What Alpha opportunities exist in the quietly warming DeSci track?

Author: BlockBeats

In the New Year's Outlook at the end of last year, many VCs publicly expressed their optimism about the DeSci track. For example, Messari stated in its investment forecast article that it would turn its attention to several key non-financial sectors in the crypto field, among which DeSci revolves around key solutions that far exceed the financial field in our industry, and is therefore less driven by rampant speculation.

There is no shortage of opportunities in the bull market. Participating in early emerging projects always seems to double capital in a short period of time. Reports of 100x and 10,000x coins have been reported one after another, and the crypto community is greedily looking for the next password.

In the face of the 10,000-fold meme and AI concepts that have appeared in large numbers, the increase seems to be just a number, and doubling is no longer enough to make waves in the crypto community. But among the general rising tokens, ResearchCoin (RSC) has attracted the attention of the market, and its price has broken through the previous high several times in the past month.

In addition to the increase, it is also worth noting that the track to which RSC belongs - DeSci (Decentralized Science), is an action to use Web3 (including NFT, smart contracts, DAO) to achieve fair and just funding, creation, review, storage and dissemination of scientific knowledge by building a public infrastructure. DeSci encourages scientists to share their research results publicly and receive honors, while allowing anyone to easily access and contribute to research results.

In the New Year's Outlook at the end of last year, many VCs publicly expressed their optimism about the DeSci track. For example, Messari stated in its investment forecast article that it would turn its attention to several key non-financial sectors in the crypto field, among which DeSci revolves around key solutions that far exceed the financial field in our industry, and is therefore less driven by rampant hype.

Matti, co-founder of Zee Prime Capital, once said in an interview with BlockBeats that DeSci is solving some real-world problems. They have practicality that most cryptocurrencies do not have directly, and are more like cryptocurrencies of cryptocurrencies.

However, for current cryptocurrencies, the popularity of DeSci is not high, and it is still a very new concept.

Compared with the Chinese community, DeSci is more discussed in the English community. At the end of last year, Berlin held a DeSci conference, where many industry OGs, including Zee Prime Capital co-founder Matti, Molecule CEO Tyler Golato and co-founder Paul Kohlhaas, participated and expressed their research and understanding of Desci.

In the Chinese community, perhaps it was the speech of former Binance CEO CZ on the social platform that caused a small wave of enthusiasm for DeSci. CZ said that he has been reading about biotechnology and thinking about how to use encryption technology to accelerate research funding there. As we all know, the crypto circle has a long history of research on "longevity", and DeSci perfectly fits the research needs in this field.

According to WIKI data, there are currently hundreds of projects in the DeSci track. However, according to Messari report data, 50% of DeSci projects were established in the past year. As can be seen from the figure, in the current DeSci ecosystem, DAO is the most prosperous, while other concepts such as NFT-related combinations are still in a relatively wild and early state.

DAO solves DeSci's financing problems

DAO can be said to be the basic form of existence of the DeSci concept. In the current DeSci ecosystem, DAO is the most prosperous. At present, the biggest and most pressing problem for DeSci is the difficulty in financing. In addition to DAO, it can be seen that the sector focusing on decentralized financing also accounts for a large part of the entire track, and the most important purpose of DAO's existence is to solve the financing problem.

Traditional scientific research seeks research funds and resources through centralized methods such as the National Natural Science Foundation, but this will lead to a large number of problems in the research method during the funding application process, and the entire process of applying for funds will also be lengthy and inefficient. Furthermore, due to the deterioration of the macro environment, such as economic deterioration and environmental protection, the overall research funding has gradually decreased, and the problem of research funding has become increasingly serious.

Interlocking Desci Ecosystem

In the Desci ecosystem, the close connection of projects may be a good start. Raising funds in the form of DAO seems to be a good choice, and different DAOs will also invest in each other.

For example, after receiving investment from Seed Club Ventures, Molecule participated in the open source drug development organization LabDAO. Subsequently, Molecule also received another $1 million investment from Sora Ventures. To promote innovation in the field of biomedical research, Molecule will provide funding specifically for Asian researchers, and plans to provide $50,000 to scientific teams or individuals who deserve funding.

As a biotech research fundraising platform built on Ethereum, Molecule has two main systems: Molecule Discovery and Molecule Finance. Molecule uses a combination of smart contracts and legal contracts to form intellectual property NFTs (IP-NFTs), a new type of mechanism that allows anyone to share ownership of research projects and their future results, such as intellectual property, royalties, data, etc.

Molecule's CEO and co-founder Tyler Golato and co-founder Paul Kohlhaas co-founded Bio.xyz and VitaDAO.

Bio.xyz serves as a biotech DAO accelerator and DeSci meta-governance layer, with the goal of enabling DeSci DAOs to use IP-NFTs to fund, manage, and develop the intellectual property of universities, companies, and researchers around the world. Not only that, Bio.xyz also provides DeSci DAOs with a launchpad, resources, guidance, a shared network, and a set of legal and smart contracts.

