Blockchain Use Cases for Science
Hello, Azeem here.
I’m away for a couple of weeks, so I asked EV member Jocelynn Pearl to step in and provide this week’s Sunday commentary.
This year has been a whirlwind for Web3, to say the least. Along with many of you, I have had to rethink my assumptions about what blockchain can do, and what real problems it can help us solve. To do this, I suggest we delve into a sphere that has problems that can easily be attributed, at least in part, to centralization and gatekeeping institutions and corporations: science.
Jocelynn is a leading thinker and practitioner in this area, and believes that Web3 can help us address some of the most pressing issues in how science is conducted and published. Share your questions and thoughts about DeSci in the comments (paying members only 🔒), and share Jocelynn’s essay with your network (everyone!).
hello I am Jocelyn Pearl, a biotech scientist, podcaster and business builder. I have been following the decentralized science or DeSci movement and working on it NFTs for research into rare diseasesas well as one open marketplace for science. I have collected many of the projects in this room DeSci Wiki, and our team at UltraRare have put together a map of the decentralized science landscape (shown below). I am particularly fascinated by how the topic of decentralization and new methods using blockchain technology can change the way science is done, including how science is published and how research is translated.
The concept of DeSci piggybacks off of a few pre-existing movements. The open science and open software movements were formative and continue to influence several of the key projects in the space. DeSci also involves applying blockchain technology to scientific challenges. Blockchain first emerged as a changemaker for finance and asset management. The art world and digital communities saw the rise of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). And decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) began to change how society and work coalesced around specific projects in an ecosystem coined ‘Web3’.
Some of the key principles of DeSci include: i. scientific knowledge should be accessible to all, ii. Scientific work should be credited and incentivized appropriately, iii. Embrace collaboration and transparency (build in the public domain), and iv. Patients and consumers should be able to own and control their medical data.
The Internet has had a debate about Web3 use cases (examples here and here). So what are the existing use cases of blockchain for science? Many ideas have been proposed, but let’s focus on two examples: improving peer review in scientific publishing, and expanding drug development.
The traditional scientific publishing industry is full of misaligned incentives that drive it profit for companies that Elsevier. But what if there was a way to use tokenization to create a better system where scientific research (or research) is shared? (Example of writing about this topic here). The current way papers receive peer review is for a given journal to ask other domain experts to review; these busy researchers are expected to spend hours reviewing the paper for free and sending to the editor whether the work is suitable for publication. Editors are now signaling that this approach is in trouble, with one editor saying that 21 reviewers requested, 20 declined the request. On top of that, the process, once underway, is highly inconsistent and often results in errors of judgment. An earlier one editor of the Lancet joked that the journal “had a system of throwing a stack of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom”. But what if reviewers were paid for their time? Or if there was a better way to identify the right experts? It is the motivation behind projects such as Ant reviewwhich aims to stimulate the peer review process:
“We designed a privacy-oriented protocol for smart contracts called Ants-Review that allows authors to issue a bounty for open anonymous peer reviews on Ethereum. If the requirements are met, peer reviews will be accepted and paid by the approver in proportion to their rated quality. To promote ethical behavior and inclusion, the system implements a gamified mechanism that allows the entire community to evaluate the peer reviews and vote for the best.“
Pharmaceutical development and the biotechnological industry have traditionally been highly centralized, just like banking. Two major problems within the biotechnology industry are i.a. Clinical development timelines are long and expensive (what many consider the ‘valley of death’) and ii. There are many disease areas that profit margin or number of patients does not guarantee that a given biotechnology will focus on therapeutic development (ie, rare diseases). But decentralized drug development can diversify the industry, reduce costs and support therapeutic development for diseases that were once avoided. Decentralized autonomous organizations are spun up to focus on specific therapeutic areas, such as e.g long lifetime or hair loss. These DAOs can raise (crypto) capital via a token launch, manage assets as a community and govern decisions via token-based voting mechanisms. The hope is that they will actually be able to manage and finance drug development; time will tell if they manage to deliver.
Towards the end of 2021, DeSci really heated up, with a number of ideas and new DAOs aimed at improving things like funding and publishing scientific research, biotechnology and drug development. Conversations and engagement were high in various communities, including a Blockchain for Science telegram group and VitaDAO, a lifetime-focused funding community for science started by a company called Molecule. The question was how much of this idea soup could be built and how quickly? Where would the capital be focused; would the “workforce” remain Web3 native in the sense of being globalized, paid via crypto or tokens and distributed?
Now heading into fall 2022, a few projects have raised traditional VC investment, including Molecule and Vibe Bio, both with $12 million rounds. Several other projects have raised crypto. In general, it is still early days for many of the DeSci projects, and many of these teams are actively working on lifting or putting together roadmaps.
We also see a spread of the theme of democratization and ‘building in the public’ within the biotechnology area; several early-stage VCs share resources for founders; more information is available today about the once obscure biotech sector. Medicines are developed in new and different ways; especially in niche areas such as rare diseases and specialist therapy.
To borrow a quote from Jon Hillisfounder of CabinDAO (a residence for creators), at Rehash podcast:
“It doesn’t really matter if Web3, as we currently conceptualize it, ceases to exist, because I think the values of it are now out of Pandora’s box … Blockchains will not survive if they don’t find real use cases. And I think we’re trying to explore what some of these real, tangible, meaty use cases are, but I think a lot of corners of Web3 are still very speculative and very much not focused on building for real end users… We’ll hit a bottom of disillusionment around that . But I think what won’t die is the underlying set of values and spirit that is starting to bring these communities together to achieve great goals. And what I’ve said before, if web3 died tomorrow, I know I’d still be around out here and built this future together that we look forward to.“
I think that’s a pretty good way to think about the current state of DeSci. I am hopeful for the progress that these projects will make in the years to come; whether it is making improvements in the process of scientific publication, developing new therapies for disease, or improving ownership and incentives across the scientific ecosystem.
A point I like to emphasize is that for decades science has been conducted mainly in university, institution-led systems that are highly centralized and hierarchical, putting out a particular type of research designed to fulfill the mold of a Nature/Science/Cell paper. DeSci has a promise of alternative approaches to the scientific process. I argue that this increased diversity of approaches will have a net benefit to society and scientific progress as a whole.
🎧 How Web3 is changing commerce and governance (Azeem in conversation with Packy McCormick)
🎧 Gaming’s Web3 Future (Azeem in conversation with Amy Wu)
