PsyDAO's new Early Career Fellowship, one of the first of its kind, backs bold thinkers who seek to unlock the healing power of psychedelics through hard science.
The fellowship helps PhD students and early-career researchers whose work might slip through the cracks of old-school funding. While their findings could reshape our understanding of psychedelics, they might not yield quick profits—and that's okay. PsyDAO steps in where others step back.[Read how BioDAOs like PsyDAO use tokens to fund science.]
Zeus Tipado, the first chosen fellow, shows what PsyDAO seeks. As a PhD student at Maastricht University, Zeus has broken new ground by linking DMT trips with virtual reality and brain scans. But what truly sets him apart is his unwavering trust in science over speculation.
Psychedelic lovers often believe in mysticism and spirit. In contrast, Zeus tends to stand firm in data and reason. He boldly states that DMT entities are brain-made, not outer-world visitors, and that hallucinations aren't proof we live in a computer simulation. While many psychonauts hype small amounts of psychedelics as cure-alls, he calls out microdosing as likely nothing more than a placebo.
"In this psychedelic renaissance," Zeus says, "it's important to keep your mind open, but not too open where your brain falls on the floor."Such iconoclasm might ruffle feathers, but it wins respect. Zeus's words have reached millions through Snoop Dogg's MERRY JANE network and Doubleblind Magazine.
(Other data from PsyDAO researchers may quibble with Zeus’s microdosing interpretation; they suggest microdosing increases energy—but different readings of data are OK!)
[Read about our main tokens, $PSY and $PSYC. Get $PSY tokens here.]
Under the fellowship, Zeus will conduct research on deoxymethoxetamine (DMXE), an NMDA receptor antagonist with unique properties. He'll use PsyDAO's decentralized funding models to push this work forward, showing how the fellowship bridges old-school research with new-world methods.
Tyler Quigley, science lead at PsyDAO, lays out the aim of the fellowship clearly: "We initiated the Early Career Fellowship to enable a funding mechanism for PsyDAO to support early-career researchers whose projects align with advancing psychedelic science but may not have immediate commercial potential."[Read about PsyDAO’s other projects: tokenizing psychedelic surveys, building multi-agent AI systems, token farming, and giving artist grants.]
What do PsyDAO’s Early Career Fellows get? First, they get money to fund their work. But that's just the start. They gain tools to work in the new world of decentralized science (DeSci), where research flows freely and funding comes through web3 networks. Fellows join a web of sharp minds and helpful hands, all pushing toward better understanding of psychedelics.
By backing bold thinkers like Zeus, PsyDAO's fellowship does more than fund research—it builds bridges between lab bench and blockchain, between careful science and cutting-edge tools. It opens new paths for psychedelic research to grow and thrive.
Through this fellowship, PsyDAO stamps its mark as a leader in making psychedelic science more open and more likely to help heal humans.
[One last note: DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please: