An insider account of the DeSci origins story \u2014 a new movement of citizen scientists, open-access scientific research and crowd-sourced peer-review funded by crypto that\u2019s gathering pace in 2022.<\/strong><\/p>\n #<\/p>\n At ETHDenver in February, decentralized science became a thing. This could well be the first insider account of the DeSci origin story. Think Peter Parker citizen scientists funded by crypto.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Research is hard and problematically peer-reviewed. Commercializing science and tech is complex and often not profitable. Intellectual property protection is time-consuming. So, scientific research isn\u2019t rife with speculators, rent-seekers and low-hanging fruit like other parts of Cryptoland.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The newly coined DeSci is about championing true decentralization, rejecting institutional influence (read big pharma, and the peer review system) and encouraging citizen science in pursuit of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n COVID-19 has spurred its development. The speed at which multiple COVID-19 vaccines and endless studies were delivered was a pivotal moment. If COVID-19 research could be produced that quickly, why couldn\u2019t decentralized movements do it too?<\/span><\/p>\n Could crypto, tokenomics and decentralized autonomous organizations play a role in new models of research and commercialization?<\/span><\/p>\n This is a story of a band of committed activists who want to make that happen, one of whom is Erik Van Winkle who grew up wanting to be a scientist, had a core role at ConstitutionDAO, and has now found his sweet spot as a community organizer for<\/span> DeSci Labs<\/span><\/a> \u2014 a project working on new technologies to improve the accessibility, reliability, transparency, and value sharing of scientific publications<\/span>, as well as the DeSci Foundation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He says the mission is broadly Can we make science more efficient?<\/em> and while it won\u2019t happen overnight, it will happen:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cDeSci is possible \u2014 it just has a long road ahead of it. Blockchain took time; DeFi took time. DeSci will get there.\u201d<\/p>\n He adds it\u2019s already attracting some of the best minds.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPeople are excited to be there; they are excited by the mission. Attracting developers is very hard. This is an area that has a good story behind it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n According<\/a> to a recent article <\/span>by<\/span> Sarah Hamburg, <\/span>co-founder of Web3 advisory <\/span>Phas3<\/span><\/a> and blockchain-based biometric data company <\/span>Lynx<\/span><\/a>, DeSci lies at the intersection of two broader trends. <\/span> DeSci communities are expected to be largely made up of those already involved in both crypto and science. How they interact with the wider scientific community is key.<\/span><\/p>\n Most DeSci advocates are keen to respect existing research communities while harmoniously building new ones. This reflects an important slogan for the DeSci movement, best summed up by Hamburg in a <\/span>letter<\/span><\/a> to <\/span>Nature<\/span><\/i> encouraging scientists across all disciplines to join DeSci. <\/span> \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Josh Bate has become a high-profile figure in the burgeoning DeSci space. A community organizer with high visibility, he agrees ETHDenver was a catalyst for DeSci.<\/span><\/p>\n Bate, \u201ca DeFi guy\u201d who was once the head of community for the Free Julian Assange campaign and began in crypto \u201cby using Bitcoin just for buying things on the dark web.\u201d He\u2019s pretty forthright when he talks. How did he earn his position of visibility in the community? Just \u201cput myself about,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Bate founded and funds DeSci World, a \u201cpeer-to-peer research platform, and a DeSci aggregator of info.\u201d It aims to create a dashboard akin to DeFi Pulse for DeSci.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He also believes DeFi practices are crucial to DeSci business models, but DeSci needs more than \u201cWeb3 tooling to improve on the current state of affairs.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n He tells Magazine that he fears a \u201cdark DeSci and a regular DeSci,\u201d so he\u2019s been campaigning for a Hippocratic Oath for DeSci. He made the case at a talk at ETHDenver:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s so early, but we can choose a Hippocratic Oath for DeSci now \u2014 no institutional finance, just pure science.\u201d He asked the crowd for a show of hands on whether \u201cDeSci should have an explicitly stated ideology\u201d and estimates that maybe 5% voted \u201cno,\u201d 20% \u201cyes,\u201d and the rest were too confused by the many variables and held out to see the outcome.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s jump back a step to consider the complex<\/span> problems with existing research models.<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a need to improve:<\/span><\/p>\n Of course, there\u2019s no proof that grafting crypto onto this process is the best way to improve it. Is creating a coin around a research project a good way to fund it?<\/span> What do holders of that token get out of it? Is it more out of altruism than a financial return?<\/span><\/p>\n LabDAO is an open community of wet and dry labs for citizen science. Founder Niklas Rindtorff tells Magazine that \u201ctokenomics can\u2019t directly change research.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cBut tokenomics can generate new mechanism design and incentives. In a time where most academic research is following the same set of incentives, I am hopeful new funding agencies and tokenomics models can help diversify the ways research is being done.