Molecule and bio.xyz are fundraising for decentralized scientific organizations similar to VitaDAO. Grouping multiple projects together makes it easier to apply for scientific research grants and can also link intellectual property to cryptocurrency.

DAO focuses on real-world problems

According to OP Research, the current DeSci projects tend to be most biological, which may be due to the large number of scientific research biological directions themselves and the public's general attention to biological sciences due to the epidemic.

VitaDAO is a leader in research and development in the field of longevity. As the world's first biotechnology DAO, VitaDAO's main goal is to promote the progress of longevity research and extend human life and health. Its native token VITA has risen 48% in 30 days, with a market value of US$83.29 million. VITA holders participate in VitaDAO's decision-making process, including the selection of project funding, fund management, and governance activities.

AxonDAO Governance Token (AXGT) also focuses on biotechnology. It redefines the interaction between individuals and their health data through the power of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. The foundation of the project is built on the use of pre-cognitive algorithms, drawing on rich biometrics, genomic data and other key health indicators, which can not only monitor but also predict health outcomes.

Desci can use AxonDAO to simplify the collection, storage and verification of clinical data through blockchain technology, providing a solution. This approach ensures secure and transparent data processing, while also enabling the establishment of universal standards for the decentralization of personal health and wellness information, thereby facilitating easier access and greater control of individuals' own data.

In the field of biotechnology, there is another popular topic: hair loss. HairDAO is a decentralized organization dedicated to treating hair loss, adopting an open source investment and operating model. Through HairDAO, patients and researchers work together to develop revolutionary new treatments for hair loss. Users' treatment experiences are recorded in the HairDAO application and earn HAIR tokens as rewards.

HairDAO has rich reward mechanisms, cultural characteristics, and Meme temperament. According to the article "Hair is Money" by Matti, co-founder of Zee Prime Capital, the ultimate state of HairDAO is a fully vertically integrated pharmaceutical business, including drug manufacturing and distribution. HairDAO must transform from a chaotic Discord group of only a thousand people to a reliable enterprise that can accommodate tens or hundreds of thousands of people (for data collection) and outsource physical world operations (for approval, patents, manufacturing, distribution, etc.).

Desci solves peer review and audit problems

On the basis of having funds, the second biggest problem Desci faces is the publication of peer review pain points and the review of paper documents. Generally speaking, for a certain scientific research project, its funding cycle often starts from writing applications at the beginning of the year, and ends and reviews at the end of the year, and a lot of time is spent on application procedures and assessment processes.

In the assessment and approval process, scientific research projects lack a comprehensive and efficient approval mechanism. Often when a project applies for scientific research funds, the progress has exceeded half, and it is difficult for scientific research funds to be implemented in the areas where scientific research is really needed. In addition, in the current scientific research funding review, journal articles and patent publications are important reference points for reviewing scientific research funds. Based on this, the publication of journal articles and patents has become a rigid demand, and even some scientific research magazines have formed an industrial chain with clear prices. This single and unreasonable review mechanism has led to the gradual utilitarianization of journal articles and deviated from the original intention of scientific research.

ResearchCoin (RSC), mentioned at the beginning, decentralizes the right to review and speak in a decentralized way, aiming to change the traditional scientific journal publishing model.

By creating a "Hub" system that replaces traditional journals, ResearchCoin allows scientists or scholars to publicly publish and discuss scientific or academic content directly in these centers, thereby bypassing the review process of traditional publishing, accelerating the dissemination of information, and conducting peer review after publication. As an encrypted scientific research platform, users earn ResearchCoin (RSC) by publishing content to ResearchHub, and the number of RSCs received is proportional to the value of the content as considered by other members of the community.

In addition, users can set RSC bounties for peer reviews, paper abstracts, or new methods in the lab. It is also possible to raise cryptocurrencies in forum posts to fund research before the research work begins, through "pre-registration" projects. According to ResearchHub, activities on the platform have been growing over time, especially peer review activities are the most active and promising.

ResearchCoin was co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and others, and completed a $5 million Series A financing on June 15 last year. According to coingecko data, as of the time of writing, the price of RSC rose to $0.8328, a 24-hour increase of 10.3%.

Although most of the tokens in the DeSci field have a good increase, perhaps because the concept is not popular, in the DeSci market value ranking of coingecko statistics, some of the official social media introductions of the top projects are marked with other labels such as DePIN and RWA.

For example, OriginTrail, which ranks 201st in total market value in cryptocurrencies, is also the No. 1 project in this track, but the official Twitter tags of OriginTrail only show AI, DePIN, and RWA. According to its official website, life sciences and healthcare are the key research directions of this project. Dynex, the No. 6 project in this track, cannot directly see DeSci-related content through its official website and Twitter. As a neuromorphic quantum computing cloud, Dynex only mentions DeSci-related use cases in its document introduction, including pharmacy, automobiles, aerospace, etc.

As an emerging concept, the DeSci track may become more and more popular, just like some other very small projects are gaining more and more attention.