Pain Points:
The lagging infrastructure around IP maintenance, accessibility, ownership, and revenue distribution for research or knowledge has always been a pain point, especially in academia.
In the complex domain of knowledge sharing and discovery, balancing security, transparency, reward mechanisms, and accessibility remains a persistent challenge. Traditional models often rely on centralized verification systems, which can limit inclusivity and broad participation. Moreover, existing systems may fail to adequately reward or recognize knowledge contributions, potentially impeding the development of a comprehensive collective knowledge base.
Problems Addressed:
The central idea of DeSci is that everyone should have equal access to all levels of science and knowledge, and the process of scientific research should be open and transparent to all. Hence, DeSci aims to create an ecosystem where knowledge contributors are incentivized to share their research, and anyone can permissionlessly access and even iterate on these contents.
This creates a fundamentally different scientific research system, where:
The initial intention of DeSci is to establish an ecosystem for scientists or scholars to share academic research and gain ownership of their research IP. For other users, their participation mostly revolves around easier access to these academic studies. Essentially, the ivory tower of academia remains unbroken, and the core players in this ecosystem are still the top scholars.
It’s likely that apart from pulling all-nighters to finish papers in college, the need rarely arises after graduation. From a certain perspective, we must acknowledge that the ability to contribute valuable academic IP is held by only a small group of people.
However, when examining the field and the narrative, this is precisely the issue with DeSci—it is too pure and noble, making it difficult to realize the true value web3 can bring, namely community effects and an efficient economic system. Focusing closely, the foundation of DeSci is not an open knowledge contribution platform but should instead be a vibrant ecosystem based on an efficient token system and strong community effects. This economy relies on broad user participation, and if users cannot genuinely engage with the system or lack sufficient motivation to hold and trade tokens, the token price, liquidity, and economic system will be unsustainable.
Therefore, having only scientists as core players obviously doesn’t make sense and cannot establish a sustainable mechanism.
DeSci should not merely be the domain of scientists but should instead lower the barrier for ordinary people to engage with science. Therefore, it’s better to avoid overusing the term “science” and instead emphasize “knowledge.” Science inherently sets a threshold for DeSci, whereas knowledge can encompass data in any form or field.
Contributing knowledge from one's professional field or areas of interest is inherently appealing and can easily generate viral effects. Thus, broadening the definition from “science” to “knowledge” allows for greater community participation and enables web3 to realize its full potential.
I believe DeSci should adopt a pyramid structure, classifying the participants and contributors across the entire knowledge-sharing pipeline into different tiers, each indispensable. Scholars, as participants at the apex of the pyramid, contribute the core value of DeSci itself while creating project highlights. For instance, in the context of new drug development, if DeSci can participate in or facilitate the launch of a drug, the attention it brings to the field and the project would be immeasurable. Community users, as participants at the base of the pyramid, have their own foundational mechanisms to engage with. They maintain the efficient operation of the entire ecosystem and economic system.
BIO Protocol is a decentralized scientific financial infrastructure aimed at promoting biotechnology innovation through community collaboration. It provides tools for funding, developing, and governing scientific intellectual property (IP) to accelerate the commercialization of biotechnology research for a global community, including patients, scientists, and biotechnology professionals.
Core Functions and Mechanisms: Supporting Decentralized Biotechnology Organizations - BioDAOs
1) Technical Details
The technical stack and architecture of BIO Protocol are designed to support the tokenization and on-chain governance of biotechnology IP.
2) Operational Model Analysis
The parent platform BIO Protocol provides BioDAOs with:
Curation Process
Bio/Acc rewards are distributed in the form of BIO tokens, including the following scenarios:
Rewards can also directly flow to users of BioDAO products:
The potential of DeSci for the industry is far beyond just conducting research or drug discovery. As previously discussed, if DeSci's scope is confined solely to science, the value and scalability of this field would be significantly limited. However, incorporating the concept of co-building knowledge—where "knowledge" can encompass data of any domain, dimension, or size—turns the process of building DeSci into the creation of a vast, dynamic database.
How to Combine DeSci + AI?
Furthermore, DeSci should focus on fragmenting knowledge. Rather than positioning DeSci as a decentralized research platform, it should be viewed as a system where everyone has the opportunity to contribute to knowledge co-building. This approach inherently complements the community attributes of web3. In DeSci’s ecosystem, different domains of data organization would naturally emerge. For instance, Gym DAO could gather people interested in fitness or possessing relevant knowledge, Longevity DAO could bring together individuals passionate about biomedical sciences, or even bounty-based DAOs could form.
Consider a navigation model that requires data on traffic flows and terrain from different streets in a specific region. These are not systematic datasets but can be collected by individual contributors. These participants might be experts or enthusiasts in the respective fields. With DeSci’s support, the knowledge contributed by anyone can continuously be enriched by other contributors, and DeSci allows each participant’s data to generate value and earn ongoing revenue sharing.
The most compelling aspect here is that while anyone’s knowledge and data are inherently limited, these pieces of data undeniably hold value, to varying extents. Any research endeavor begins with the accumulation of foundational knowledge. By leveraging community co-building to aggregate fragmented data into large-scale datasets, a synergistic effect of 1 + 1 > 2 can emerge.
To truly establish this web3-based knowledge repository, the primary task is building communities and expanding the user base to create viral growth—even onboarding researchers at the initial stage can take a backseat. This approach diverges from most traditional DeSci strategies but feels more crypto-native. Retail participants’ motivation to join and hold tokens lies in staking to contribute data to data organizations, earning incentives or staking returns. The more valuable their data, the more frequently it will be referenced or associated, leading to greater external income and native rewards for the corresponding data organization. Thus, this mechanism not only incentivizes user participation but also enhances data quality.
In such a large system, there will inevitably be users who contribute little or submit low-quality data. However, the generation of such garbage data does not hinder the system’s operation. These users are still allowed to provide data, staking for a chance to earn the lowest tier of community rewards.
Author: Ian@Foresight Ventures
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