DeSci: Immortality Technology and the Galactic Future

Original author: Andy Yee, Fellow, CryoDAO Translator: LlamaC

(Portfolio: Burning Man 2016, About Tomo: eth Foundation Illustrator)

"Recommendation: The article describes CryoDAO's specific projects and achievements, including infrastructure construction, fund raising and promotion of scientific research, and how these efforts contribute to the realization of an interstellar future and immortal vision."

Decentralized science is breaking scientific stagnation and ushering in a new era of human progress. Guided by the philosophy of Cosmism, now is the time to boldly pursue our goal: to transcend death and expand into the universe. CryoDAO is leading the journey toward cosmic realization and awakening consciousness, bringing us closer to the moral realm of interstellar immortality.

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Studies of the long-term trajectory of human civilization often place the future of humanity under several scenarios. Philosopher Nick Bostrom summarizes these four scenarios as extinction, cyclical collapse, stagnation, and posthumanity. Recently, an interdisciplinary research team formally divided these trajectories into four categories: status quo, catastrophe, technological change, and astronomical. In his book, The Story of the Future, historian David Christian labels the future global scenarios we imagine as collapse, retrenchment, sustainability, and growth.

Whatever the terminology used, we can draw some common conclusions from these studies. First, maintaining the status quo or a steady trajectory, in which civilizations remain confined to a narrow range of states, seems unlikely. Instead, civilizations are likely to either go extinct or transform, for the simple reason that the cumulative probabilities of these scenarios increase monotonically over time, eventually breaking out of this range. However, achieving our survival in the distant future through transformative technologies or cosmic expansion is not a sure thing. The prevalence of major extinction events in Earth history, combined with our current technological capabilities to cause severe environmental and social harm, suggests that a catastrophic trajectory is more likely.

Stagnation of Scientific Progress

In fact, humanity may have reached a technological level capable of complete self-destruction, either through nuclear war or artificial intelligence (AI), but has never achieved the technological maturity required to achieve a posthuman or interstellar future. We are still a long way from becoming a technologically mature civilization in which members can achieve extremely long and fulfilling lives through biological modification or participate in space colonization. Worse, scientific inertia has been a prominent feature of our society since the mid-20th century. The epoch-making technological advances of the late 19th century Gilded Age in multiple fields such as automobiles, energy, materials science, and communications transformed our society from "an animal-driven, low-quality civilization to an electrified, mechanized, high-quality civilization."

In fact, a recent paper published in Nature reveals a clear decline in disruptive science and technology over the last sixty years, heightening concerns about a slowdown in innovation. This is partly due to scientists focusing too narrowly on their own areas of knowledge and lacking a broader ambition to advance science as a whole. As Peter Thiel and Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin have pointed out, recent advances in information technology have only created the illusion of rapid progress. These advances have simply made our societies more efficient, but have not changed the material or energy basis of civilization itself.

We cannot become complacent. For the first time in Earth’s history, humans have developed the technological capability to manage Earth on a planetary scale, from the composition of its atmosphere to its geographical features. David Christian calls this new complex entity “a managed or conscious planet.” We may be on the verge of overcoming the "Great Filter," a concept used to explain the Fermi Paradox, referring to the insurmountable challenge that prevents intelligent civilizations from spreading across the universe. As long as we don't destroy ourselves before we become a spacefaring civilization and we are determined to acquire the technology we need, there is reason to be hopeful about our astronomical future.

To achieve this feat requires a transcendent goal that can motivate society for decades or even centuries to invest and break through the stagnation that has set in in many areas of science and technology. The history of our species is one of the expansion of life and intelligence in space and time, as we occupy the Earth and have longer lifespans. It is natural, therefore, that we build on this legacy with bold visions: to expand into the universe and transcend death. Only through such ambitions can we ignite new societal forces and direct sufficient resources to achieve the technological breakthroughs needed to accomplish this transcendent goal.

Revitalize our cosmic ambitions

We already have a solution to this problem. In the early 21st century, American sociologist William Bainbridge proposed the creation of a galactic religion that could unite this demanding social movement - the Cosmic Order. Through the religious view that heaven is a sacred realm that we should enter to transcend death, people would see the meaning of life in a cosmic context and believe that this could be achieved through science and technology. This view has deeper roots in Cosmism, a Russian philosophical and spiritual movement at the turn of the 20th century that explored our place in the universe, immortality, and resurrection. The Cosmist movement sought to use science to expand humanity's current spatial and temporal limitations, inspiring the Soviet space program and leading directly to contemporary transhumanism. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a follower of Cosmology and the father of astronautics, famously said, "The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but humanity cannot remain in the cradle forever." Tsiolkovsky's mentor, Christian philosopher Nikolai Fedorov, conceived Cosmology in his Philosophy of the Common Task. In short, the project of the Common Task was to create the technological, social, and political conditions for the resurrection of all who had ever lived, for the reconciliation and unity of past and future generations. This had to be the conscious work of humanity, not dependent on divine grace. Secular technology was seen as a soteriological force that would overcome death and fulfill the Christian promise of universal salvation. Fedorov firmly believed that the ideal of science and progress was to study "the blind forces that bring hunger, disease, and death in order to transform them into life-giving forces."

