DeSci: A new outlet for Web3.0 to empower scientific research

Source: Jishi Communication

Abstract

The allocation of traditional scientific research funds is often controlled by small, closed, centralized groups, which have certain limitations in supervision and efficiency, which will further affect the efficiency of scientific research results and the exploration of value potential. In response to these problems, the industry has recently generated a decentralized science (DeSci) movement, which aims to use the Web3.0 system to build a public infrastructure for fair and equal funding, creation, supervision, confirmation, storage and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In the simplest terms, DeSci provides a more Web3.0-based solution for the fundraising, supervision, review, scientific research promotion and timely decision-making of scientific research. Completely different from the operating model of traditional scientific research, users in the Web3.0 world become the promoters of scientific research, and the market becomes the core driving force. This is a new outlet for the industry. Of course, as a new thing, the risks of DeSci are also obvious, such as data falsification in the scientific research process, platform security, and other external risks (such as external attacks) will have an immeasurable impact on scientific research quality and risk spillover.

Pumpscience is driving longevity research and represents the recent rise of the DeSci industry. Currently, Pumpscience enables anyone to conduct longevity experiments by providing an idea of ​​an intervention (drug, or multiple drugs) to be tested, and a token incentive based on the Solana platform. Drug developers can raise funds for experiments, and others can bet on which intervention will extend the lifespan of the different model organisms tested. To fund experiments on a specific intervention, drug developers launch a token that represents a partial right to the drug mixture, which can be sold to pay for the experiment. Rights to interventions developed on the platform can be licensed, and these interventions can be sold by chemical suppliers as supplements or research chemicals. All projects on Pumpscience are decentralized from inception to implementation, and the DeSci model is structured at each stage, and at each stage: funding, decision-making, regulation, and market operation are driven by the cryptocurrency market in a fully developed and decentralized manner.

The core of Pumpscience is the cryptocurrency market as the core driving force. In terms of funding (and funding threshold), creativity, supervision and decision-making, it uses market forces to fully tap the market value of each link and promote the rapid development of scientific research. For example, compounds can be formulated into final products at any stage of the research process (if the relevant companies are willing). This is also very imaginative. We can think openly: in the process of scientific research experiments in biological sciences and even other fields, some intermediate data and products will also have a certain application market. For example, although chemicals are not the ultimate ideal target, they may be compounds required by other manufacturers (catalysts or other intermediate products required for production). Relevant companies can buy tokens in the token market to push up prices as an intervention measure, providing a milestone basis for possible effective products in the next stage. At the same time, they can buy out the relevant product production/sales authorization. Although this is not the ultimate goal of the experiment, the market value of the intermediate process has also been well released.

It can be said that DeSci has decentralized the structure of every step from scientific research creativity/leading, promotion process (and decision-making at each stage), supervision to industrial transformation. This flywheel model will undoubtedly fully release the efficiency and energy of Web3.0.

Risk warning: Blockchain technology research and development is not as expected; regulatory policy uncertainty; Web3.0 business model implementation is not as expected.

1. Core view

The allocation of traditional scientific research funds is often controlled by small, closed, centralized groups. These groups have certain limitations in supervision and efficiency, which will further affect the efficiency of scientific research results and the exploration of value potential. Of course, groups have a high influence in the process of relevant property transfer and productization, which sometimes also inhibits the efficiency of scientific research output. In response to these problems, the industry has recently generated a decentralized science (DeSci) movement, which aims to use the Web3.0 system to build a public infrastructure for fair and equal funding, creation, supervision, confirmation, storage and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Different from the decentralized crowdfunding of a few years ago, DeSci is quite open in terms of funding, creativity, research ideas and even market support, and has a more Web3.0 mindset, fully tapping the efficiency and output of scientific research, while sharing the rights and interests with decentralized Web3.0 ecological users.

Of course, as a new thing, the risks of DeSci are also obvious, such as data falsification in the scientific research process, platform security, and other external risks (such as external attacks) will have an immeasurable impact on scientific research quality and risk spillover.

This article introduces the operation mode of DeSci's typical representative projects and analyzes its development potential.

2.DeSci: Web3.0 Empowers Scientific Research

Decentralized Science (DeSci) is a movement that aims to use Web3.0 to build a public infrastructure for fair and equal funding, creation, supervision, confirmation, storage and dissemination of scientific knowledge. In simple terms, DeSci provides a more Web3.0-oriented solution for the fundraising of scientific research funds (as well as supervision, auditing and various assistance), that is, Web3.0 becomes an accelerator for new scientific research. Completely different from the operating mode of traditional scientific research, users in the Web3.0 world become the promoters of scientific research, and it is carried out in a decentralized manner.

