DappCon 2023: Why Desci - Vincent Weisser

Transcript

so excited to talk to you about uh D today and kind of give a broad level overview for what the centralized science is uh why we need dii and how it works um I think I recognize of course many familiar phas also in the audience so I'm curious by show of hands like who of you is already quite familiar with decentralized science and knows of organizations like V okay so almost everyone um so I'll try to jump into uh some depth so I I'll start with kind of like um why dii and why we need dii what it also sets out to um solve and then what it looks like in

practice um how it works in practice and kind of some hopes for the future so I always like to start off with this graph of kind of um science as the engine of human progress and I think it's worth emphasizing that I think um our model modern world and like well-being is largely due to Scientific progress and of course also more broadly technological um engineering uh progress um from the Agricultural Revolution to kind of like the Industrial Revolution and of course really just like different breakthroughs in the scientific method um and really broadly applying it and translating science into actual

inventions that benefit all of us but I think it's also um very broken and I think um there's a whole field called meta science which actually is like the science of science which is quite interesting trying to use the scientific process to understand what's broken about science um and there's a lot of lessons there but it's a theoretical so they don't apply the lessons it's more like scientists trying to ramble about how science is broken not really able to do to change anything about it because they are not the funding bodies they are not the coordination mechanisms they're just a set of academics trying to reflect on how Academia is broken um and I think I view decentralized science almost as an applied um meta science

what means we can use the insights that this field has about how scientific funding replication competition communication and a bunch of other Central pillars of science are broken and how could we could devise Solutions and I think importantly like thisa is quite new so I think we're uh just getting started to experiment with some potential Solutions I think ideally um the the really big Solutions I think are still ahead of us and uh I would invite all of you to participate in finding the solutions and helping to come up with these experiments um and then learning and do iterated cycles of improvement to ultimately make science better um so to

just jump into some of the problems on on funding they are also widely known like funding is is very uh insanely centralized so there's big funding bodies in the US like the NIH and they are one of the major funders of of science there are a few small um philanthropic arms and of course venture capital for example for later stages but uh at the end like especially for early stage science it's usually top down bureaucratic government entities funding um early um science I think it's more functional for example for startups where it's like a free market VC World um so funding is highly competitive and very also like distributed for example

towards um repeatedly the same people and and old people so there's like an interesting statistic that less than 2% of the funding goes to under 45 year olds which really means that like a lot of the funding goes to uh usually like quite old professors and people with tenure um and then of course also widely known um sence has a huge replication problem for example there was like an Alzheimer's um uh study recently that got debunked and it turned out that people faked signs on which tens of billions of Alzheimer research have been built on basically you can throw all this taxpayers money into the bin because none of this research will work because someone in the chain uh created fake signs that

didn't replicate which means it couldn't be reproduced it it didn't uh work at the end which was the um kind of like Alzheimer hypothesis um and then on competition it's very hyper competitive and not even a good way I for example think like maybe the free enterprise VC world is also hyper competitive but maybe in a more functional way I think in science it's a very Sero sum like uh underpaid kind of competition um with perverse incentives like uh publish or Parish like just getting as many citations as possible like almost like playing a game that you can't win because you're optimizing for the wrong thing and connected to that I think uh all these Publications then are pay

walled and no one even can read them uh so like really on the communication side science is very inaccessible which is very weird if you consider that all of you fund science through your Texas uh but you can't even read the science you funded um so I think that's also something crypto can solve and then also science could um just be forgotten in in in a sense where I think things for example like decentralized storage um promise permanently stored signs like ideally every scientific artifact every scientific data point should be backed up on as many computers as possible so we don't lose it a lot of some of the most important research in the world just gets lost like maybe you still have

the paper but you have no clue how they actually did the research you couldn't replicate it so um I think permanent storage of uh scientific data and research is also quite important um so as I mentioned a lot of the problems stem from centralizing authorities I think decentralization offers Solutions I think there's also a lot of problems Beyond just like the centralization decentralization axis U but I think actually there are interesting ones that come from from that and then I think um to break it down maybe in the why what and how kind of like the why of this I would say is to build an uh open science movement apply the lessons for meta science make

