imagine a world where patients and their families can directly fund scientists developing the next
breakthrough drug or treatment that they need a world in which drug development is a collaborative
open and decentralized process such a future is not only possible but the
decentralized science community is making it a reality through blockchain crypto and
nfts of course and that's exactly what we're going to talk about on this coin market cap episode my
name is kay and here on coin market cap we are on a mission to make crypto accessible
all around the world that's why we love making videos for you that are packed with information
that are easy to understand and simple to share with your friends and family members especially if
they're interested in science and crypto so if you want something more than just hype and to actually
learn about crypto make sure to hit the subscribe button right now turn on those notifications
to not miss on our next video and let's learn together decentralize science or design
blockchain is shaking up the banking supply chain and healthcare industries and scientific research
looks to be the next industry ready to be revolutionized by blockchain the scientific
research space has long been controlled by a handful of powerful publishing companies
that decide which research projects are worth publishing and therefore which projects are worth
to fund and while the open access movement has made progress towards a fairer system research
scientists are still spending half of their careers writing grants and funding proposals
and struggling to get funding for most of their research well that was until early last year when
scientists around the world began collaborating on how to use blockchain to better fund their
research and share the results and so begun the DeSci movement the design movement is in short a
group of scientists who are applying decentralized ideas and technology to improve and advance modern
science the movement is very new and so it lacks a formal manifesto or plan describing
what it exactly wants to achieve however the DeSci platforms and startups that are up and running
today have four common aims number one to free up research data like test results and studies
from behind paywalls to eliminate the reliance on profit hungry middlemen like publishing giants
to make collaboration easier among scientists around the world and number four to drastically
alter the way scientific research is funded these side platforms hope that through decentralized key
processes like funding and sharing the results of important research it can speed up the rate
of discovery in every scientific field to fully understand what the decentralized science movement
wants to do let's take a deeper look at some of the problems the scientific community faces today
number one finding funding scientists want to spend as much of their careers doing what they
love to do science what they don't want to spend hours of their time doing is pitching grant givers
or corporations for funding and yet it seems that scientists often spend as much as half of
their careers writing grant requests and funding proposals now why is this because the only way
research scientists stand any chance of winning funding is by carrying out novel or attention
grabbing research the kind of research journals and newspapers want to include in their cover page
for example think about miracle cancer drug or exotic herb to cure your acne unfortunately early
stage exploratory or non-critical research is now very difficult to find funding for
almost regardless of how important it could be for our future over time this has reduced
the total quantity of research scientists have achieved and has greatly contributed
to the replication crisis where nobody can get funding to replicate old results to double check
the first funding which is the basic foundation of good science in a sense researchers are only
really incentivized to create work that shows large effects because journal prices
new and spectacular results because after all they're in the business of selling subscriptions
which we understand but it's science but if nobody replicating the results of a study are the results
truly meaningful which leads us to problem number two the journals themselves today scientists share
most of the research and knowledge with the scientific community by publishing articles
and journals let's say you're a scientist after thinking up and testing an idea you put together a
study explaining what you found which you write as an article to submit to a journal after receiving
the study the journal's editors then sent that article to a few other scientists working in
the same field which is commonly referred to as peer review process the reviewing scientists then
provide feedback on the submitted article and tell the journal's editors whether they think
the study is good enough to be published in the journal the feedback is then passed on
to you and resubmit to the journal if you wish today there are tens of thousands of different
scientific journals and each one usually focus on a specific area of study like neuroscience or
medicine publishing in a journal can take a year or more from submission to actual publication and
it's a very competitive process journals often choose to publish the sexiest studies the studies
which sell as many extra copies of the journal as possible which means that scientists have no
option but to research whatever they think will get published the most and not what would be best
for the scientific field or even the world also journals rarely publish negative results which
often leads to scientists repeating research which has been conducted elsewhere multiple times on top
