Beaker is a newly formed Decentralized Science (DeSci) DAO, focused on supporting the scientific community and providing critical resources for research, community building, and scientific progress.

A new field is emerging in Web3, bringing together people motivated to shake up standards in traditional science via Decentralized Science, or DeSci. DeSci has far-reaching implications, explored by many—including the Ethereum Foundation—due to its potential to build public infrastructure for funding, creating, reviewing, storing, and sharing knowledge more fairly and equitably. 

DeSci is giving traditional science a wake up call—issues that have plagued science for decades such as opaque research funding processes, ineffective methods of data sharing, and challenges in valuing and sharing intellectual property are being reimagined. Through DeSci, alternatives are being proposed and implemented that address each of these pain points, while energizing the scientific community to experiment rapidly with the new technologies introduced through crypto.  

Incubated by members of The LAO, Beaker is a newly formed collective that will focus on identifying and supporting groundbreaking initiatives in science. “We are still at an early stage, but the DeSci ecosystem is beginning to flourish with the benefits of open-source technology and composability—it is reframing what is possible and in what timeframe,” notes James Brodie, Chief Investment Officer of ID Theory and member of The LAO. In his essay, “Decentralization is Disrupting Drug Development,” James lays out how every step of the process to bringing novel therapeutics and drugs to market is being interrogated and rebuilt. As Beaker DAO, our aim is to spearhead efforts to create new systems that work better for scientific funding, discovery, and development. 

DeSci improves access to scientific funding. 

Many areas of scientific research are historically underfunded, specifically in areas like longevity, women’s health, and early-stage biopharma. Many of these underrepresented fields are able to access funding more directly via investment DAOs, like Beaker and many others. DAOs provide a way for a diverse set of stakeholders to come together, regardless of their background, to discuss, fund, and develop novel IP and therapeutics.  

One early example is VitaDAO, a collective focused on longevity research. In June 2021, they were able to raise $5 million from hundreds of individuals. Having an invested community is a key component to VitaDAO’s efforts—holders of the $VITA token can also vote on proposals to acquire, support, and finance new therapeutics and research. Using blockchain technology, and organizing through a DAO, Vita is just one example of what we imagine is to come for many areas of scientific study and experimentation. 

Peer-review models are upgraded with DeSci. 

In traditional science, peer-review models can lead to echo chambers where researchers and reviewers are incentivized to publish experiments with positive outcomes. As an alternative, imagine quickly organizing and collaborating with peers from all over the world, to review studies that are immediately shared with the public. Through organizations like DeSci Labs, researchers are gathering to form Autonomous Research Communities (ARCs), to select studies to review and validate together. Findings are then stored on-chain, creating an extended public record of the research to invite even more peers to study. 

Experiments like DeSci Labs also address the issue of unpaid peer-reviews by ensuring that participants are rewarded for their contributions. With ARCs, collectives can choose how to directly compensate authors, referrers, and reviewers, acknowledging the role that each plays in advancing scientific records.       

New markets are emerging for research with IP-NFTs.  

When research is stored onchain, its coinciding IP can also be tokenized as an NFT. Similar to how NFTs have seen mass adoption and financialization as digital collectibles and art, a market is beginning to develop for ownership of research IP-NFTs.    

Now, researchers are also tokenizing their studies as IP-NFTs, which represent full legal IP rights. Owned by an individual or entity, but freely available for anyone to view and access, IP-NFTs are a novel mechanism for information to circulate and accrue value back to its originator. Funds generated through the acquisition of IP-NFTs have been used so far towards advancing longevity, Alzheimer’s, and Gerontology research. Also, each IP-NFT is stored onchain via decentralized servers like IPFS and Arweave, to ensure the data will be available for future generations to access freely.      

With DeSci, research is recorded onchain and can be shared more openly and freely. 

In 2011, programmer and hacktivist Aaron Swartz downloaded 4.8 million articles and documents from JSTOR, a subscription-only service for distributing scientific and literary journals. An advocate for unrestricted access to peer reviewed articles, Swartz was charged for violating the Computer and Fraud Abuse Act. The documents were never made public, but the need to create an open source library for academic papers remained. 

By storing, sharing, and distributing peer reviewed papers (and IP-NFTs) on Ethereum, researchers in DeSci can opt-in to their work being universally accessible and censorship-resistant by default. The open knowledge ideals of advocates like Swartz, are taken a step further in DeSci—as more data is stored onchain, seemingly disparate areas of study can become subject to network effects. The further development of an Open Knowledge Graph, made possible by immutable onchain attribution models, will give rise to unseen scientific breakthroughs.

Introducing Beaker DAO.

Beaker is designed for scientists, industry experts, builders, and investors who understand the potential for DeSci to bring positive and healthy change to our respective fields. Together, we want to help explore and fund initiatives aimed at: reimagining the pharmaceutical industry, challenging current approval pathways for medicine, helping empower scientists, and supporting new models for clinical trials. Our approach to mapping out the current DeSci landscape prioritizes funding technology platforms, infrastructure, new forms of IP, patents, and R&D. 

Beaker is at the forefront of funding and backing experiments in DeSci.

Since inception, we’ve invested in projects at the intersection of blockchain and cutting-edge scientific research, including VitaDAO, Molecule, and LabDAO—with even more in development. Alongside investing, we also want to find ways to make data and IP more available, to enable the creation of community-owned, cost effective, globally accessible treatments.

We have set ambitious goals for the DAO:

• Build the largest and highest quality community of scientists, builders, and investors in DeSci to create a safe and trusted space for collaboration.

• Invest in and support ingenuity within scientific research.

• Fund projects who have the potential to make game-changing contributions to the biotech and blockchain industries.

• Coordinate academics to create novel and exciting discoveries. 

• Create decentralized collaboration with experiments conducted remotely with Contract Research Organizations, or CROs. 

• Finance physical DeSci laboratories and enable scientists to experiment outside of academia. 

• Leverage IP-NFTs without patents. 

With deep conviction in the future of DeSci, and an engaged membership base, we’re optimistic that Beaker will be able to contribute to progress in this new era for scientific study.  

Stay connected with Beaker.

If you are interested in learning more about Beaker or want to share details about a DeSci project you think we should know of, visit beakerdao.xyz or email us at hello@beakerdao.xyz.  To stay up to date with Beaker and all of our efforts, follow us on Twitter @BeakerDAO.