attendees to fill in on a calendar app called Social Layer or SoLa. For instance, one day was devoted to the topic of Neurotech x AI alignment, which threaded Eastern wisdom through the cerebral topics. Four days were dedicated to 'd/acc', Vitalik's particular brand of techno-optimism. Nearly every day had a plethora of fitness classes.
These social spaces, of gyms and saunas, breakfasts and dinners, allowed the crypto folks to congregate with other groups on the edges. An openness to new ideas united the attendees, and most seemed more outwardly interest in health and visions of the future more than they were trying to shill their particular project.
Edge City seems poised to both expand to new locations (such as Burma) while cultivating relationships with recurring spots (such as Esmeralda in Northern California). They were actively seeking local government contacts, and it seems like this sort of global network might be useful in the eventual softening of the nation state boundaries... but it also may end up reinforcing them.
'Funding the Commons' rented a small resort in the mountainous outskirts of town, that was owned by band of Chinese ex-patriates. The BlockRavers had their own venue and put on parties at others’. One house, ‘AuraVerse’, was explicitly focused on DeSci. While many groups of around 10-20 people formed a residency, few had regular programming.
DeSci Day - Nov 10th - Bangkok
When I heard that the illustrious Foresight Institute was hosting a DeSci day in Bangkok, I moved my schedule up to attend.
The event was held in 'True Digital Park', a recently built tower complex that includes a mall, co-working space, and communications company.
Finding the right bank of elevators was a challenge, but I eventually made it to the 6th floor, and caught sight of a small group discussion room that was filled to the brim with people that might be from Berlin.
This space saw fast paced pitches of early stage DeSci projects; getting some instant feedback and recommendations for next steps. Some, like Biohacker DAO and a number of space exploration DAOs, had already seen some crypto funding. Others were still at the idea stage, exploring harmonic incentives for human and synthetic systems, or artistic displays of underwater life that might fuel conservation efforts.
We all eventually shuffled over to the main stage, where Juan Benet and Paul Kohlhaas were the main draws. Juan is not just a whale, but a rather smart one. His talk was an intense infodump that zoomed in to exponential graphs of computational progress, that one might find in a Kurzweil book. The Singularity seems pretty near, but who will run the servers? Will the post-human revolution be brought to you by OpenAI and Apple's pearly gleaming product mommies domming you into liking the AI generated slop? Or will a squirlly band of decentralists be able to provide a viable alternative? Who knows, but clearly Juan's Protocol Labs is going to at least try to seize that power to fuel their decentralized hosting networks.
Paul's organization, Molecule, has seen serial successes in the DeSci space. Their Bio.Xyz DAO (something between a Y Combinator and a hedge fund for biomedical research DAOs) was just wrapping up their second crowd sale. Their respective orgs had likely provided the largest source of funding for the event.
Geoff from Quantum Bio DAO shared his project's mission. He and his fellow DAO members were frustrated by the inattention that mainstream science gives to the theory that quantum effects might play a role in biology. Their proposed experiment would look at how weak magnetic fields inhibit or excite growth in plants. They're currently in Bio.Xyz's second cohort and are hoping to raise enough funds to build a microscope capable of observing quantum effects.
Following the talks, a pitch competition occurred in a more direct manner than the lightning talks that had been given earlier in the day. Five presenters pitched for five minutes, and subsequently the audience voted. Your author won this contest with 'Dog Years DAO', a longevity research DAO that would start with a follistatin gene therapy for canines.
Parallel Society Congress - Nov 11th - Bangkok
There were a ton of events hosted just before DEVCON, and the Parallel Society Congress ended up being my pick. While many crypto events are centered around ‘Number go up!’, this gathering focused on the harder question of, how do we actually reshape society with these new tools?
DEVCON 7 - Bangkok, Thailand
DEVCON was a sprawling takeover of the Queen Sirikit Convention Center in Bangkok. Thousands from across the globe convened. Most projects that had a strong showing were for Ethereum's infrastructure - solving problems like scaling or privacy. For better or for worse, most 'decentralized apps' were not encouraged to attend; or at least, be in public shilling their tokens, as the threat of being labelled as promoting 'Securities!' loomed over the org.
At any rate, the bull market could be felt (free food!) and the vibes were rather immaculate. There was less press, less shilling; practically no vendor booths. A few 'community corners' did dot the landscape on the perimeter, including one for DeSci. This informal space attracted newcomers with a ton of memes and revolutionary posters.
Most of the DeSci events were offsite, however, such as a Bio Xyz dinner at a Thai restaurant that necessitated me walking through the infamous Cowboy Soi alley.
The most notable offsite was hosted by Binance Labs, an investing arm to the centralized exchange. Both the exchange's founder, CZ, and Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, made an appearance. Like a king and a pope granting their blessing to an expedition force, it felt like Decentralized Science was finally granted the legitimacy it had been seeking.
Meanwhile, Bio.Xyz's second crowd sale completed successfully, and the team hosted their third 'Bio/Acc' rave in the ’Temple’, a sprawling complex of a venue. I rushed to get there by using the local ridehailing app’s feature for riding on the back of a moped.
SINGAPORE
I took an interlude in Singapore, to meet with potential collaborators. The culture shock coming from Thailand was severe. Taxi drivers would honk at me to insist I use the crosswalk when I paused to look at my phone; quite a contrast to Bangkok’s streets where you’re expected to make room for yourself and navigate around the oncoming mopeds.
SCICON - Nov 20th - San Francisco
Soon after I arrived, I heard applause after one of the panelists suggested that "the world would be better off without [science] journals".
Discontent for the existing academic system was the uniting theme, and served as the backstory for why most people were present.
I had met the Research Hub's founder, Patrick Joyce, while he was still struggling with academia as a med school student. It felt great seeing his project go from idea to fruition; finding Coinbase’s Brian Armonstrong as a co-founder certainly helped.
ResearchHub is something like a 'pre-print' service, allowing articles to be posted on their server. People are able to add comments directly.
Their token, RSC, is used to incentives users on the platform; and could be used as a bounty for writing article summaries.
At the conference, it was announced that Research Hub would be offering peer review as a service, as well as starting their own journal.
I have been hesitant to endorse most DeSci projects hoping to start a journal, as the problem is more about legitimacy than technical solutions. That being said, ResearchHub has seen decent linear growth and may be reaching that critical threshold necessary to support a journal.
Pretty much everyone there had some sort of ‘villain backstory’ for why they gave up their academic dreams, or of how they struggle with institutions regularly.
As @ThatInvestor's thread on the the conference summarizes:
There is a cultural shift happening in Academia due to:
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Misleading or sometimes plagiarized publications -
Broken incentive models -
Lack of public trust
ResearchHub is meeting the new age of academics where they are at by:
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Redefining incentives to solve the replication crisis -
Allowing the market to compensate academics -
Open sourcing academia
What comes next?
Some other notes on recent developments…
Massive changes in the FDA might happen based on Trump’s HHS cabinet picks - RFK Jr. and Jim O’Neill. We might see some meaningful reform, or it might get deadlocked by the incumbents.
The development of the biotech vertical that goes around both the patent and regulatory systems seems inevitable… privacy preserving systems for reputation and identity are just starting to become viable.
Pump.fun become a launch pad for tokens… a derivative, pump.science, saw some initial success with funding early stage research. However, it did not take long for them to be attacked by people posting ‘fake’ tokens on their platform through a glitch.
LongCovidDAO is recruiting patients for a study.
PsyDao is seeking to develop alternatives to MDMA that provide a similar experience but have less MDMA alternatives
Overall things are looking good.