Decentralized Science (“DeSci”) in Web3

Decentralized Science (“DeSci”) is a significant movement in the Web3 ecosystem. Its aim is to make scientific knowledge available to all, and to make the research process clear and open. DeSci directly impacts one of the world’s most valuable fields when it comes to innovation. It's important for people to understand the value that the scientific and academic communities can derive from distributed ledger technology.

If you need more context about what DeSci is and how it is being developed to better the global scientific community, please have a look at last week’s “Learnings” article on the topic below.

Decentralzed Science (”DeSci”)

Projects you should know about

1. VitaDAO ($VITA)

What is it?

Vita is an ETH-based DAO focused on funding and managing research in the field of life extension and aging. The implementation of a DAO is part of their plan to democratize access to the results of longevity research and promote a more open and collaborative approach to scientific discovery.

What’s so good about it?

1. Funding

VitaDAO offers an alternative funding mechanism for longevity research, which typically relies on grants, private investments, or government funding. Its decentralized approach enables a more diverse range of stakeholders to participate in funding decisions and research direction.

To date, VitaDAO has funded 17 projects with approximately $4 million USD. These projects provide the DAO with some share in equity of research findings or on-chain ownership of the IP-NFT. One of the unique aspects of VitaDAO is its focus on the intellectual property (IP) generated by the research it funds. The organization aims to acquire and manage the IP rights of the projects it supports, ensuring that the benefits and breakthroughs in longevity research are shared fairly and transparently among its community members. With over $4 million USD in the treasury and growing, the DAO will be able to fund future longevity research for some time to come.

In addition, VitaDAO recently closed a $4.1 million fundraising round with the likes of Pfizer and Shine Capital, L1 Digital, among other prominent investors in the space, such as Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase and GP at a16z) and Joe Betts-LaCroix (CEO at Retro Biosciences).

2. Leader

The DeSci movement is still in its infancy, and there is relatively little recognition of it outside of the movement itself. VitaDAO is leading the ecosystem in terms of following and valuation, largely due to how well the protocol has matured and guided its community.

The DeSci wiki, curated by Dr. Jocelynn Pearl, aggregates all projects related to the movement, along with their purpose and relevant links. Going through the list, it's clear that there aren't very many projects in this ecosystem. VitaDAO is one of the few that has closed a significant funding round and has a highly engaged community compared to other projects in the space.

In addition to the above investors, VitaDAO has an impressive range of partners listed on its homepage, seen below.

Further, VitaDAO partners with the below universities and companies to actually conduct research supported by the DAO.

2. ValleyDAO ^{*Token to be released}

What is it?

ValleyDAO is a global, open community that democratically finances and governs synthetic biology technologies. Its mission is to protect the future of our planet.

ValleyDAO funds and supports synthetic biology researchers to create intellectual property (IP) from their research. This IP is then licensed to third parties or used to create a startup. Income derived from this is shared between the researchers and ValleyDAO. Ultimately, ValleyDAO can use this income to fund the next cohort of researchers, thus completing the cycle.

What’s so good about it?

1. Growth Groups

There are many positives associated with the way in which this DAO was structured.

The DAO has 3 different growth groups you can join and start contributing to, all of which have leaders that distribute tasks and maintain each group separately.

• Dealflow & Incubation

• Communications

• Governance & Operations

Each of these growth groups has its own objectives and processes.

The most interesting to us was the ValleyDAO governance system which is split into 3 phases.

• Phase 1 - Informal discussion on Discord.

• Phase 2 - Assuming support from the community, a formal proposal is created in their Discourse, where community members will simply agree, comment for revisions, or disagree.

• Phase 3 - If passed in Discourse, the proposal moves to Snapshot to facilitate the final vote.

We found this recommended process valuable because it prevents the Snapshot (Phase 3 platform) from becoming filled with unnecessary proposals. This is a common problem with DAOs that leads to less participation in voting. The community vets the proposal before it even reaches that stage.

The incentives to participate are also set up in an interesting way. Valley’s native token, $GROW, is awarded to contributors on an hourly basis for their work. The interesting part is that these tokens are locked for 1 year before they can be sold. This means that sell-offs are not occurring instantly and there isn’t a constant downward pressure on the token’s price action, which gives ValleyDAO time to grow, fund projects, and profit off of the IP and equity that comes out of their efforts without that market pressure.

Touching briefly on the other growth groups, the Communications and Dealflow groups each have the same lock-up period mentioned prior for any rewards resulting from a member's contribution. A few additional interesting points to note:

• The Communications growth group allows users to suggest their own bounties and incentives for a particular task that they would like to take on that they think the DAO would benefit from

• The Dealflow & Incubation growth groups provide a 2% commission to contributors that refer a project that ultimately gets funded. This means a $200,000 grant to a research project awards the referrer $4,000. Additionally, 1-2% in equity is awarded to the contributor in the event that IP or a company is formed out of their referral, but only if they take on a more active role for the growth group.

2. Onboarding

Onboarding is important for a DeSci project, not only are we taking in Web3 natives, but also trying to convert unfamiliar researchers, academics, and scientists that have no idea what this space is about or what it can offer. You’ll find a 1-minute-read, step-by-step on how to join ValleyDAO and how to contribute to their project in their Notion.

In their Notion, you can find a curated list of resources to learn about Web3 and Synthetic Biology. Inviting anyone interested and bringing the two fields together.

We believe that having an effective onboarding structure will always provide benefits in this context. It's possible that they are in the more well-known category of DeSci protocols because of how easy they've made it to join, start contributing, and be rewarded.

3. Opportunity

The $GROW token is set to launch in mid-2023. This would be a good opportunity to diversify into decentralised science, especially given Valley’s traction in the space.