What Is DeSci – Decentralized Science?
The Price of Business Digital Network has a new series of outstanding commentaries from thought leaders. This is one in that series.
Paige Donner, co-founder of FrontierDAO.xyz
DeSci refers to decentralized science. What is decentralized science? In its most succinct description, it is science meets the blockchain otherwise known as decentralized ledger technology (DLT).
Many of you are probably familiar with DeFi or decentralized finance? DeSci is similar in that it is a way to decentralize knowledge, resources and power – but in this case in science, engineering and academia.
FrontierDAO, the decentralized autonomous organization I co-founded a year ago, is one of the first DAOs focused on scientific pursuits, hence one of the pioneers in DeSci. FrontierDAO.xyz’s main mission is to make scientific research, collaboration, innovation and commercialization more accessible to wider groups of people, regardless of where they come from. Our philosophy, echoing that of NASA’s, is that ‘Good ideas come from everywhere.’ And we are using the blockchain and Web3 tools to help facilitate that people with good ideas get access to funding, mentorship, peer support and paths towards collaboration and commercialization while still protecting their IP.
Protecting one’s IP is where the blockchain comes in handy. Unlike regular publishing, or even digital publishing, the blockchain allows for a thinker, innovator, scientist, researcher, engineer or academic to make an immutable record of their Intellectual Property by minting it on-chain. We call this IP on-chain or IP NFTs. NFT stands for non-fungible token. And while NFTs have become famous this past year for their Ape & Punk avatars, we believe that non-fungible tokens actually have far-reaching use cases in science, engineering and academia. How so? Because any digital asset such as a PDF of a research paper, can be ‘minted’ as a NFT on-chain.
One of FrontierDAO’s main projects is called FrontierRegistry. It is like ResearchGate, in that it allows for scientific self-publishing. But it is enhanced with Web3 tooling, meaning blockchain immutability. Why is this relevant and how is it a breakthrough?
Think for a moment on Nikolas Tesla. Much of his work was lost after he passed away destitute in a NY hotel room. If he had had the means to immutably publish his scientific breakthroughs on-chain, not only would they have been accessible to everyone and anyone, it would have given him a date/time stamp and authentication of Intellectual Property ownership. So even if someone tried to plagiarize him, the immutable record of his original IP would be there as an open source, transparent, traceable – and yes, immutable – record.
At FrontierDAO, with our FrontierRegistry publishing platform, we believe this is the missing catalyst that will unleash immeasurable amounts of collaboration. What the printing press was to the Bible, we believe FrontierRegistry will be for scientific, engineering and academic research. Many scientists and engineers do not have a beneficial means by which to collaborate or share their best work. This is because of the current scientific publishing situation where their work is put behind a paywall and they are required to give up copyright upon publication; It’s also due to a faulty peer review system where truly innovative breakthroughs, such as we saw with mRNA vaccines, are delayed – arguably because of competitive business practices that supercede purely scientific, public good intentions.
The best way to find out more about DeSci is to go to our website, FrontierDAO.xyz. There you will find a link to our white paper. The science and engineering topics we focus on are fusion energy, space exploration and climate change technologies.
Our Twitter is @FrontierDAO.
You will find an invite to our Discord Server on our website and also on Linktr.ee/frontierdao
Our FrontierDAO LinkedIN page is HERE. https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/frontierdao/
And my personal LinkedIn page is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigedonner
