Source of the article: Tuo Luo Finance
When it comes to the hottest track in the past two weeks, it is undoubtedly DeSci.
Since November 8, when Binance Labs announced its investment in BIO Protocol, under the endorsement of CZ and V God, this once-silent concept has risen again, with hot money flocking in, RIF and URO generating thousands of times wealth, also creating a new potential MEME track.
DeSci, also known as decentralized science, refers to the behavior of establishing public infrastructure through Web3 technology to achieve open and fair funding, storage, and dissemination of scientific knowledge, according to Messari's concept. DeSci encourages scientists to publicly share research results and gain recognition, while allowing anyone to easily access and contribute to research results. In simple terms, DeSci aims to solve scientific research issues based on blockchain technology, covering fundraising, knowledge sharing, review, intellectual property, and more.
From the perspective of track performance, DeSci focuses on fundraising, with most project models relying on tokenization for financing projects to support scientific research and development. At the same time, research results are often encouraged to be put on the chain to enhance transparency and protect intellectual property. Currently, the core role of DeSci is to open up new fundraising channels for scientific research that requires long-term investment. By linking the seemingly unrelated fields of cryptocurrency and scientific research, it gives tokenization more practical significance, and thus it is strongly promoted by the market as one of the practical cases of MEME.
Regarding the root cause of the recent explosion of DeSci, the celebrity effect is key. On November 8, according to official disclosures, Binance completed strategic financing for BIO Protocol, bringing this 'chain-based scientific version of Y Combinator' to the surface. Subsequently, CZ attended the DeSci Day event held by Binance in Bangkok, and Vitalik was also present, both discussing DeSci, which further propelled DeSci to the forefront.
The crypto circle, adept at finding hotspots, quickly surged with the DeSci craze. Pump.Science became an instant success, with RIF and URO projects generating thousands of times profits, taking this track completely out of its original boundaries. Andrew Kang, a partner at Mechanism Capital, even stated that "the DeSci field now feels like the DeFi era in early 2019. Everything is still very primitive and experimental, but a basic conclusion can be drawn: it has enormous potential." As a result, even amidst a significant market correction today, according to SoSoValue data, the DeSci sector still rose against the trend by 3.35%.
Although the vision for DeSci is good and opening funding channels for scientific research undoubtedly has value, based solely on the current situation, the speculative component is clearly greater than the actual utility. Essentially, the long-term nature of scientific research significantly diverges from the short-term profit-seeking nature of the MEME field, making it feel somewhat fanciful to hope to reconcile the purely speculative MEME track with the non-speculative research field.
On one hand, scientific research has a high degree of uncertainty; drug development can take dozens of years, and if the direction is wrong, everything is lost. It requires sustainable long-term investment, which is why scientific research funding usually adopts a model led by the government and leading enterprises, combining state capital and social capital to hedge risks and maintain competitiveness. However, in the crypto market, attention is key, and trends are difficult to sustain. Currently, hot money surrounding DeSci is mainly concentrated on the meme coin issuance platform for scientific research projects, Pump.Science, indicating the market's focus on profit effects.
In fact, from a conceptual viewpoint, DeSci somewhat resembles the idea of putting new wine in old bottles. If we trace back the history, VitaDAO, initiated by V God in July 2021, is one of the earliest and most representative DeSci projects, but the development of this project has not been as grand as its concept.
VitaDAO is a community-owned project dedicated to funding early longevity research, aiming to promote scientific innovation through the collective power of the community, researching and supporting projects aimed at extending human lifespan and preventing age-related diseases. In other words, VitaDAO is a DAO community that researches longevity.
Previously, due to traditional pharmaceutical company Pfizer's strategic investment in the project, VitaDAO briefly sparked heated discussion but quickly fell into silence as the talk subsided. Currently, VitaDAO is also widely expanding its layout, not only deploying 4.2 million dollars in funds to support 24 projects but also collaborating with well-known universities like Newcastle University for research. However, compared to its actions, the actual results seem quite limited. Starting from 2021, it wasn't until the recent Devcon that V God finally showcased the first product of VitaDAO, VD001.
On the other hand, although putting scientific research results on the chain will enhance transparency and protect intellectual property, and also facilitate the diffusion of science, in the relatively closed field of scientific research, this point is almost a structural disruption. In today's scientific research system, most research teams maintain a high degree of confidentiality regarding research results and experimental data during the research process to prevent unauthorized persons from stealing, utilizing, or leaking research results, especially when deep interests are involved, confidentiality is of utmost importance. With the strong entry of decentralization, the security of data is also difficult to guarantee.