However, technology will overcome not only the limitations of time, but also those of space. The resurrected beings cannot all be accommodated on Earth, and eventually they will settle in the vastness of the universe. "By resurrecting all the generations that have lived on this Earth, consciousness will spread to all worlds of the universe," wrote Fedorov. Later cosmist Alexander Svyatogor, the main representative of the biocosmist-immortalist party, went a step further and developed the goal of resurrection into the realization of personal immortality. In his 1922 manifesto, he outlined his ambition to conquer both time and space: "The struggle for personal immortality — for survival in the universe — embodies the universal will."

Towards Decentralized Science and New Frontiers

Nikolai Fedorov also pondered the social organization needed to realize the cosmist vision. Since science and technology play a key role in achieving immortality, resurrection, and universal salvation, participation in knowledge and research must include everyone. Only in this way can the gap between scholars and non-scholars be bridged and feelings of kinship restored. Applied science can then be directed toward the higher goal of regulating the blind, lethal forces of nature. This belief in the power of universal participation in science has parallels with the current Decentralized Science (DeSci) movement.

In an era of scientific stagnation, DeSci offers the kind of social organization envisioned by Nikolai Fedorov and promises to reinvigorate scientific progress. Today’s academic world is ossifying, developing a “publish or perish” culture that prioritizes quantity over less popular but far-reaching research. Furthermore, the scientific publishing and peer review systems suffer from opaque and inefficient systems that result in limited data availability and transparency, hindering vital replication studies. In contrast, DeSci plans to leverage blockchain technology to implement novel governance mechanisms, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), that allow for democratic participation by a wider range of scientists and investors. The result is that more high-risk, high-reward, or unconventional research can be supported under the principles of open access and transparency. Within the DeSci space, DAOs have already been formed that focus on far-reaching areas ranging from longevity science to space exploration.

The emergence of parallel institutions powered by decentralized technologies, replacing traditional institutions, is part of a larger movement toward networked nations pioneered by entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan. In his vision, a networked nation is a highly coherent online community with the capacity for collective action that can crowdfund territory around the globe and eventually gain diplomatic recognition. While Balaji seeks to use this concept to reopen physical borders on Earth and reignite America’s pioneering spirit, we can apply the same digital technologies to set our sights on the ultimate frontier: overcoming death and colonizing space. As a global coordinating institution, decentralized science will be well suited to fostering a global network of human cooperation and a new loyalty and commitment to our transcendental goals.

CryoDAO: Beyond Death Through Cryopreservation Research

The field of longevity is a perfect example of how DeSci injects fresh and disruptive ideas. During the 20th century, human life expectancy increased by decades due to advances in public health and medicine. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are approaching the limits of existing methods and that radical human life extension is not possible if we continue on our current path. In its Longevity Acceleration Roadmap, the Longevity Biotechnology Foundation (LBF) outlines three parallel strategies to achieve unlimited lifespan. The first two, whole-body replacement and advanced bioengineering, aim to completely solve the problem of aging. However, given their uncertain timelines, biostatics are a critical third approach and backup plan. Biostatics is a strategy to buy time, suspending aging indefinitely through cryopreservation of the human body, offering the possibility of future resurrection, when all other contemporary life extension options have been exhausted.

Due to public perception and other historical reasons, biostatic preservation is an underfunded life extension strategy, with only a few startup companies and academic labs in the field. According to LBF, the total cost of a whole-body cryopreservation and resuscitation program is approximately $2.4 billion. However, this amount is relatively small compared to the research budgets of the pharmaceutical industry. Even a small amount of attention and funding can lead to significant advances in the field. Against this backdrop, DeSci is well-positioned to attract unconventional funding and talent to achieve breakthroughs in this field that, if achieved, could radically extend our lifespans.

Among the Decentralized Science (DeSci) DAOs, CryoDAO is at the forefront of the field of biostatic preservation. Its goal is to contribute to cryopreservation research projects that have high potential to improve the quality and capabilities of cryopreservation, ultimately enabling future resurrection of humans. Biostatic preservation faces many challenges, including preservation technologies, methods to assess preservation quality, and future resurrection technologies. The good news is that these are primarily engineering problems, and we already have an initial roadmap with clearly defined goals and key technical milestones to achieve successful preservation and resurrection. This coherent plan is critical to attracting talent and funding.

In its first funding round in early 2024, CryoDAO raised about $3 million and has already funded several groundbreaking initiatives. One project aims to use molecular analysis and machine learning to discover safer and more effective cryoprotectants, compounds used to keep biological tissues from forming ice crystals (vitrification) at extremely low sub-zero temperatures, thereby preserving cellular structure. Another project hopes to achieve the world's first live birth from a vitrified and replanted whole sheep ovary. This would prove for the first time in history that it is possible to restore a complex organ from extremely low temperature storage to a fully viable state. In December 2024, CryoDAO completed another funding round, raising $900,000 for the ambitious CryoRat project. The project aims to demonstrate the first-ever cryopreservation and resuscitation of a small mammal (rat). This type of full-body resuscitation has not been attempted since the 1960s.

