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DeSci - opportunities for the longevity industry Q3 2022

Intro

We have dived into the newly emerging industry - Decentralized Science. We tried to figure out what it can offer for those who are trying to solve the aging problem. Long story short, DeSci is a successor of Open Science. It takes the same principles but tries to use different tools to achieve the goal. However, it is very young and the widescale results are expected only in 2-3+ years.

Authors:

Vitaliy Gataulin⁠

Rinat Kulsinbaev⁠

info@stoneageless.com⁠

⁠

What is DeSci

Decentralized Science -

DeSci⁠

- is a movement that aims to build public infrastructure for funding, creating, reviewing, crediting, storing, and disseminating scientific knowledge fairly and equitably using the Web3 stack. It takes

web3⁠

technologies such as

decentralized storage⁠

smart contracts⁠

, and decentralized organizations (

DAOs⁠

) to enable new possibilities for how science is incentivized, evaluated, financed, and shared with the world.

DeSci 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 easily. DeSci works off the idea that scientific knowledge should be accessible to everyone and that the process of scientific research should be transparent.

DeSci is creating a more decentralized and distributed scientific research model, making it more resistant to censorship and control by central authorities. DeSci hopes to create an environment where new and unconventional ideas can flourish by decentralizing access to funding, scientific tools, and communication channels.

What is web3

web1 - read web2 - read/write web3 - read/write/own

⁠

Web3⁠

is an idea for a new iteration of the

World Wide Web⁠

which incorporates concepts such as

decentralization⁠

blockchain technologies⁠

, and token-based economics. It tries to take back the ownership of the internet to its users.

Some ideas that the community declares it will try to achieve

New funding models, fairer and more accessible

Unlimited collaboration with other scientists, even in a trustless medium

Decentralized wet and dry lab services, open for anyone to use

New models for publishing can be developed that use Web3 primitives for trust, transparency, and universal access

Incentivization for peer-review and replication of findings, based on different token models

Distributed IP ownership, reinventing of IP model

Sharing all of the research, including the data from unsuccessful efforts, by having all steps and data on-chain

Key differences with Open Science

DeSci is a logical extension of Open Science, according to leaders of the DeSci industry. Open Science is a movement to overcome the barriers associated with the exchange and production of scientific knowledge. The key is openness: software, code, articles, reviews, quotes, and everything related to publishing.

DeSci as a field is much broader in scope, and already incorporates the core approaches and principles of Open Science. DeSci expands funding opportunities by trying to use crypto tools (tokens, NFTs). It also allows other blockchain tools to be used for data storage, distributed ownership of scientific knowledge, and collaboration in a trustless environment.

An interesting feature of DeSci projects is the emphasis on the community around their products and ideas. As a result, the community can turn into a full-fledged decentralized organization, which will bring many long-term benefits to such a product.

However, DeSci has just appeared and the majority of projects are still in the pre-launch stage, meanwhile, Open Science has been developing since the beginning of the 21st century. Therefore, there are already many well-established companies, products, and ideas in Open Science.

The current stage of DeSci and some products

Molecule ecosystem

One of the pioneers of this new industry is

Molecule⁠

. They act as an incubator for biotech companies in DeSci - BioDAOs. Recently they raised a $12.7M round. Also organized a DeSci conference in Berlin -

DeSci.Berlin⁠

⁠

Their most successful project so far is the community for funding research in the longevity industry -

VitaDAO⁠

, which raised 5M a year ago, during crowdfunding - they issued VITA tokens.

Crypto auction raises over $5m for longevity research⁠

They have

an onboarding for newcomers⁠

who want to join as a part-time contributor.

VitaDAO received support from significant experts in the longevity industry. $2.5M they have already invested in various projects and labs at the initial stage -

VitaDAO funded projects⁠

. Recently, Pfizer expressed a desire to buy ~1% of VitaDAO tokens. They will assist in evaluating and helping projects, and raise awareness of the entire initiative.

Other BioDAOs of Molecule:

PsyDAO⁠

- research for psychedelics,

LabDAO⁠

- an initiative to create a community of dry and wet labs. These projects are in the pre-launch phase.

There is also innovation from the Molecule team -

IP-NFT⁠

. The intellectual property

Non-Fungible Token⁠

is a new mechanism that leverages distributed ledger technology (DLT) to manage ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights. The goal of the IP-NFT is to enable funding, owning & transacting of IP in an open and distributed market while preserving the privacy and the potential for IP protection that relates to non-registered IP. It is not limited to filed/pending patents but also includes pre-patent intellectual products, data sets, or contracts relating to the management of research projects and their corresponding outputs.

