An explainer about decentralized science, covering the fundamentals and challenges for this emerging market.
One of the biggest trends in Web3 in 2024 has been the rise of DeSci, short for decentralized science. In this guide we take a look at the fundamentals of DeSci, how to works, what dapps it affects, and which ecosystems could be interesting for research, investments or other types of engagement.
DeSci, which stands for Decentralized Science, refers to a movement within the scientific community that leverages blockchain and Web3 technologies to revolutionize how scientific research is funded, conducted, shared, and published. The movement doesn’t necessarily invent the wheel, but uses existing blockchain technology to frame their message and create a new purpose for existing crypto, dapps and other tools.
DeSci represents an exciting frontier in science, aiming to make the process of scientific discovery more inclusive, transparent, and efficient. This can then potentially lead to faster innovation and more equitable distribution of scientific knowledge.
Early example of decentralized science
The principles of DeSci are nothing new. In the early 2000s, Sony launched the PlayStation 3. Owners of this online-ready console could opt-in to share their computing power with the Folding@Home project from Stanford University. The computing power would be used to do calculations for research to fight diseases like cancer. According to press releases from Sony, over 15 million PlayStation 3 owners have contributed over 100 million hours of computing to the Folding@Home project. Using crowd-sourced computing power for scientific research, already was a clear example of decentralized science back in 2007.
DeSci is more than just computing power
De term DeSci encompasses more than just computing power, but also refers to the distribution of research funding, and active community participation. Down the line, decentralized science needs to make science more involving for everybody outside the research labs.
5 fundamentals of DeSci
- Decentralization of Funding and Research: DeSci aims to address the challenges of traditional scientific funding by enabling more transparent, community-driven funding models. This includes mechanisms like crowdfunding through cryptocurrencies or using DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) to allocate research funds.
- Transparency and Accessibility: By using blockchain technology, DeSci promotes transparency in scientific research. Research data and findings can be stored on decentralized networks, making them immutable, verifiable, and openly accessible. This reduces the control of large institutions over scientific knowledge and promotes open access.
- Incentivization through Tokens: Projects within the DeSci space often utilize tokens or NFTs to incentivize researchers. For instance, scientists can mint NFTs representing their research, which can be used to fund further research or reward contributions to science.
- Decentralized Peer Review and Publication: DeSci proposals include systems for decentralized peer review where the process is more transparent, potentially reducing bias and increasing the credibility of scientific publications. Blockchain can be used to track contributions and peer reviews, ensuring accountability.
- Community Involvement: DeSci encourages broader participation in science, not just from academics but from anyone interested or capable of contributing. This democratizes science, allowing for diverse inputs and solutions.
Challenges in decentralized science
Traditional academic institutions might resist or be slow to adopt decentralized systems due to entrenched practices, funding models, and governance structures. The academic community’s reliance on peer-reviewed publications, tenure, and established metrics like impact factors could hinder the acceptance of new DeSci models. Encouraging collaboration across different fields within a decentralized framework can also be logistically challenging without the structured environments of traditional academic institutions.
Lack of legal frameworks in DeSci
The tokenization of research through NFTs or similar mechanisms raises questions about IP rights. How these digital assets interact with current legal frameworks for patents and copyrights remains unclear. Compliance with existing laws regarding financial transactions, data protection (like GDPR), and scientific research ethics can also be complex in a decentralized environment.
Ensuring quality could become a challenge
Without centralized gatekeeping, ensuring the quality, reproducibility, and credibility of research becomes challenging. While blockchain can offer solutions like transparent tracking of peer reviews, developing a trusted, decentralized peer review system that maintains scientific rigor is complex. Furthermore, the open and potentially anonymous nature of decentralized platforms could inadvertently allow for the spread of pseudoscience or fraudulent research if not properly moderated or validated.
While still in its nascent stages, DeSci faces challenges like regulatory issues, acceptance by the traditional scientific community, and ensuring ethical practices in decentralized frameworks. However, its potential to accelerate scientific discovery through collaboration, transparency, and open access is significant.
DeSci tech stack, services and dapps
Decentralized Science, or DeSci, taps into already existing blockchain services and technology, but framed towards supporting scientific research. DeSci could potentially require services like data storage, computation power, shared ownership, digital identity and onchain reputation, and many more. Developments across the blockchain industry could already fill these demands, supporting DeSci as a new wave of innovation.
For example, projects like Render could help with decentralized computational power, while Filecoin could provide decentralized and encrypted storage. Furthermore, NFT technology, soulbound tokens, digital identities and cryptocurrencies are already supported through a variety of existing tools, platforms and dapps on the market.
Curious about the dapps and projects that could push DeSci forward?
- Filecoin, decentralized data storage
- Digital ID services listed on DappRadar
- More about Soulbound tokens
Discover what else is trending
DeSci is a big talking topic in the Web3 community, but there’s a lot more happening right now. Crypto gaming remains one of the headlines, while memecoins are stealing the show at the moment. On a technical level Layer-2 networks are shining bright, while Solana and Sui Network have become popular L1 networks. Enough is happening, and you can find trending topics through our Explorer page. Here you can see which projects have been pumping in the past 24 hours, which tokens gained the most value, and which NFT collections had the most trading volume in the past 24 hours.
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