Author: Kevin, the Researcher from BlockBooster
On November 26, Paul Kohlhaas, the founder of BIO Protocol, responded to CZ's tweet on social media, stating, "Decentralized Science (DeSci) has successfully brought the liquidity of meme coins into universities and laboratories around the world, supporting genuine scientific research." This phenomenon raises questions: Why has scientific research, traditionally characterized by rigor and long-term investment, especially medical research, been able to successfully combine with the rapidly changing crypto market?
Scientific research, especially medical research, objectively requires significant time investment, usually measured in years or decades, which contrasts sharply with the current market's pursuit of "quick returns." Why did decentralized science spark market discussions in November? Is it due to meme sentiment reaching a historical high, leading to market corrections? Or is decentralized science merely a meme trend disguised as scientific benefits for humanity? This article will explore what the true demand for DeSci is, starting from the business models and development directions of Bio Protocol and Pump.Science; under what circumstances can it align with market needs and achieve long-term development.
Business Model Breakdown of Bio Protocol
First, it was the Bio Protocol that sparked the DeSci narrative. On November 8, Binance completed strategic financing for BIO, but the round and amount were not disclosed. This prompted BIO to launch the BIO Genesis community fundraising campaign, raising $33 million.
BIO currently has 7 active DAOs, researching topics such as longevity health, hair loss treatment, and brain health. It is important to note that BioDAO does not refer to a research team in a specific direction, such as the longevity health track, but should be seen as a specific implementation of the BIO Protocol. Why do I say this? Please refer to the diagram above of the BIO Protocol business model. In simple terms, BIO is a nested Launchpad, combined with non-earning staking, incentives, and an embedded Launchpad that allows for infinite market splitting. BIO consists of these four parts.
Specifically, in the first part, Launchpad BioDAOs, BioDAO raises funds through token sales and uses its funds to support relevant biotechnology projects. Each BioDAO can also be viewed as a separate Launchpad, which I will discuss further in the fourth part.
The second part is the staking mechanism of BIO, which locks users' tokens under the guise of curation. From the governance and proposal pages, it can be seen that the normal staking rate of BIO is around 15%, and the staking rate when voting for new BioDAOs will exceed 20%. Users do not earn rewards from staking; instead, when the BioDAO they voted for wins, users who voted for that BioDAO receive BIO token rewards, while no rewards are given if the voted BioDAO is not selected. Curation is a very effective tool for locking users' tokens; when a new BioDAO emerges, its value output to the BIO ecosystem will far exceed the rewards distributed by BIO.
The third part is the main use case of the BIO token, which is incentives. Incentives are divided into two parts: the first part is for the participating BioDAOs, which receive incentives when they initiate their initial token sale. For users, if they use the products of BioDAOs or make certain contributions to the BioDAO, they will receive incentives. I believe the current amount of incentive tokens is minimal; compared to the traditional scientific research industry, costs have been greatly reduced because participating in drug trials in the traditional industry is very expensive, while BIO distributes BIO token incentives.
The fourth part is about splitting the market; BioDAO can be viewed as a sub-Launchpad. BioDAO chooses specific teams or research topics, raises funds to launch IP tokens or IP NFTs, and the holders of these assets are promised some early participation rights, but no form of additional returns is guaranteed.
From a business model perspective, BIO still operates in a familiar way within the industry, but its characteristic is that Launchpad is nested within Launchpad. As specific research projects launch tokens or NFTs, the potential liquidity drought will primarily impact the BioDAO tokens, while the value of BIO tokens will only be questioned when multiple BioDAO tokens encounter problems. However, the benefits of releasing assets for specific research projects will also fully feedback to BIO, as it will attract more users to buy BIO tokens to participate in the ecosystem. Another feature is that it uses participation in scientific research as a reason for users to stake tokens without having to pay out earnings; thus, the potential rewards are provided by BioDAO tokens or specific research projects, allowing BIO to lock users' tokens for a long time at a very low cost. BIO is an index token across all these DAO tokens.