of it the pressure journals put on scientists to publish positive headline grabbing research
is one problem but the money these journals charging is possibly an even larger problem
today five companies control more than half of all academic publishing and the whole sector
makes an estimated 19 billion per year which puts it about halfway between music and film industries
in 2005 deutsche bank referred to scientific publishing as a bizarre triple pay system
in which the state funds most of the research pays the salary of those checking the quality
of the research and then buys most of the published product themselves
beside money grabbing journals scientists are also struggling to share information with one another
which brings us to point number three information sharing the vast majority of experiments that
come back with a negative result never make it into a journal also vast amounts of scientific
knowledge and research is trapped behind paywalls or inside private databases which means that other
scientists in different parts of the world don't know about the test negative outcome the result
of all this is that researchers spent years or even decades exploring dead ends that scientists
elsewhere have already confirmed as fruitless in fact in 2013 a study reported that half of all
clinical trials in the us are never published in a journal meaning billions of dollars are wasted
every year on repeating tests that have been carried out elsewhere but never entered the public
sphere so besides wasting money keeping scientific research under lock and key goes against the whole
ethos of science science advances forward when researchers test each other's idea by pulling them
apart but grinds to a halt when researchers either can't or don't share the results of their research
with anyone which is the current state of the science community of course a couple of movements
have sought out to solve these problems before for example the open access movement which is
basically set up guiding principle through which scientific research is distributed online for free
and it's probably the most successful attempt so far making scientific research more transparent
and open on top of it a number of journals have adopted this model by changing their funding
model to charge researchers to publish their work instead of charging their reader for subscription
fee unfortunately the researchers are having to pay a lot of money to publish their work because
the publishers don't want to lose out on money that readers would have paid to read the article
nature for example is charging eleven thousand three hundred ninety dollars to publish an open
access article right now not very open access so while open access has worked in that individuals
can access more research for less money it hasn't solved the problem yet however the DeSci movement
believes that blockchain can make scientific knowledge more accessible than open access ever
could so now let's take a look at some of the most promising design movements today molecule
is a decentralized funding ecosystem for early stage research and discoveries basically in layman
terms is a marketplace for biotech intellectual property and patents on the platform researchers
can then make their data and patents visible to a global audience receive feedback on their data and
explain the commercial viability of their projects with potential funders they can also present their
research projects to investors and investors can privately fund the next therapeutic breakthrough
in whichever area they're interested in most and because the data stored via molecule is housed on
a blockchain it's immutable so disputes about who owns which pattern or which scientists invented
the miracle cure become much easier to resolve molecules platform is built around intellectual
property non-fungible tokens or ipnfts these nfts essentially function as a proof of ownership over
specific ip or patent stored on a blockchain the ipnfts enable any researcher to share ownership
of the data their ip or their royalty rights with anyone else on molecule and by tokenizing
early stage ip molecule brings liquidity to a formerly illiquid asset class and lowers the risk
for investors by fractionalizing said ip molecule has strong ties with veda down which is the next
DeSci platforms we're going to talk about and together the two platforms created the first ever
ip to nft transfer which is being used to fund novelty longevity therapeutics at the
university of copenhagen vitadao is a drug development dow wanting to acquire support
and finance new therapists and research in the biopharma space the dow hopes that its work will
address the patenting and intellectual property problems plaguing the biopharma sector right now
namely that intellectual property and patents are the core drivers for funding and innovation
in the industry but most patents are in the hands of a few highly centralized entities the vita dao
collective will directly hold legal ip rights to each project and aims to build a portfolio
of assets represented as ipnfts and other tokens this will help to stem the flow of patents going
towards the larger biopharma companies by making them open access instead and by operating as a dao
vita gives members the freedom to choose to invest in the research projects that which they believe
hold the most value so if you bought tokens or nfts from a vita dao for a scientific project
you have a stake in the outcome of the research much like investing in a company now obviously
this gives people with specialist knowledge or a vested interest to invest in projects they're
passionate about and could bring a lot of extra cash to research funding like every other dow
vita has its own governance token called vita the decentralized science platform which takes