2.1 DeSci's progress compared to GitCoin: Completely decentralized structure project progress

Gticoin is a decentralized collaboration platform built on Ethereum, which provides developers with a development collaboration platform and investors with a donation platform (cryptocurrency donation). It can be simply understood as a crowdfunding and sharing platform for project codes and funds. In return, the funders are given project tokens airdropped. This financing method is very Web3.0-style. This is an early decentralized financing and incubation model.

During the implementation of the funding plan, the project needs not only a one-time funding, but also different rounds of financing according to different stages of project development. A single round of funding can spark interest from funders, but a coordinated multi-round funding strategy is essential to building sustained engagement and attracting long-term builders. By sequencing funding rounds by established goals (milestone achievements), projects can attract a steady stream of funders and co-builders while continually adapting to changing needs.

Take the Sei project as an example. Sei aims to combine the development standards of the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) with the performance of Solana to enable ecosystem applications to flexibly scale between the two public chains. Sei's funding was planned in four rounds according to different stages of development. In the four rounds, a total of $1.3 million was raised and allocated to various projects in the Sei ecosystem. The TVL (value of locked assets) of the Sei ecosystem achieved significant growth between July and October, more than doubling to more than $200 million. During this period, the number of active users rose sharply, peaking at about 65,000 per day.

Obviously, GitCoin is an earlier Web3.0 decentralized crowdfunding platform, which mainly solves the personalized financing needs of different stages of the project, and provides a more decentralized and market-oriented way to combine financing needs and capital supply in a decentralized way. In addition to providing early support for scientific research (projects) in terms of funds, DeSci is more decentralized in terms of project (research) content, creativity and decision-making, rather than just crowdfunding. This is an innovation with more Web3.0 thinking. At the same time, in terms of the openness of development potential, the scientific research supported by DeSci has more potential and wider commercialization potential, and innovation in this regard is also a prominent feature.

In the following analysis, we will see that DeSci essentially deconstructs the process of scientific research projects in a decentralized manner.  

2.2 DeSci: Deconstructing the entire process of scientific research

DeSci aims to create an ecosystem that encourages scientists to share their research publicly and receive honors and rewards for doing so, while allowing anyone to easily understand and contribute to research. This is significantly different from traditional scientific research: the allocation of traditional scientific research funds is often controlled by small, closed, centralized groups, which have certain limitations in supervision and efficiency, which will further affect the efficiency of scientific research output and the exploration of value potential. Of course, groups have a high influence in the relevant property transfer and productization processes, which sometimes inhibits the efficiency of scientific research output. In response to these problems, DeSci is trying to create a more decentralized and transparent scientific research model, through decentralized access to funds, scientific tools and communication channels, to create an environment where new and unconventional ideas can flourish. Obviously, under the DeSci model, Web3.0 users will deconstruct the traditional scientific research funding, supervision and even experimental operators, and other aspects of authority, so that they can be more developed from the initiation of scientific research experiments to the implementation of products, and have different potentials.

DeSci has become a hot topic recently, and its representative is the Pumpscience platform. Currently, Pumpscience enables anyone to conduct longevity experimental research, provide an idea of ​​an intervention (drug, or multiple drugs) to be tested, and token incentives based on the Solana platform. Drug developers (drug devs) can raise funds for experiments, and others can bet on which intervention will extend the lifespan of the different model organisms tested. In order to fund experiments on a specific intervention, drug developers have launched a token that represents a partial right to the drug mixture, which can be sold to pay for experiments. The rights to interventions developed on the platform can be authorized, and these interventions can be sold by chemical suppliers as supplements or research chemicals. All experimental tests on Pumpscience (currently) are aimed at extending lifespan. The entire process of this project from initiation to implementation is decentralized. DeSci's model is structured at all stages. At each stage: fund preparation, decision-making, supervision and market operation are driven by the cryptocurrency market and are carried out in a fully developed and decentralized manner.

Pumpscience’s specific workflow includes:

1) Drug developers submit interventions for testing and pay X dollars of SOL to cover the cost of the experiment;

2) Issue tokens on pump.fun and use the funds raised to purchase the first batch of tokens:

3) If the token market value reaches a certain threshold, the token will be automatically sold to fund the experiment to a new stage of research and development;

4) These interventions were tested on C. elegans on Ora Biomedical’s Wormbot and flies on Tracked Biotechnologies’ FlyBox, and more experiments will be conducted in the future;

5) Data is transmitted to users at fixed time intervals, and users can evaluate the effectiveness and value of the interventions;

6) Chemical suppliers can purchase the right to intervene from token holders.