CryoDAO demonstrates how the DeSci movement can make bold and unconventional projects possible. It also shows that if we set transcendent and ambitious goals, scientific progress can be reignited and even bring benefits to humanity in the short term, despite the difficulty and time involved. For example, improved cryopreservation methods could increase the ability to store organs and tissues. This would not only benefit thousands of people worldwide by increasing access to transplants, but also improve tissue engineering, trauma medicine, and basic biomedical research. In addition, the ability to store large quantities of tissues and cells would facilitate drug discovery, development, and evaluation.

Returning to Cosmism, cryopreservation can also help achieve another pillar of the philosophy - Interstellarism. Currently, manned long-term space travel faces challenges such as limited resources required for normal physiology and metabolism, exposure to interstellar radiation and zero gravity, and psychological stress. Cryogenic biostasis or cryopreservation can make these limitations negligible. In this regard, CryoDAO will explore the feasibility of cryosleep for deep space travel together with organizations such as NASA and the European Space Agency. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe is always increasing, irreversibly moving toward disorder. However, regions of order will still emerge in this process. In his book Until the End of Time, physicist Brian Greene clearly explains how gravity and nuclear forces work together to give rise to ordered structures such as stars and galaxies from the primordial universe, while obeying the second law by releasing the entropic potential locked up in matter, creating regions of low entropy. Since then, the photons released by the sun have been used as a low-entropy, high-quality energy source for life processes and to maintain the ordered structures of organisms.

Thus, as our knowledge of the universe deepens, we begin to understand that nature is not a blind, deadly force, but a source of low-entropy fuel that life needs. The meaning of life is to fight the increasing disorder in the universe and preserve regions of order and low entropy. For us, this will be possible through cryopreservation. If we can preserve the brain structure of an individual before he or she reaches information-theoretic death, thereby preserving his or her memories, personality, and identity, we may one day be able to resurrect that person using advanced future technology. This is similar to the museum preservation technology described by Fedorov in "The Museum, Its Meaning and Mission". In his vision, all people who have ever lived should be preserved in museums and resurrected by future generations. As he writes: "To transfer all the remains of life to a museum is to transfer it to a higher order, to a field of study, to the hands of posterity, to the hands of one or more generations." This naturally raises the prospect of intergenerational justice, looking both back to the past and forward to the future, brought about by the long-term preservation and potential resurrection of individuals. As philosopher Boris Groys points out, Fedorov's project to resurrect the dead is a technology that looks to the past. Previous generations will no longer be excluded from a better future society. Thus, the dead will not be exploited for the benefit of the living. One caveat, however, is that it is technically impossible to resurrect if the brain was not properly preserved in the first place. After all, a perfect reversal of a thermodynamic system is impossible due to entropic barriers. Therefore, it would be impractical to resurrect all previous generations from a less advanced era. A more hopeful prospect is to turn our attention to the future, aiming to preserve the informational integrity of present-day individuals and resurrect them using future technology. In Bainbridge's Cosmic Order, this system of biological resurrection can give people new life. However, a person is only worthy of being resurrected and given a new life through their contribution to the development of the Cosmic Order. Individuals who make extraordinary contributions will earn the right to live multiple times on different planets, thereby spreading advanced ideas throughout the galaxy by the "fittest arrive." In this way, "each generation has a moral contract with the generations that come after it." Those alive today will not be sacrificed to favor those who come later, because future generations will respect this moral contract if they want those after them to do the same.

This prospect of interstellar immortality would greatly deepen and enrich the human experience. We need not fear living indefinitely. In Jorge Luis Borges’s short story “The Immortals,” infinite time renders caveman life sluggish and rigid, because “every action (and every thought) is an echo of a previous action in the past.” In a cosmic context, however, people can live new lives on new worlds, gaining access to a wider and richer range of experiences and personalities. In his influential paper “Endless Time: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe,” theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson provides quantitative proof of how an open universe would offer an ever-expanding realm of life, consciousness, and memory. No matter how far into the future we go, there will always be new things happening and new worlds to explore. If this is right, we must continue to advance the expansion of our consciousness across space and time.

DeSci is ushering in a revolutionary era in the way science is done, reinvigorating human progress. Now is the time for us to be bold in our ambitions. Guided by Cosmism, we should work to expand humanity's reach in space and time before civilization falls on a catastrophic trajectory. To paraphrase philosopher and science fiction author Olaf Stapleton in Starman: "There is a race between the fullness of the universe and the death of the universe, between the full awakening of cosmic consciousness and eternal slumber." CryoDAO is firmly advancing the fullness of the universe and the awakening of consciousness. As the biocosmist poet Olga Lohr wrote over a century ago:

I thrust the soul of the blade into Death

To rend the darkness of the grave

The god of death is a sickening god

overthrown by the hand of Reason!