How does Pump.Science blur the boundaries between DeSci and Memecoin?
Molecule is a protocol that puts IP on-chain, issuing IP-NFTs and IPT for the Bio Protocol; Pump.Science is Molecule's Launchpad, representing the intellectual property of a certain compound in the form of tokens.
Pump.Science believes that compared to buying stock in a biotech company, it is equivalent to holding all of that company's drugs. However, on Pump.Science, investors can choose to invest in a single drug. The tokens issued on Pump.Science comply with legal regulations, but in terms of tokenizable intellectual property, they must be artificially synthesized compounds, not naturally occurring substances like nicotine. However, if nicotine is combined with other substances, like caffeine, such a combination can be patented. What Pump.Science does is tokenize these patents or data and then test their effectiveness.
Pump.Science has launched two tokens, namely $RIF and $URO. Among them, $RIF has a market cap of $100 million. The compounds behind these tokens can be used to develop supplements, and in the future, they can also generate profits through sales or patent licensing. To attract more investments, Molecule will develop a set of data to prove the effectiveness of these compounds, such as significantly extending lifespan in animal tests.
But does Pump.Science really want to do scientific research properly? It seems that the possibility is decreasing. As Christmas approaches, Pump.Science will hold the 'Rif Christmas' event, launching two tokens each day for ten days. That is, throughout December, Pump.Science will intensively launch 20 tokens for artificially synthesized compounds. Although the platform claims it will gradually showcase their development paths, ultimately hoping to advance to human testing stages and even develop a product market to sell different supplements, it is foreseeable that the vast majority of the 20 tokens will not survive until the corresponding supplements hit the market, leading to their market value plummeting to zero.
From the perspective of chasing market trends, Pump.Science is also actively advancing AI-related product development. It plans to create an AI robot that trades based on compound experimental data, executing operations according to the progress of events at different stages.
Returning to the theme of this article, should DeSci return to value or chase memes? From the business models and development directions of Bio Protocol and Pump.Science, it is clear that both have not fully chosen to invest in scientific research while forgoing the opportunity to provide the market with Memecoins, which may also be one of the future paths for DeSci protocols. However, one thing should be clearly recognized: scientific research needs to return to fundamentals and objective laws, and biological science research requires a long-term and substantial financial investment. Therefore, short-term speculation on Memecoins will not last long, and a single Memecoin is not the development model for DeSci protocols; buying DeSci tokens requires enduring an unremarkable narrative, and DeSci needs to hype its valuation in a manner similar to VC tokens, increasing the expectation of leading values and continuously releasing signals through totemic figures, as the market understanding of DeSci is far lower than that of AI, necessitating more authoritative signals to increase market confidence and consensus. From the perspective of specific GTM methods, the subfields of DeSci include: financing, research, data, peer review, publishing, infrastructure and services, arts, scientific open ecology, and community. Choose directions that align with your understanding or have relatively low implementation thresholds. Additionally, DeSci's model is inherently a split market; different research topics are like sub-tokens, requiring large vehicles to pull smaller ones, using Web3 financing to obtain a crowdfunding-like approach to fund a specific research project in reality and to make it a spokesperson for the practical application of DeSci. This is what several protocols in the industry are currently doing, but due to the uncertainty and high failure rates in scientific research, achieving this should be quite difficult.
The market needs numerous impactful DeSci examples to build consensus in reality, a process that may take longer than AI narratives. ChatGPT was released at the end of 2022, and speculation in the crypto space began in 2023, while DeSci will require more time. However, from another perspective, this also paves the way for DeSci, as the rapid development of AI has subconsciously prepared people to accept the possibility of seemingly unattainable things becoming reality, and the longevity science of VitaDAO is no longer a castle in the air. Overall, I believe the consensus around DeSci has just begun and needs long-term development; we should prepare for the narrative to explode in the next bull market.
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