The intersection of blockchain technology and science has introduced an innovative approach to addressing systemic inefficiencies in the scientific field. Decentralized Science (DeSci) uses the principles of decentralization, transparency, and tokenization to revolutionize the way research is conducted, funded, and shared. By harnessing the power of blockchain, DeSci aims to democratize the scientific process and overcome obstacles such as data accessibility, publication controls, and asynchronous incentives.
What is DeSci?
DeSci is an emerging movement that aims to revolutionize the way scientific research is conducted, shared, and funded. By leveraging blockchain technology and related tools such as tokens, NFTs, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), DeSci aims to create an open, transparent, and community-driven scientific ecosystem.
At its core, DeSci is built on the belief that scientific knowledge should be accessible to everyone and that the research process should prioritize collaboration and transparency over monopoly and profit motives. Traditional research systems are often hampered by control, lack of funding, and restrictive intellectual property practices. DeSci addresses these challenges by allowing scientists to raise funding, conduct experiments, share data, and distribute insights on decentralized platforms.
Understanding Decentralized Science – DeSci
In an interview, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin described decentralized science as a set of ideas that seek to find ways in which emerging open and decentralized technologies can improve science.
So, before blockchain-related terms pop into your head, let’s focus on the first and most important use case of decentralized blockchain technology, which is to improve organizations, form better collaborations, and enhance the fundraising process.
In general, the newly coined term “DeSci” or decentralized science is a broad concept, encompassing many dynamic methods and topics that aim to democratize scientific research and discovery.
You may wonder if there is an online scientific community that is conducting research in a non-hierarchical and loosely organized manner, but does not use terms like Web3, DAO, crypto, or blockchain.
How blockchain powers DeSci
Blockchain technology is the foundation for DeSci’s ability to create a transparent, immutable, and efficient scientific ecosystem. By leveraging the unique characteristics of blockchain, DeSci addresses key shortcomings in traditional scientific practices and fosters collaboration.
- Immutable Scientific Records
Blockchain ensures that all research data, publications, and reviews are permanently recorded. This prevents tampering, maintains trust, and provides an auditable trail of scientific progress.
- Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)
DAOs empower researchers and communities to jointly fund and manage scientific initiatives. They promote democratic decision-making, align incentives with community goals, and enable global participation in research funding and prioritization.
- Smart Contracts
These automated contracts facilitate the secure, transparent, and efficient distribution of resources, rewards, and intellectual property. They allow pre-determined agreements to be executed without intermediaries, reducing administrative burdens.
- Incentivizing Collaboration
Blockchain introduces tokens and NFTs to incentivize collaboration and reproducibility in research. Scientists can earn tokens when publishing data, validating results, or participating in peer review, creating a self-sustaining innovation ecosystem.
- Ownership and Monetization
Through tokenized intellectual property (e.g. IP-NFTs), researchers retain ownership of their discoveries. This allows them to monetize their work directly while ensuring transparency and equitable distribution of profits.
- Secure Data Sharing
Blockchain enables secure, privacy-protected data sharing, allowing researchers to collaborate while maintaining control of sensitive information. This is especially valuable in areas such as genetics and clinical research.
By integrating these features, blockchain empowers DeSci to build a decentralized scientific infrastructure that is fairer, transparent, and accessible to everyone.
Challenges in Traditional Science
The current academic research system faces many challenges that impede progress, innovation, and accessibility. These systemic inadequacies, ranging from limited data sharing to funding bottlenecks, create barriers that impede scientific progress.
- Data Sharing
Limited Accessibility: Traditional systems often restrict access to important datasets, making it difficult for researchers to validate results or collaborate effectively.
Lack of Provenance: Difficulty in tracing the origins and modifications of scientific data, leading to concerns about reliability and reproducibility.
Property Issues: Outdated practices often deny researchers appropriate control over their work, as institutions and publishers demand rights to published data.
- Research and Publishing
Peer Review Issues: While peer review is essential for validating science, the process can be slow, inconsistent, and biased, sometimes acting as a control mechanism that hinders innovation.
Intellectual Property Barriers: Strict intellectual property and patent regulations often limit the open sharing of discoveries, hindering collaborative efforts.
Control and high fees: Traditional academic journals act as regulators, charging high open access fees, limiting publication opportunities and restricting public access to important knowledge.
- Funding Challenges
Bureaucratic processes: Securing research funding often involves lengthy grant application processes, which distract researchers from their work.
Misaligned priorities: Researchers may have to tailor their proposals to the interests of funders rather than explore high-risk, high-reward ideas.
