Original compilation: BlockTurbo
Original compilation: BlockTurbo
Scientific knowledge is a public product that supports technological development and economic growth. However, the current scientific system is riddled with inefficiencies, rent-seeking activities, and low transparency that hinder innovation.
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Why choose DeSci? Breaking the Science Lifecycle
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The system is plagued by different issues, which can be broadly grouped into three main categories:
1. Centralize decision-making and funding
Research is often funded by government grants or by small, business-driven groups of policymakers. Both show an inherent bias against who they fund. Its a negative feedback loop, with researchers adjusting laborious funding applications based on the hypotheses they think are most likely to be selected, at the expense of the hypotheses theyre likely to be most passionate about. As a result, the study variance was greatly reduced. For example, billions of dollars go to fund a single theory of Alzheimers disease research, while promising new ideas continue to be denied funding.
2. Poor methodology and data transparency
Bad science can perpetuate as researchers “publish or perish” to secure jobs and funding. Furthermore, the lack of transparency of data and methods makes it difficult, if not impossible, for others to verify or build upon existing results. This has led to a “replication crisis” where it is estimated that over 50% of research papers cannot be reproduced and 85% of biomedical research expenditure is wasted on poorly designed and redundant studies.
3. Unincentivized censorship and tightly controlled publication
Manuscripts must pass review by a small panel of unpaid peers before being considered for publication. This can lead to significant publication delays, bias against competing ideas, and insufficient attention to detail. Numerous scandals involving false reporting, doctored and reused images, and manipulation of Impact Factor scores have led to a tenfold increase in the number of retracted articles over the past decade.
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call for open science
In response to these problems, with the rise of the Internet, the open science movement came into being. It is a commitment to open and fair data, manuscripts, and collaboration. Pioneers like the Open Science Foundation award badges to researchers who publish manuscripts with open data and methods. The campaign uses Web2 coordination tools and relies primarily on volunteers and donations. While many open science organizations still exist today, many have struggled to stay afloat or keep costs low for end users (researchers and readers):
Sci-Hub: An open access website whose founders publish research from various journals. The platform is considered illegal and is often threatened with being shut down;
Experiment: Project crowdfunding site for independent researchers. The platform relies on one staff member per project to review submissions and charges an 8% platform fee and about 3% for payment processing;
PLOS: An open-access publisher inevitably passes the cost of staffing and website maintenance on to applicants. The cost of publishing in PLOS is similar to traditional journals.
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The Rise of DeSci
The DeSci ecosystem has a variety of projects that address some or all of the research economy.
Token-incentivized research ecosystems, such as Brian Armstrongs research centers, handle multiple eases of the scientific lifecycle. Other DeSci projects are building a core focus area and can be modularly integrated with other projects in the stack.
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funds
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Coordination Mechanism and Value Accumulation
Funding DAOs typically revolves around governance tokens, or NFTs, to induce treasuries and vote on research initiatives. They can also access funding and donations from outside sources, such as Gitcoin, which held its latest DeSci funding round from July 2022 to September 2022.
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IP-NFT was first proposed by Molecule in August 2021, which can legally protect the IP generated by research. They are a unique alternative to traditional patents, which are used to hoard and limit data and limit the rate of scientific discovery. IP-NFTs allow DAOs to monetize their work in a number of ways:
License IP for commercialization by other entities
Split ownership with partners
Trade data on an open market and maintain creator royalties
hold as collateral
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Transparent research methodology and datasets
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Coordination Mechanism and Value Accumulation
The IP-NFT is an example of how contributors can discover and participate in research projects funded by the DAO. The Molecule marketplace matches projects with potential investors and the results can be added as IP-NFT metadata.
OpSci is taking a different approach, tokenizing the identities, certificates, and projects of independent researchers or groups as Impact Certificate NFTs.
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Incentivizing peer review and open publishing
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Coordination Mechanism and Value Accumulation
Projects like Ants-Review propose an incentivized peer review protocol on Ethereum, where community members hold professional paid review committees accountable. Researchers pay for the agreement to have their research reviewed, but payments are released to reviewers only when the community votes that the requirements for a thorough review have been met.
On the publishing side, DeSci Labs DeSci Nodes app allows researchers to create and publish FAIR-enabled research objects on open, decentralized repositories. Research objects include manuscripts, codes, datasets, videos, etc., and are interconnected for reproducibility and replicability.
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Data, Tools and Infrastructure
DeSci relies on data, and a lot of it. Protocols such as Data Lake, CureDAO, and Fleming Protocol allow individuals to monetize their personal health data and medical records for purchase by researchers. With DB DAO, DAOs can manage the datasets they collect by tokenizing each row in the database as an NFT, and contributors receive query fees when accessing their data.
Further down the research lifecycle, DeSci NFTs (IP-NFTs, Impact Certificates, Hypercerts, Research Objects, etc.) are stored in decentralized solutions, including IPFS and Arweave. Projects like Bacalhau allow users to perform computations directly where datasets are stored (“Compute Over Data”). Each job outputs a unique content identifier (CID) on IPFS, which creates provable links between datasets, enabling reproducibility. Bacalhau also helps simplify workflows for researchers, as downloading large datasets locally is often impractical.
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Challenges and Risks
DeSci is an emerging ecosystem and not yet battle-tested. The majority of DeSci projects (78%) were started in the past year and a half, from the peak of the last bull market in Q4 2021. The surge in project launches coincides with the first DeSci track taking place at the Ethereum conference during LisCon in October 2021.
Most protocols are not yet fully launched on mainnet. There are various emerging DeSci ecosystem designs, and it remains to be seen which projects will successfully capture value and sustain operations. Future challenges include:
Intellectual Property: Conducting research does not necessarily guarantee useful results. IP-NFT communities may not be able to monetize IP, affecting their bottom line. Additionally, negotiating IP may require significant effort through funding DAOs if working with research institutions, as traditional institutions are used to receiving most of the IP produced by their organizations researchers.
Verifiability: Decentralized identity and data verification protocols are in their infancy. Before they reach maturity, there is a risk that researchers will misrepresent their qualifications to attract funding and potentially facilitate illicit results.
Reproducibility: Open and verifiable methods and datasets may lead to better reproducibility, but replication research has not yet been incentivized. Projects such as Scholar and DeSci Labs are in the early stages of building research protocols that incentivize replication.
Regulatory compliance: Storing data on a decentralized network like IPFS or Arweave may not be considered GDPR or HIPAA compliant. Projects will need to work with regulators to establish legitimacy around DeSci practices.
Summarize
Summarize
DeSci is a massive undertaking, and most projects are still in their early stages. However, there are many untapped opportunities for individuals to benefit from contributions to public goods. Communities can fund the research that matters most to them, scientists can more easily monetize their workflows, and entire systems can be made stronger by defaulting to open and verifiable data practices. Transparent datasets and methods improve reproducibility. In turn, scientific discoveries may become more frequent and fruitful, benefiting all participants in the DeSci economy.
