About a year or two ago, a friend in the industry specifically talked to me about the topic of DeSci.
The so-called DeSci is an abbreviation for Decentralized Science.
At that time, I had heard this term and could roughly guess its meaning from the literal sense.
At that time, DeSci was not popular; DePIN was more popular, especially a series of DePIN projects combined with GPU computing power—like the early Filecoin utilizing decentralized, scattered GPU computing power.
However, I am very cautious about these so-called DePIN projects because I feel that most likely they will end up with a similar fate to Filecoin—fundamentally not utilizing idle fragmented computing power but turning into a competition of giant computing centers, completely deviating from the original intention of the project.
Influenced by such projects, I then believed that the so-called 'DeSci' probably aimed to do something similar, gathering scattered researchers around the world through token incentives.
I think this way of doing scientific research may not be easy to popularize on a large scale; it may not be a true application of cryptographic technology.
Although the open-source code community has developed in this way, I think it is still uncertain whether scientific research can develop in this way.
So at that time, I expressed a very cautious view on DeSci mentioned by my friend.
Unexpectedly, in the past few days, the concept of DeSci suddenly became popular again in the community, especially with a DeSci project called Bio Protocol leading the way.
Regarding this project, Deep Tide has a well-written article, and the reference link of the article is attached at the end.
This project mainly funds some projects in the biotechnology field, and its funding method is mainly through the DAO approach, initiating a DAO for each direction/project.
Currently, the official website (https://app.bio.xyz/genesis) shows that 8 DAOs have been established. Each of these 8 DAOs has issued its own token.
Taking one of the VitaDAOs as an example, from the official website of this DAO (https://www.vitadao.com/), we can see that its funding direction is longevity technology.
Researchers can apply for funding for their research projects on the official website. After review by VitaDAO, the holders of this DAO token vote to decide whether to fund the project.
This approach has a significant difference from the DeSci I once understood:
This method of using encryption technology/cryptographic assets is more about project review and funding, rather than the so-called decentralized approach to scientific research that I once understood.
I think this method is still worth trying. If DeSci is evolving in this direction, it is worth further tracking and observation.
In fact, I strongly support exploring similar methods in more fields, such as funding the development of language models, AI agents, etc. using cryptographic assets.
However, the project tokens, including VitaDAO, currently do not have much economic empowerment, mainly focusing on governance functions. So whether these DAO tokens are worth investing in is another matter.
In addition, there has been an interesting little episode in this field these past few days: tokens related to biotechnology appeared on a website called Pump.Science.
Many people say these tokens are purely meme coins, but they actually have some differences.
Pure meme coins rely solely on artificial narratives and emotions, but the tokens on Pump.Science are currently linked to the progress of research projects. The projects represented by the tokens update their research progress periodically.
This has slightly more data support than pure meme coins.
Although the authenticity and significance of this data is still to be observed, at least it has become somewhat 'rational' rather than purely gambling.
Reference link:
https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_21702.html