Private funding bias: Private funders may prioritize profit-driven outcomes, leading to biased research outcomes and a lack of social impact.
- Lack of Reproducibility
Inadequate Data Sharing: The limited availability of raw data makes it difficult for researchers to replicate and validate existing findings.
Lack of Incentives: Traditional systems provide little incentive for researchers to invest in validating or reproducing the work of others, leading to unreliable conclusions.
- The Valley of Death
The Gap Between Research and Application: Bridging the gap from basic research to practical applications is a major obstacle. Promising discoveries often fail to reach commercialization due to funding constraints and ineffective collaboration between academia and industry.
How DeSci Addresses These Challenges
Decentralized Science (DeSci) offers innovative solutions to the challenges that plague traditional science. By leveraging blockchain technology, DeSci brings transparency, accessibility, and equitable participation to the scientific ecosystem.
- Transforming Data Sharing
Open Access Repositories: DeSci creates decentralized repositories to store and share data on blockchain ledgers. This ensures data availability, integrity, and provenance.
Ownership and Control: Researchers retain ownership of their data through tokenized systems like IP-NFTs, allowing them to monetize their work while maintaining transparency.
Global Collaboration: Decentralized platforms enable seamless international collaboration, allowing researchers from diverse backgrounds to contribute and benefit from shared resources.
- Revolutionizing Research and Publishing
Transparent Peer Review: Blockchain-based platforms enable verifiable and incentivized peer review processes, minimizing bias and delays while increasing accountability.
Tokenized IP: By tokenizing IP, researchers can bypass traditional publishers, monetize their work directly, and control its distribution.
Lower Fees: DeSci eliminates the need for expensive publishing fees by creating open-access platforms, democratizing knowledge sharing.
- Innovating Funding Models
Decentralized Funding Mechanisms: Platforms like DAOs pool resources from global communities, enabling equitable distribution of funds across diverse research projects.
Tokenization: Scientists can tokenize discoveries as IP-NFTs, attracting investment and providing liquidity in the early stages of research. This model also aligns funding with community-driven priorities.
Second-tier contributions: This innovative funding approach ensures equitable allocation of resources, prioritizing projects that receive widespread support over those backed by a few high-net-worth individuals.
- Enhanced Reproducibility
Incentives for Validation: DeSci introduces token rewards and a reputation system to incentivize researchers to reproduce and validate findings, improving the credibility of scientific work.
Immutable Records: Blockchain technology ensures that data and methodologies remain immutable and accessible, allowing for rigorous validation of research findings.
- Bridging the ‘Valley of Death’
Early-Stage Liquidity: Tokenized research and decentralized funding platforms provide the resources needed to move discoveries from the lab to real-world applications.
Simplified Collaboration: DeSci platforms foster partnerships between academia, industry, and the public sector, accelerating the commercialization of innovative ideas.
DeSci represents a disruptive approach to overcoming the limitations of traditional science. By integrating blockchain technology into the scientific ecosystem, it addresses systemic inefficiencies such as limited data sharing, opaque publishing practices, and inequitable funding. With the potential to democratize access, encourage collaboration, and drive innovation, DeSci paves the way for a more transparent, inclusive, and impactful future for scientific research.
Notable DeSci Projects
- VitaDAO
VitaDAO is at the forefront of decentralized scientific research, focused on extending human lifespans and improving the quality of life. By funding early-stage projects and supporting the commercialization of their results through spin-out companies, VitaDAO bridges the gap between groundbreaking research and practical applications.
One of the hallmarks of VitaDAO is its collective funding approach, where global community members join forces to support transformative research. This decentralized funding model has attracted significant backing from major players like Pfizer and prominent figures like former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. With over $4 million raised, VitaDAO demonstrates the potential of community-driven science.
VitaDAO challenges the traditional pharmaceutical industry’s monopoly on intellectual property (IP). By decentralizing ownership and access to IP, it ensures that innovative therapies are widely available and not restricted to a select few. This model democratizes access to cutting-edge treatments and enables researchers to work on high-risk but potentially high-reward ideas without institutional barriers.
- AthenaDAO
AthenaDAO addresses a critical gap in medical research – women’s health. Historically, the field has suffered from severe underfunding, with conditions such as menopause and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) receiving little attention. For example, menopause and its associated symptoms are often excluded from global burden of disease databases, reflecting a lack of attention to addressing these common issues.
AthenaDAO’s mission is to revolutionize women’s health research by creating a global, decentralized community dedicated to improving understanding and treatment. It funds projects related to ovarian aging, endometriosis, uterine fibroids, and many others. Through collaborations with researchers, computational modelers, and enthusiasts, AthenaDAO ensures that these underserved conditions are thoroughly researched and addressed.
By leveraging decentralized funding mechanisms, AthenaDAO brings much-needed attention and resources to women’s health, creating a comprehensive platform for innovation and advancement in this overlooked field.
- ValleyDAO
ValleyDAO focuses on using synthetic biology to address global sustainability challenges. This field involves engineering new biological systems or modifying existing ones to address pressing issues such as climate change, pollution, and energy production.
Its research spans a wide range of high-impact areas, including developing renewable energy sources through biological innovations, engineering bacteria that can degrade pollutants to clean up the environment, and engineering crops that are more nutritious and more resistant to environmental stress.
As a decentralized community of scientists, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts, ValleyDAO advocates a collaborative approach to sustainability. By democratizing access to synthetic biology, it ensures that breakthroughs in this transformative field are not limited to a handful of organizations but are made accessible to solve shared global challenges. This model fosters innovation and inclusivity, paving the way for impactful solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.
- GenomesDAO
GenomesDAO is pioneering a decentralized approach to genetic data ownership and research. Based on the belief that individuals should have full control over their genetic information, it provides a secure and privacy-protected platform for storing and sharing genetic data.
Users manage their data through a secure DNA Vault, accessible via the GenomesDAO mobile app. This allows individuals to decide who can access their genetic information and for what purposes. Pharmaceutical companies, academic researchers, and biotech organizations can query this data to understand disease mechanisms or develop drugs without compromising user privacy.
GenomesDAO aims to build the world’s largest user-owned genetic database, promoting transparency and trust in genetic research. By combining privacy, ownership, and accessibility, it bridges the gap between personal data sovereignty and collaborative scientific advancement.
- ResearchHub: A Crypto-Powered Scientific Discussion Platform
ResearchHub is a platform that seeks to promote a collaborative open science model, where researchers can share their favorite research papers, discover new papers, and become part of the scientific community.
Their ultimate goal is to become the leading platform for scientific discussions with an incentive layer that rewards contributors, thereby accelerating scientific breakthroughs. The project is backed by Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong, who is passionate about accelerating scientific and technological solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. He is so passionate that he sold 2% of his Coinbase shares to fund ResearchHub.
Incentivization is provided through the ResearchCoin (RSC) token, which is the community reward token and currency of ResearchHub. Users will earn RSC by actively participating in the platform – this can include uploading articles, posting comments, and creating articles.
RSC can also be earned by other users appreciating your contributions. Additionally, rewards can be created for community members to complete specific tasks, all of which are incentivized with RSC.
- BIO Protocol
BIO Protocol is a DeSci project that uses blockchain technology to finance biomedical technology-related research. The goal of BIO Protocol is to make it easy for researchers to raise capital to advance the development of the biomedical technology industry.
BIO Protocol has supported the funding of prominent biomedical DAOs such as HairDAO – a hair treatment drug research organization, AthenaDAO – a women’s disease research organization, and many others.
BIO can be viewed as a Y Combinator for on-chain Science. The platform enables a global community of scientists, patients, and investors to jointly fund, develop, and collectively own new drugs and therapies through a network of Biotech Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (BioDAOs). The protocol’s innovative approach addresses critical gaps in traditional science funding, particularly in areas such as rare diseases, longevity research, and emerging health challenges.
Currently, BIO’s network consists of seven BioDAOs focused on areas as diverse as cryopreservation, women’s health, and psychopharmaceuticals for mental health. The protocol’s next cohort includes projects to accelerate the search for cures for long-haul COVID and rare diseases, as well as the development of quantum microscopes to observe quantum biological phenomena, expanding the scope and impact of community-driven science.
The Future of DeSci
DeSci’s potential lies in its ability to disrupt entrenched systems and establish a more equitable and efficient scientific ecosystem. By democratizing access to knowledge, streamlining funding processes, and promoting transparency, DeSci could pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries that benefit society as a whole.
However, widespread adoption of DeSci faces challenges such as resistance from traditional institutions, scaling issues, and the need for global standards. Success will depend on building trust, building robust infrastructure, and demonstrating concrete improvements in research outcomes.
Conclusion
Decentralized Science (DeSci) represents a bold step forward in transforming the way research is conducted and shared. By integrating blockchain technology with scientific practices, DeSci seeks to overcome the inefficiencies of traditional systems, empower researchers, and democratize innovation. As the movement grows, it promises to reshape science in a way that is more open, collaborative, and impactful.