With the support of the above two, it can be expected that aside from the superficial applications in scientific content, review fairness, and data tokenization, only topics that are extremely difficult to implement, time-consuming, and highly collaborative will fit the crypto model. From this round of enthusiasm, most DeSci projects are targeting a core issue of common concern for all humanity—longevity, which has led the market to jokingly refer to DeSci as the elixir of life on the chain.
Longevity is ultimately just a beautiful vision, and the market's focus on DeSci is only for the liquidity it brings. Although BIOProtocol's BIO Genesis community fundraising campaign raised 33 million dollars, and the DeSci sector has surged in the past two weeks, actions in the primary market are limited, and large institutions have not yet participated. From the perspective of leading projects, secondary market attention has also performed poorly, with the market values of VITA and RIF both falling between 120 million and 200 million dollars, far from the 1 billion dollar market values of other leading sectors.
Development status of the DeSci sector, source: sosovalue
However, if viewed from a long-term perspective, DeSci is considered a relatively good sector in the MEME world. Compared to other MEMEs, DeSci has a stronger narrative. Although the celebrity effect is difficult to sustain, there are actual scientific research projects to support it, thus there exists a fundamental effect. Any innovation in scientific research and product development will strengthen the narrative. Moreover, the biomedical sector is open to fundraising, and the emerging nature of this field makes it more likely to connect with the crypto field. Additionally, DeSci has the potential for a breakout effect; currently, the celebrity effect in this sector is still concentrated within crypto, led by V God and CZ, while celebrities from traditional medical and scientific research fields have not yet entered, and large institutions have not yet emerged, which also provides direction for future narratives.
Returning to the macro market, whether it is the zoo or the artist, whether driven by AI or validated by scientific research, it can be seen that MEME has already become the main carrier of market funds. However, the former bearers of this round of tremendous wealth are still altcoins. From the perspective of the altcoin market, Bitcoin has risen from $10,000 to near $100,000, and the following effect of Ethereum has significantly decreased, while the performance of altcoins has mostly declined. Only SOL and XRP among the top ten crypto assets have seen an increase, and the explosive growth of altcoin seasons seems difficult to replicate.
At its core, the change in the flow of funds is key. In traditional bull market transmission, the common path is to gradually sink from high stability assets to low stability assets, activating high return preferences from low returns, namely mainstream coins - altcoins - MEME coins - other sectors, but this year's path has not been as it was in the past. However, currently, with the entrance of institutions and the saturation of project numbers, external large new liquidity will only flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem. The public chain ecosystem has not produced strong applications, and altcoins are deeply trapped in supply-demand institutional crises, with Bitcoin becoming the siphon of ecological funds, and funds from other sectors also being siphoned away, leaving only the rapidly in-and-out MEME with concentrated wealth effects standing out, turning the altcoin season into a MEME season.
A typical proof is that Pump.fun has already become the biggest winner of the bull market. According to Dune data, as of November 24, Pump.fun's cumulative revenue is close to $230 million (228,908,720 dollars), with a total of about 3.74 million tokens deployed.
Of course, the two are not substitutes; the rise of MEME does not mean the collapse of altcoins. Under regulatory relaxation and sector rotation, altcoins may still turn around against the wind. However, the rise of MEME's market position undoubtedly reflects the structural changes in the market. In fact, whether it is Pumpfun live streaming, TikTok shoutouts, or AI autonomous driving, with the entry of Generation Z and the rapid evolution of new technologies, the crypto market is undergoing profound changes in narrative logic, communication modes, and operational methods.
Traditional altcoin projects, which revolve around token releases to maintain long-term narratives while cutting韭菜, are difficult to sustain. The market is no longer paying for VC tokens, but is shifting towards a direction that is fairer, more autonomous, and closer to the core of tokens, where attention is increasingly scarce. In this regard, the combination of MEME and projects seems more competitive than single projects. Altcoins are controlled by a few, while MEME is relatively fair. MEME lacks long-termity, while projects provide fundamentals, and the two align closely, which may also be one of the reasons for the rise of concepts like AIMEME and DeSci.
However, regardless, the formation of consensus has a high degree of randomness, and there are very few MEME gold mines. According to Panews data, as of November 21, Pump.fun has issued a total of 3.59 million tokens, a quantity that has far exceeded the total token issuance in the past 10 years of the crypto world. Among them, the number of tokens graduated from the curve (fully filled on Raydium) is 50,389, accounting for about 1.4%. The number of tokens with a market value exceeding 100 million dollars is only 32, and less than one ten-thousandth of the MEME market value can exceed ten million dollars.
In the long run, finding a consensus balance between attention and long-termity will become an important issue for MEME development, but for individuals, surviving and not going to zero is the premise of everything.