Rising projects

⁠

GenomesDAO⁠

- is a biotech DAO focused on the safe, private, and auditable monetization of genomic data. Their goal is to disrupt the genetic testing industry. The team has already made their app. GenomesDAO provides you with the possibility of full genome sequencing. After that, you have a full control over your genome in private onchain custody. You can also choose to safely and privately monetize your data by allowing 3rd parties or pharmaceutical companies to query parts of your genome in exchange for GENE tokens. They have a goal to make a first deal of selling genomes data by the end of 2022. At the moment you can buy

GENETICATS NFT⁠

and get a discount of up to 80% for the full genome sequencing and a lifetime subscription to the app.

⁠

ResearchHub⁠

- is a platform where people can collaborate on scientific research in a more efficient way, like GitHub for scientists. Researchers are able to upload articles (preprint or postprint) in PDF form, summarize the findings of the work in an attached wiki, and discuss the findings in a completely open and accessible forum dedicated solely to the relevant article. The platform already works and you can earn RSC tokens for publishing and commenting.

⁠

CureDAO⁠

- is an open collaborative building of a community-owned, no-code digital health platform to accelerate clinical research and realize the personalized, precision medicine of the future. They have many

applications in development⁠

. The community is open to contributors and partners of any kind.

⁠

AthenaDAO⁠

- FemTech project that is trying to reduce the funding gap in research and access to reproductive health.

⁠

DeSci Collective⁠

- build a community of DeSci leaders for open discussions of projects and initiatives, and shared investments.

⁠

DeSci World⁠

- build an open dashboard for DeSci projects. Help teams raise funds with NFT collection sales.

⁠

DeSci Labs⁠

- build the infrastructure for DeSci.

DeSci Nodes⁠

, the first product from DeSci Labs enables a radically transparent ledger of the scientific record. They have

a demo of their innovation - web3 pdf⁠

. It’s a tool that connects classic pdf and web3 in order to combine a publication and its data, so you can find everything related to the research in one place.

ArcSci⁠

, the second project, enables the creation of scientific validation workflows and provides tools to align incentives and coordinate scientific communities. They have a DeSci Foundation initiative with a mission to support initiatives of scientists and web3 pioneers that have the potential to improve scientific progress.

Distributed storages

There are some mature

distributed storages⁠

in web3:

Arweave⁠

IPFS⁠

Ocean Protocol⁠

Filecoin⁠

Storj⁠

. They’re building an infrastructure for storing different data more secure and privacy-flexible.

Some projects in DeSci space use existing infrastructure and products, with a focus on scientific challenges. And we expect to see more projects doing that, as demand from scientist increase over time.

⁠

DeSci Nodes⁠

- mentioned above, build a transparent ledger of the scientific record.

⁠

Bacalhau⁠

- the goal of the project is to give researchers and data engineers the ability to publicly reproduce data pipelines, thereby making their research more transparent and reusable.

⁠

Kamu⁠

- is created to address the ongoing reproducibility crisis in science. "Git for Data" that lets you easily share both static and highly dynamic data without losing ownership.

Opportunities

What opportunities are there for the projects that want to be a part of the DeSci movement:

New ways of funding with web3 tools

If you have a hypothesis or a project at an early stage, you can apply for

funding from VitaDAO⁠

⁠

Also, they recently launched a new grant initiative -

The Longevity Prize⁠

⁠

You can issue your community token or NFT collection to get support from your followers

The ability to gather a community of like-minded people around the project and turn them into contributors using various web3 collaboration tools and mechanisms. A community motivated by a share in the project in the form of tokens may be more effective than volunteering. This will allow the project to develop faster in different directions, receive more feedback and support, and always have the opportunity to hire additional specialists to the team.

The ability to come up with new ways of monetization due to an extensive blockchain toolkit in finances

Ability to share ownership of the IP with an unlimited number of people

Some projects are working on the ability to interact with other projects and laboratories without worrying about the safety of your intellectual property

In the near future, there will be projects to improve storage and work with data using distributed storages.

Conclusion

Currently, DeSci is not a large part of web3, out of ~50 projects, 80% are in the stage of ideas and just started building a community, meanwhile, the crypto market is experiencing another winter phase.

However, for such a young industry as longevity, it is important to use all existing opportunities. Additional ways of funding and creating like-minded community is a chance for longevity start-ups to survive the valley of death. DeSci potentially can provide these essentials.

It's a big open world and if you have had an idea for a project or service for the longevity industry for a long time, maybe this is a good place to start this project. Because here you can quickly get support and feedback.

If you think that coming to DeSci, creating your DAO, and leveraging web3 approaches may help your project growth,

contact us⁠

, we are ready to help and advise you with our experience in this field.

Links

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Decentralized science (DeSci) | ethereum.org⁠

⁠

A Guide to DeSci, the Latest Web3 Movement⁠

⁠

Decentralized investor communities gain traction in biotech | Nature⁠

⁠

Web3 Wikipedia⁠