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Funding is the bane of scientists\u2019 existence, and the process does not always reward merit. Scientists waste a lot of time writing grants applications. Hamburg wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c<\/span>Funding<\/span><\/a> is an especially acute pain point for scientists, who spend up to <\/span>half<\/span><\/a> their time writing grant proposals. Success in getting funding is heavily tied to metrics such as the <\/span>h-index<\/span>, which quantifies the impact of a scientist\u2019s published work. The resulting pressure to \u2018publish or perish\u2019 incentivizes the pursuit of novel research over work that\u2019s critical but less likely to grab headlines. Ultimately, inadequate and unreliable funding not only reduces the amount of science being done, but also biases which projects scientists choose, contributing to issues such as the <\/span>replication crisis<\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The replication crisis<\/a> means that the results of perhaps more than 50% of published studies cannot be <\/span>replicated<\/span><\/a> by other scientists carrying out the same experiments or research.<\/span><\/p>\n DeSci proponents argue that funding gatekeepers hinder scientific progress. Hamburg, a neuroscientist who has researched innovative ways of treating Alzheimer\u2019s by using light known as entrainment, explains to Magazine that \u201cfunding bodies are too slow for innovative therapeutics.\u201d She was building a phone app for entrainment treatments but ran out of funding. She still believes the trial would have proved fruitful for treating Alzheimer\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n In addition, traditional funding <\/span>mechanisms aren\u2019t great for<\/span> new and different research approaches. <\/span> Like the open-source nature of AI research, Hamburg suggests that \u201cmedicine of the future will be algorithms in one way or another. <\/span>Pooled data will be very important for generating new insights.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s the vision. The question is whether the decentralized science movement has the capabilities to better decide what should or<\/span> shouldn\u2019t<\/span><\/a> be funded.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n How do you conduct peer-reviewed research and collaborate with the harmoniously scientific community? Will DeSci crowdsource both the funding and the peer review, or does it just fund the research and get out of the way? For now, experimentation may be the only option.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n SCINET.io co-founder Kaitlin Cauchon believes DeSci\u2019s success is inevitable because the current academic funding model is broken.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHow to get scientists on board the DeSci train? Democratize funding. Funding is the biggest centralization of science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n SCINET is an early-stage project that is currently focused on building a decentralized crowdfunding platform for life sciences research. Once done, they will turn their attention to an \u201celectronic lab notebook built on on-chain\u201d, according to Cauchon. Open access and replicability are the problems they seek to solve \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Information access is another big problem for science today, Hamburg noted in her article. <\/span> Peer review is slow and anonymous, and this can lead to \u201c<\/span>turf wars<\/span><\/a>\u201d as journals are gatekeepers of knowledge. (FYI, see this 2018<\/span> review<\/span><\/a> of the peer review system.) Two major players are <\/span>Clarivate<\/span> and <\/span>Elsevier<\/span>, who are the Web2 equivalents of academic research. Scientific journals are an oligopoly of for-profit companies. Articles are protected by copyright.<\/span><\/p>\n The<\/span> two leading business models<\/a><\/span> of journal publication companies are \u201cpay-for-access\u201d and \u201cpay-for-publication.\u201d Even for independent observers, this does seem like a perversion of incentives.<\/span><\/p>\n In recent years, preprint platforms<\/span> Arxiv<\/span>, <\/span>bioRxiv<\/span>, <\/span>medRxiv<\/span>\u00a0and <\/span>SSRN<\/span> have allowed academics to post early versions of their manuscripts online and have emerged and found favor. However, this is prior to the peer review process, and academics may not divulge key findings at this stage<\/span><\/p>\n The problem is clear: paywalled science. And the benefits of fixing the problem are even starker.<\/span><\/p>\n Hamburg, who has had a chronic pain condition called fibromyalgia since she was 19 and long COVID over the past two years, believes that by <\/span>making research more available, DeSci can crowdsource ordinary people working together to help solve problems, especially those affected by an illness who are the most motivated.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWith many chronic conditions, there\u2019s a strong \u2018biohacker\u2019 mentality that emerges, as people are left to track flare-ups and the impact of interventions themselves, with inadequate know-how and tools to do so. There is very little crossover (if any) between these \u2018citizen science\u2019 experiments and traditional science and medicine, so insights are missed, and many illnesses remain under-researched despite the millions they impact worldwide.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n One innovative approach that might improve open access is being taken by the <\/span>Smart Contract Research Forum<\/span><\/a>. It\u2019s a community<\/span> for industry and researchers to share research and peer reviews that is <\/span>\u201cdecoupling review from publication.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Operations leader Eugene Leventhal tells Magazine, \u201cToday, peer review is only available for those vying for those coveted journals and conferences. The majority of the Web3 space, with the exception of the underlying cryptographic primitives, has mostly been built outside of academia, and most researchers publish more on their blogs and Twitter than in traditional venues.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s why we think it\u2019s important to start a series of open peer review experiments supporting independent researchers in the space, and we\u2019re starting to coordinate with meta-science researchers to ensure that we\u2019re not re-inventing the wheel with our experimentation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n They will announce their plans for 2022 at ETHAmsterdam on April 20.