Will global corporations influence the development of medicine, agriculture, and space exploration as strongly as they do today? Will it be possible for independent scientists to have research funding and work together on global challenges? Will doctors be able to use scientific discoveries freely, giving patients more affordable treatment?
Decentralized Science (DeSci), combining classical science and decentralized technologies, should answer this.
My name is Daria. I'm a Strategic Brand Marketer and Growth Expert helping blockchain-powered projects gain awareness and trust among users and developers. In this video, I want to give you an overall picture of DeSci and share some hypotheses about the future of this direction.
Decentralized Science aims to create an ecosystem where scientists are incentivized to openly share their research and receive credit for their work while allowing anyone to access and contribute to the research quickly. DeSci works off the idea that scientific knowledge should be accessible to everyone and that scientific research should be transparent.
Decentralized science allows for more diverse funding sources, such as DAOs and crowdfunding.
Let's learn more about the projects presented in this direction!
Molecule
The most influential project is Molecule. Molecule is a decentralized biotech protocol, building a web3 marketplace for research-related Intellectual Property.
A platform and scalable framework for biotech DAOs connects academics and biotech companies with quick and easy funding while enabling patient, researcher, and investor communities to directly govern and own research-related intellectual property.
Molecule works in three directions:
1. The protocol. Molecule created a hybrid legal-smart contract primitive called an IP-NFT. The IP-NFT protocol brings rights to Intellectual Property and R&D data on-chain, unifying the legal rights, data access, and economics around research projects into cryptographic tokens on Ethereum.
2. The marketplace. On top of this new primitive, Molecule is building a marketplace that enables matchmaking between researchers and funders for translational research projects. Researchers and funders meet on Molecule Discovery to propose and evaluate research proposals, negotiate terms, and come to agreements.
3. The BioDAO launchpad. To foster demand and supply for the marketplace, Molecule builds and incubates bioDAOs, a new class of decentralized biotech IP and R&D organizations, through an incubator/accelerator program called bio.xyz. BioDAO communities consist of patients, researchers, and enthusiasts joining to fund research in specific therapeutic areas.
VitaDAO
Molecule became a basis for the creation of VitaDAO. VitaDAO was started in 2021 by Tyler Golato of decentralized biotech protocol Molecule to fund longevity research.
VitaDAO is a community-owned collective dedicated to funding and advancing exceptional longevity science research that will help people live longer healthier lives.
According to the organization, it boasts a community of over 9,000 "enthusiasts, researchers and contributors," and deployed over $3.5 million to projects researching diseases of aging, cellular biology and repairing age-related damage to the body in 2022.
The DAO has its token - VITA. It's used to vote on and govern longevity research funding proposals.
At the beginning of 2023, VitaDAO closed $4.1M funding round with Pfizer Ventures for longevity research. Previous investors include Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer, and decentralized science organizations BeakerDAO and Spaceship DAO.
Zuzalu Pop-Up City by VitaDAO and Vitalik
Based on VitaDAO, a Zuzalu city was created. Zuzalu is a first-of-its-kind pop-up city community initiated by Vitalik Buterin and frends.
Zuzalu is a public good community, a pop-up city, a playground for cross-pollination experiments, a debating ground for exciting topics, a testing space for Ethereum-based technology, and a hub for futuristic-sounding disciplines such as longevity, synthetic biology, network states, and more.
Watch a video on the Bankless YouYube channel to learn more about Zuzalu:
AthenaDAO
The next DAO is focused on women's health, called AthenaDAO. At DappCon, Inês Silva, founder of AthenaDAO, talked about the mission of the DAO and the underestimation of women's health research.
The main point is that most research and data analytics on human health are relevant to men.
The female body's physical and psychological health has been researched much less so far, leading to difficulties in preventing some diseases and during treatment.
AthenaDAO is built on Molecule protocol and gets support from the ecosystem. This DAO also uses IP-NFTs for rewarding scientists:
LabDAO
The last organization on my list for today is LabDAO. It is an online organization of scientists and engineers. Their goal is to make Bio Machine Learning tools more accessible and clinically relevant. They aim to unlock progress in the field by breaking down barriers caused by poor usability and niche expertise. LabDAO has developed Plex.
Plex is the Python package enables you to run computational biology tools seamlessly. PLEX manages all dependencies and installations, and requests compute time from the LabDAO network, ensuring an effortless experience. It's developed for scientists and developers who want to make running the latest computational biology tools easier.
Here is the link to GitHub with the description of Plex:
DeSciWorld
DeSciWorld is being built by contributors: researchers; designers; businesspeople; creators. Situated around the world, they bring diverse views and people together to unite with the goal of Decentralising Science.
DeSciWorld lists and describes the projects combining science and blockchain. The full list of the DeSci projects and related content by DeSciWorldDAO is available by this GitHub link:
From the marketing and branding perspective, I like the website of DeSciWorld. The design looks consistent and gives the proper vibe.
What reduces DeSci's credibility?
Decentralized Science is still a niche and new direction in the industry of blockchain-powered projects. Therefore, at the moment, several points can reduce the trust in this direction for people inside of Web3 and people far from advanced decentralized technologies. I can name 4 reasons for the decrease in trust in DeSci:
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DeSci lacks a clear set of shared values. Currently, different segments are defined by the problems they're attempting to solve. For a new culture within science to emerge, the movement would benefit from rallying behind common principles.
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Diverse participation. DeSci communities will primarily comprise people already involved in crypto and science, two spaces where women are underrepresented. Gender imbalances have real consequences — women's health, for example, has been historically under-researched. That's why Athena DAO is focusing on women's health.
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Prioritizing end goals. Ultimately, DeSci is a movement that's experimenting with a collection of new tools in an attempt to improve science. For DeSci to succeed, these tools should be unnoticeable and integrate seamlessly into the everyday work of scientists. DeSci should, therefore, focus on empowering scientists to do good science and ensure through robust user research that the focus is on this, not these new tools themselves.
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Lack of trust. Due to the novelty of the direction and the longevity of scientific research, bad actors can take advantage of the opportunity to appropriate funds received from donors. Imagine Elizabeth Holmes, who thought of adding blockchain to her excellent idea! That is why DeSci projects need to work on public communications to overcome mistrust in the community and of people far from science and technology.
Conclusion
Despite all the challenges, I think such decentralized scientific initiatives can help make the healthcare and wellness industry more transparent and diverse. What do you think? Where would you invest if you chose the field of science? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
If you like a video format more than text, you can watch my video about Decentralized Science on YouTube:
