Original article: " Decentralized Science (DeSci)" is on the rise
Author: Chenglin Pua (Malaysia) Editor: Yu Baicheng Typesetting: Wang Jilongyan
Blockchain technology has had a considerable impact on the financial industry. Compared with the past, the degree of decentralization of the financial industry has improved a lot. Similar to finance, blockchain is also changing other industries, such as agriculture, transportation, energy, etc. Today, the combination of blockchain and the scientific community extends DeSci.
What is decentralized science?
DeSci is an initiative aimed at building a public infrastructure to fund, create, review, credit, store and disseminate scientific knowledge fairly and equitably using the Web3 (tools including NFTs, smart contracts and DAOs).
DeSci encourages scientists to openly share their research and receive credit for their work, while allowing anyone to easily access and contribute to research. DeSci's philosophy is that scientific knowledge should be open to everyone and the process of scientific research should be transparent. DeSci is creating a more decentralized and distributed scientific research model that is more free from censorship and control by central authorities. DeSci hopes that by decentralizing access to funding, scientific tools, and communication channels, it will create an environment where new and unconventional ideas can flourish.
DeSci is a model that incentivizes researchers to share their work openly, while making scientific knowledge accessible to everyone.
A decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) is an organization embodied in open and transparent computer code, which is controlled by many token holders and is not affected by an individual/an organization. The financial transaction records and procedural rules of a distributed autonomous organization are stored in the blockchain.
Why is DeSci needed?
Science has always been a central driver in solving some of humanity's greatest challenges and helping improve people's lives. Scientific discoveries have enabled us to extend our lives, put humans on the moon, and vastly expand the limits of what humans can achieve by creating new technologies. It continues to play an important role in almost all aspects of our lives. However, modern science still faces a number of challenges, including high barriers to accessing information and funding issues.
First, to establish a credible reputation in the research field, researchers often have to publish their papers in scientific journals, for which they may also have to pay, placing a financial burden on scientists. After the researchers' papers are published, sometimes they want to review the papers they wrote before, and they may need to pay for it themselves. And readers also need to pay a certain price if they want to read the papers. This model further limits the way for the public and researchers to obtain knowledge.
For scientists, funding issues are a particularly big pain point. They spend most of their time writing funding applications, but whether they can successfully obtain funding is largely related to the h-index. h-index is an indicator used to quantify the influence of scientists' published content, which also puts pressure on scientists to publish papers. Driven by the pressure, scientists tend to chase new hot spots rather than vital but elusive research.
In the end, insufficient and unstable funding not only reduces scientific output, but also makes scientists biased in choosing research projects (not being able to do what they want), and even triggers a potential crisis of project replication.
Advantages of DeSci
DeSci has been recognized for its ability to deliver new value, including solving the challenges of research funding, removing the middleman between researchers and reviewers, and making science truly open to the world.
Solve research funding challenges. Existing scientific DAOs offer several funding methods, ranging from crowdfunding, investing in research tokens, to selling utility NFTs. For example, part of the proceeds from a commercially successful scientific discovery would be able to go back to the DAO under the terms of the smart contract.
Plus, it can raise money for science projects—in theory, anyone with a rare disease could help fund research to find a cure more quickly.
Eliminate the middleman between researchers and reviewers. Nowadays, if scientists want to publish or consult the research results of the same industry, they rely on intermediate platforms-some scientific alliances or journals, and the profits are often obtained by intermediaries. Blockchain and smart contracts will remove middlemen and connect scientists with experts around the world, which will make scientific progress faster.
Make science truly open to the world. DeSci can encourage scientists around the world to join like-minded research teams, no matter what their background or their country of origin. For example, in the form of online co-labs and cloud labs. This borderless sharing of knowledge will drive the advancement of science, scientists will be able to find solutions to fundamental problems faster, share the results of cooperation, and protect intellectual property through the opportunities provided by NFT.
In addition, many papers and possibly data need to be paid, while DeSci is to allow people to freely obtain these papers and related data for research.
What are the current DeSci cases?
Opscientia is an Open Science/DeSci data wallet project that aims to make it easier for scientists to share data securely with their peers. At the same time, the project also designed a reward mechanism that can reward neuroscientists for uploading and sharing their data, as well as participating in neuroscience research. User. The project also allows users to retain ownership of their data and easily modify permissions.
VitaDAO aims to challenge the status quo of the longevity industry by opening governance to participating token holders in the community. VitaDAO and its donor partners are using these funds to fund projects in longevity and medical research. Scientists share data and research with VitaDAO, they democratize the DAO, and provide others in the collective with more convenient access to longevity and healing research. Researchers and workgroups who contribute data or expertise to VitaDAO will be rewarded with VITA tokens, giving them additional governance rights over the DAO's intellectual property and providing financial rewards for their continued participation.
Antidote DAO is looking for effective ways to cure cancer. The founders of this organization have nothing to do with science, but they understand blockchain technology. With the help of investors, they are conducting a bold study to find new treatments for cancer. Another example is that Dynamicculture aims to conduct research in the field of environmental protection. This area includes air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, food crises, and other important ecological problems in recent decades. The community has issued tokens that scientists around the world can earn for helping The DAO fight climate change.
Molecule is a fundraising platform for biotech research. Currently, about 40 scientists are looking for funding for their projects on the site. Anyone can donate and support future important discoveries. For example, these studies include the search for antibodies for the currently incurable Alzheimer's disease, effective treatments for autoimmune diseases, and psoriasis treatments. Some projects have already raised the necessary funding for Phase 1 trials.
Dynamicculture is aimed at research in the field of environmental protection. This area includes air and water pollution, biodiversity loss, food crises, and other important ecological problems in recent decades. The community has issued tokens that scientists around the world can earn for helping The DAO fight climate change.
LabDAO is a community of scientists and engineers dedicated to sharing open tools for life science research. The community's mission is to accelerate the advancement of the life sciences by making computing and scientific tools accessible to all members.
LabDAO hopes to live in a world that can unleash the potential of individuals to develop technology, so that the research capabilities of researchers and organizations are not limited by funding, hardware, software, and infrastructure. The tools that LabDAO has co-built are designed to lower the barriers for inventors to raise funds, develop technology, and share it in a barrier-free manner.
Bio.xyz is a DAO organization startup platform incubated by Molecule, providing one-stop supporting services including operations, technology, infrastructure, and professional advice. Since 2018, Bio.xyz incubated and accelerated the aforementioned first biotech DAO: VitaDAO, which funded $2.5 million worth of longevity research and created core DeSci infrastructure such as the IP-NFT framework , laying the foundation for the emergence of the next generation of builders in the DeSci field. Bio.xyz can provide direct support services and funds for various DeSci DAO organizations, and build the future of DeSci together with DAO organizations.
DeSci's challenge
Although DeSci seems to have many advantages, in fact DeSci is still in its early stage, and there are still many problems and challenges to be faced and solved. The challenges that DeSci needs to face include the quality of scientific research projects, building the DeSci protocol, and identifying the ultimate goal (that is, a good integration with current scientific research).
Do non-authoritative scientists have the ability to distinguish high-quality projects from low-quality ones? A robust reputation and governance system is critical to science. Grant applications, for example, could be pre-screened by reputable scientists before being put to a broad community vote. Additionally, collaborations between DeSci and traditional science can also aid in quality assessment. For example, traditional funding such as medical foundations can provide a helping hand for high-quality projects that are dying.
DAOs can improve the governance system by imagining corner cases. Furthermore, a group of supporters similar to the "flat earth theory" want to use money to do research, so how to prevent it?
At present, DeSci is still in an early state, and the protocol and rules are not yet perfect. How to build a good DeSci protocol, or the DeSci protocol that everyone agrees with is an important issue to be considered for the safe implementation of DeSci in the future.
DeSci seeks to improve scientific research by employing a variety of new tools. For DeSci to be successful, these tools should integrate seamlessly with scientists' daily work. Therefore, DeSci should focus on empowering scientists to help them do their research better, while conducting effective user research to ensure that the focus is on empowering scientists rather than the tools themselves.