<\/span><\/p>\n So, more open and pooled data is one key to more research from concerned citizens. But should tokenomics mean that reproduction of data sets along with all research data is incentivized?<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Patrick Joyce worked at a tumor biology lab at the famed Johns Hopkins University. He also dropped out of med school and a Ph.D. program working on molecular biology.<\/span><\/p>\n He\u2019s far from the only person who tells me that \u201cgood science isn\u2019t always super citable. This creates weird perverse incentives driven by money flowing from citations.\u201d<\/span> In 2016, before Joyce discovered crypto, he decided to build a Reddit-like platform for science called Knowledgr. Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong invested in his company, but the project soon sputtered out. Joyce then joined Armstrong\u2019s<\/span> ResearchHub<\/span><\/a> \u2014 a sort-of GitHub for science, with utility behind the paper \u2014 in 2020 as chief science officer.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n ResearchHub is a good example of where DeSci may be heading. ResearchHub has hired 60 editors, he says, people who \u201care qualified to review scientific papers.\u201d It\u2019s really an economies-of-scale issue, enough editors and support, and the reviews will be almost universally respected. It\u2019s currently on the hunt for preprints or draft research manuscripts to receive peer reviews.<\/span><\/p>\n ResearchHub isn\u2019t trying to conduct research, but to create a platform for independent science. The editors are paid in ResearchCoin, which \u201cessentially equates to governance rights on the platform.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLike open source, we hope to tear down the Ivory tower so a barefoot biochemist in Yugoslavia can unlock clever science.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n They recently added digital object identifier (DOI) citations to papers to help integrate ResearchHub with existing research models. DOIs aid researchers to find original references.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Joyce says the project started as a pure DAO, but that didn\u2019t work out. It \u201cis still kind of a DAO but more CEO-run. It\u2019s hard to organize people. We had to carefully delineate what the DAOs should decide. For example, \u2018should we ban a eugenics hub?\u2019 that question goes to the DAO.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But he adds in DeSci, \u201cNow there\u2019s an expectation that you\u2019re a DAO.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Do you see opportunities to improve #PeerReview<\/a>?<\/p>\n SCRF will host an Open Peer Review discussion with Prof. Nihar Shah
<\/span>
<\/span>It was like the good old days of crypto: Like-minded spirits met and then crashed at each other\u2019s rented places. Ideologies and open research were respectfully debated. DeSci panels were well attended with renewed energy for figuring out hard problems. Heated discussions were had. Many committed themselves to decentralized science, whatever that would mean. DeSci is, of course, very new and untested.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDecentralized science?<\/h4>\n
\n
Building upon existing science<\/h4>\n
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201c1) Efforts within the scientific community to change how research is funded and knowledge is shared, and 2) efforts within the crypto-focused movement to shift ownership and value away from industry intermediaries.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span>
<\/span>Don\u2019t work against us \u2014 join us<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"DeSci](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/DeSci-Foundation-1024x511.jpg\")
Hippocratic Oath for DeSci?<\/h4>\n
How to peer review as a decentralized public good\u00a0<\/span><\/h4>\n
\n
![\"DeSci\"](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Desci-small.jpg\")
1. Crowdsourcing research funding<\/h4>\n
![\"Passion](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/Desci-3.jpg\")
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cFor example, DeSci will unleash the growth of digital therapeutics [wearable biometric devices], which will enable large numbers of people across many different locations to participate in digital-based studies and pool their data,\u201d she argues.<\/span> DeSci trials could be done with fewer biases and better-pooled data on a blockchain.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
<\/span><\/p>\n![\"DeScie](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/FPIGyViXsAgGo4B.jpg\")
2. Open access for citizen science<\/h4>\n
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cDespite the fact that science is the epitome of a global <\/span>public good<\/span><\/a>, a lot of scientific knowledge is trapped behind journal paywalls and inside private databases. Making all types of data more accessible is the main objective of the <\/span>Open Science<\/span><\/a> movement, which emerged over a decade ago.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nCitizen science<\/h4>\n
![\"DeSci](\"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/desci-2.jpg\")
<\/span>
<\/span>DeSci Labs is working to create a ledger of scientific records that stores and validates manuscripts, data and code in a transparent way that is accessible to everyone. <\/span>
<\/span>
<\/span>\u201cMaking science truly open involves transforming science from solitary PDFs into dynamic research objects. We plan to showcase our first product, DeSci Nodes, at the DeSci Day on April 20 in Amsterdam to demonstrate how a pre-print can be turned into a reproducible research object stored on IPFS containing data, code and video to evidence work and chip away at the reproducibility crisis,\u201d Van Winkle tells Magazine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n\n
3. Overhaul the academic peer review process<\/h4>\n
<\/span>
<\/span>He adds, \u201cHigher prestige journals lead to better citations. But paywalls mean the world can\u2019t benefit in real-time.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n
\n