Scientists can take advantage of blockchain tools such as smart contracts and tokens to improve collaboration on scientific efforts among different stakeholders. This so-called decentralized scientific movement, or DeSci for short, combines blockchain and Web3 technologies to improve scientific research.
A primary goal of DeSci is increased participation and funding in addressing scientific challenges, as well as democratizing the peer review process, which is dominated by a few journals that can be expensive to appear in and fight censorship. DeSci can also create standards for research storage with Proof of Existence technology. While in financial blockchains like Bitcoin, transactions are verified by a network of miners, research could also be verified by participants in a blockchain network of scientists, etc.
decentralization of science
Blockchain-based peer review ecosystems can be transparent and can lend credibility to research contributed even by pseudonymous participants. Scientists could, for example, receive a stake or “reward” for participating, incentivizing a wider community to contribute.
Essentially, decentralized science makes it possible to develop platforms that allow more people to work with what Dr. Benjamin Bratton calls the “source code of matter” at a fundamental level. Democratizing science through decentralized science would enable a new type of interface layer for a modern Scientific Revolution. The way to do this is to decentralize access to scientific activities, that is, to allow citizen-scientists to play a role.
We saw this happen with computers, and we think it could happen with science in general. At the beginning of the computer revolution, software was difficult to work with. Very few understood the rarefied technologies, which over time became more and more intuitive and simplified —thanks to the different levels of abstraction— and, therefore, allowed more people to become valuable collaborators. Some of the technologies that made this possible are Javascript and the useful packages developed to make coding more efficient. At a lower level of abstraction, there is technology like WordPress that allows people who don’t understand software or coding to set up their website.
Blockchain technology for science
Blockchain technology (tokens, NFTs, metaverses) has the potential to positively impact the platform economy in such a way that it democratizes access to scientific collaborations. When you think of platforms, you usually think of Uber or Airbnb, which are world-changing projects in themselves. But platform economics is something that is a very new field of research and is actually driving game theory as an academic discipline. This process started with Bitcoin (BTC) and has only been fueled by Ethereum (ETH) and the dozens, if not hundreds, of other blockchains since then.
Historically, web platforms and applications have tended to be centripetal in their value creation process; the more they are used, the more value the platform builder gets. Blockchain makes possible a more equitable agreement whereby the more people participate in a given platform, and the more people add value to the platform, the more they get from it.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) is different from an IP platform or a platform where the more it is used, the more the platform benefits and the value is built. In the case of DeSci, the people who create the value—the researchers, the scientists, the citizen scientists, etc.—earn value in line with the value of their contribution; that is, the more other researchers and scientists use it, etc., the more value they receive.
The impact that this can have on basic research in science and math and other sorts of things could be huge. DeSci is creating new ways to contribute and collaborate that were not possible until blockchain technology came along. If you have knowledge or understanding that is valuable both intrinsically and as a component of a larger project (you may not even know what that project is), someone else can make use of your contribution, and you can be recognized for it and earn residuals. that contribution to the future.
NFTs will play an important role in the future of the metaverse, as it is through NFTs that scientific research could be safely transferred. The academy has already used NFT. The University of California, Berkeley, for example, auctioned off an NFT tied to documents related to the world of Nobel Prize-winning cancer researcher James Allison for more than $50,000. The US Space Force, a branch of the US Military, began selling a series of NFTs featuring augmented reality images from satellites and space iconography. Biology pioneer George Church’s company, Nebula Genomics, plans to sell an NFT of Church’s genome. Church is a geneticist at Harvard University in Cambridge and helped launch the Human Genome Project. There are burgeoning use cases for NFTs in science, and there are sure to be more.
Blockchain is a high resolution detection, indexing and value calculation. The potential is there, and it is now up to DeSci organizations to demonstrate their merits, scientific quality, and overall effectiveness in improving the scientific process.
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Steve McCloskey is a student in the first Nanoengineering class at the University of California, San Diego. Steve’s work focuses on emerging technologies applied to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). After graduating from UCSD, he founded Nanome Inc to create virtual reality solutions for scientists and engineers working at the nanoscale, specifically protein engineering and small molecule drug development.
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