its name from the DeSci movement functions as a network and marketplace for peer reviews
to make it simpler it's like ebay for scientists who want to find other scientists to review their
work in exchange for cash kudos or both the site wants reviewers and authors to be able to work
together independent of scientific journals and other intermediaries and it wants reviewers to
be properly recognized and compensated for their contribution as they should so instead of going
through scientific journals to have their work peer-reviewed researchers can find peers to review
their work through an open and transparent platform right now the platform is building
a public data bank of peer reviewers as well as a network for publishers to interact with scientists
willing to carry out reviews so researchers using the platform can earn verifiable credits
for undertaking crucial work which could come in the form of nfts or crypto and each scientist can
store their nfts in a public wallet which can double up as their digital resume article and
study authors will be able to speak to a broad field of peers and have their work reviewed by
well established and internationally recognized members of their field
giving their work more authority but this is not just for established scientists
student scientists can build their digital reputation by taking part in community tasks
allowing them to be rewarded for their contributions to science while they still
complete their studies the platform also benefits from being resistant to political censorship or
interference as peer reviews carried out through the platform are public and therefore transparent
so no mendling so far the platform has received funding from the european union horizon 2020
research and innovation program and is partially funded through a european research council grant
absentia is a dow using web3 tools like blockchain and crypto to help scientists earn rewards and
recognition for sharing their neuroscience data with the world the dao which is mostly made up
of web 3 engineers and neuroscientists focuses on freeing up neuroscience data sets that are styled
in centralized databases like university hospitals or private hard drives while the dao is starting
with neuroscience there are plans to expand the platform to cater to other scientists as well
absentia aims to increase the quantity of scientific data sets available around the world as
well as coordinate collaboration and democratize funding within the scientific research space to
create new open data sets if necessary the new data sets could be stored anonymously which would
protect identities of those people included in the data while allowing other scientists to analyze
the data using artificial intelligence so as you can imagine scientists being able to analyze vast
data sets without worrying about data protection or hiding private patents data would be a huge
win for research scientists all around the world and will lead research progressing much
faster than it is today so by incentivizing scientists to share their data with the world
Opscientia hopes to eventually bring more of the economic value created by the scientific community
back to the people who actually created it while also increasing the rate of scientific progress
where other DeSci platforms focus on the theoretical aspects of science lab dow focuses
on the execution and experimental aspects labdao is an open community-run network of laboratory
services where scientists can either run experiments on behalf of other scientists or pay
to have experiments carried out on their behalf in other words it's an airbnb for laboratory services
labdao hopes that by connecting wet lab researchers who work with liquids and chemicals
and biological materials with dry lab scientists and researchers who work with computations physics
and engineering it can increase the rate of progress and discovery in every scientific field
so how does lab down work in practice let's say that you're a scientist in a biochemistry lab that
needs to perform an experiment but lacks crucial and expensive piece of equipment for example you
could go and buy the equipment yourself which would probably start gathering dust the moment
that you finished the experiment or you could use lab dow to connect with a group of scientists who
that have the equipment that you need enabling you to test your theory without buying the expenses
piece which only gets used once or twice all the data generated from the experiments organized
through lab dial can be managed on chain or using nft data sets which can be licensed later or third
parties can use it so you see nfts is not just about art scientists also benefit because instead
of approaching numerous laboratories or one by one and then discussing their needs with lots of
different people they can see all the labs online with transparent pricing and apply to any or
all of them with a single request going forward lab dow hopes to develop its platform farther
into a digital ecosystem for scientific research that will streamline the experimenting process
and make collaboration easier at a broader scale than ever before so as you can see crypto is not
just about money it's not just decentralized money there's so much more there's so much more
that blockchain technology can do and as you can see it can revolutionize entire industries as it's
doing right now with decentralized science so if science and crypto is something that
you're passionate about stop looking for that moon coin and jump into this field right now
look for these side projects that are operating right now or maybe start your own and help all of
us live a little bit longer live a little bit healthier what are you waiting for