In terms of specific operations, Pumpscience’s current scientific research projects design DeSci as a "game" to identify chemicals that extend human life in the most time-saving and economical way. To generate meaningful, high-quality data quickly and economically, Pumpscience begins by testing on model organisms with shorter lifespans and lower experimental costs, building evidence in simpler organisms before moving on to more complex and more expensive organisms. There are three levels:

1) Worms: Start with worms, a small nematode about the size of an eyelash. Worms only live 20-30 days in the lab, so the effects of chemicals that potentially extend lifespan can be quickly observed in worms. A high-quality drug screen in worms costs about $300-500.

2) Flies: Next, tests will be conducted on fruit flies, which can live for about 3 months in the lab. Fruit flies are relatively cheap to raise (about $2-3 thousand per experiment) and provide more complex biological insights than nematodes. Although they do not have a spinal cord, their low cost and rapid life cycle make them ideal experimental subjects.

3) Mice: Promising chemicals will then move to mouse testing. Mice live about 2-3 years, and experiments cost $30,000-60,000, depending on the setting. Due to the longer lifespan and higher costs, only the most promising drug candidates advance to this stage, where more expensive, time-consuming, but more human-relevant data can be collected.

To fund the game, Pumpscience proposes a fundraising protocol based on a cryptocurrency platform. The protocol will allow funds to be raised and allocated for each intervention, ensuring that only the most promising interventions make progress. Through transparent, decentralized funding, donors can directly support the development of chemicals that may extend human lifespan in the future.

When researchers (developers) submit new interventions, participants purchase tokens on the platform that are linked to their interventions. This funding is based on cryptocurrency market cap milestones: as the token market cap grows, tokens are sold at key milestones to pay for increasingly advanced testing:

1) Worms: $500 of tokens sold at $70k market cap;

2) Flies: $2,500 of tokens sold at $1m market cap;

3) Mice: $20,000 of tokens sold at $3m market cap.

Anyone will be able to submit a compound for testing for less than $100, without permission. Keeping costs low and removing barriers to entry for potentially valuable products will further increase the number of ideas submitted. The more ideas submitted, the more likely they are to lead to valuable healthspan-extending products.

The fly longevity experiment involves feeding either a compound or a placebo control to a tube of flies (about 15 flies per tube). Flies that take the compound are placed in one tube, and flies that take the placebo are placed in another tube. Your goal is to predict whether the compound will make the flies live longer than flies that take the control. To predict this, you must monitor the flies, which are uploaded to Pumpscience as they are recorded. You can view the flies in the test tubes. The flies in each test tube either receive a compound or a control, the latter of which are labeled on the top of the test tube.

At the end of the experiment, there is a final score: the Percent Lifespan Extension (PLE). This indicates how much longer the organisms that took the drug lived than the animals in the control group. The goal of the game is to find more compounds that increase the PLE of all the organisms tested. Once the experiment is completed, if the market value of the compound token reaches the next milestone threshold, then the next experiment is funded and executed.

Pumpscience's future development plan is to launch more scientific research test content, business plans, and even the introduction of AI agents. No substantial progress has been seen in this regard so far, but the deconstruction and innovation brought by Web3.0 are expected to bring more interesting results.

The above game seems to be more complicated and interesting, but the core is the cryptocurrency market as the core driving force. In terms of funding (and funding threshold), creativity, supervision and decision-making, market forces are used to fully tap the market value of each link and promote the rapid development of scientific research. For example, compounds can be formulated into final products at any stage of the research process (if the relevant companies are willing). This is also very imaginative. We can think openly about it: in the process of scientific research experiments in biological sciences and even other fields, some intermediate data and products will also have a certain application market. For example, although the chemicals are not the ultimate ideal target, they may be compounds required by other manufacturers (catalysts or other intermediate products required for production). Relevant companies can buy tokens in the token market to push up prices as an intervention measure, providing a milestone basis for possible effective products in the next stage. At the same time, they can buy out the relevant product production/sales authorization. Although this is not the ultimate goal of the experiment, the market value of the intermediate process has also been well released.

It can be said that DeSci has decentralized the structure of every step from scientific research creativity/leading, promotion process (and decision-making at each stage), supervision to industrial transformation. This flywheel model will undoubtedly fully release the efficiency and energy of Web3.0.

Risk Warning

Blockchain technology research and development is not as expected: The blockchain-related technologies and projects underlying Bitcoin are in the early stages of development, and there is a risk that technology research and development will not be as expected.

Uncertainty of regulatory policies: The actual operation of blockchain and Web3.0 projects involves a number of financial, network and other regulatory policies. At present, the regulatory policies of various countries are still in the research and exploration stage, and there is no mature regulatory model, so the industry faces the risk of regulatory policy uncertainty.

Web3.0 business model implementation is not as expected: Web3.0-related infrastructure and projects are in the early stages of development, and there is a risk that the business model implementation will not be as expected.

This article is excerpted from the report "DeSci: A New Outlet for Web3.0 to Empower Scientific Research" released on November 28, 2024. For details, please see the relevant report.