science more collaborative and Democratic like ultimately less than 0.01% of the world is involved in science if you think about it uh directly like there's very few scientists compared to humans in the world and very um many people are not able to get involved in science like there's huge barrier to entry in terms of like you need a PhD it's even almost like um gate capped like a club that you can only get in if you have a PhD or if you have a lot of money andil iire philanthropist or something like most regular people are not involved in science they can't access it they can't read it they can't find fund it they can't participate in it um and I think that is something which decentralized science can solve so the what I view is

almost like a global open alternative to the current scientific system that anyone in the world can participate in um and then how really by enabling scientists to raise funding from everyone in the world run experiments share data distribute insights and for everyone in the world to participate actively in the scientific process through scientific communities that I'll touch later on um so what if science is decentralized and I think what's interesting is in the ethos of decentralization it shares a lot of things I think with um potential solutions for science mainly ether of decentralization Open Source transparency um really an ethos of enabling Global access and collaboration

no matter your language or your education um censorship resistance that Fosters open culture which I think is also very key to science like literally in many countries I won't name them but you you can't uh publish research that is critical to the regime or to the to the country like Co is a great example like if you look at some big places that go unnamed uh you couldn't publish Co research uh that would challenge specific assumptions and as mentioned before like permanent storage of scientific data I think is also quite critical so I just um on a side by side comparison you can also find it on ethereum.org Dei U I'm kind kind of trying to compare TR side to D um and of course there's

the axis of of funding collaboration labs and infrastructure publishing peerreview and IP and in the decentralized system um all of that is better and solved of course um and I'm go I'll go into some depth of some examples on how this looks like in practice so there are some vertical that I want to focus on the first one is funding um where Stefan already touched on IP nfts and tokens which is the very first almost prototype experiment I think there's still a lot to um refine and proof there to make it a perfect funding mechanism but I think it already shows the way uh there's of course a lot of public goods funding mechanisms some of which we're also involved with um

and uh then on the coordination layers with biotech dos kind of like scientific collectives like vadal that really bring together a large group of people to coordinate which I think really helps because a lot of people have the desire maybe to fund longevity research or climate research but they don't have the time to figure out what to fund um or maybe they just want have the desire to go to a community to learn about science to discuss science and that's really I think the point of these native online communities of scientific Dows uh then there's a whole vertical of publishing and reproducibility and identity of reputation and also a bunch of other verticals a few examples which I will pick um with molecu we focused on U

making IP transactable specifically and enabling sustainable funding Loops for research organizations where they can fund research and license the research make money with the research to fund more research um there's a lot of challenges in IP um because I don't have too much time I I I'll skip a bit but on into some of the solutions um the goal is really to make um intellectual property uh digital native and kind of fix some of the problems by really making it uh more discoverable uh making it more liquid and enabling people to fund research directly um and and doing so by bringing

it on chain which also enables then uh scientific Dows like VI da to fund research natively through a digital way um this is what like the molecule Marketplace looks like um I'll skip a bit ahead because Stefan touched on some of the architecture so one of the newer things we did which this um visualizes well is really which is at the heart on the more like crypto side of things is um the IP nft which is basically a oneof one it's like one research project and what you can do is tokenize it and split it into infinitely many parts and that basically turns an IP nft into many IP tokens it's fundamentally still the same thing but like uh we as the whole

audience could collectively through IP tokens own one ipft um of course you can also govern it through a biod for example um so the purpose is really to get individual stakeholders into research projects you could imagine that the researcher has some IP tokens the community has some IP tokens and the individuals that are really excited about a specific research project could also uh fund or earn tokens for their work and um yeah maybe to just go yeah um and we've basically done this with VA fast which is the first um IP token and then I want to touch on why bods in this uh picture are also quite important I

think at the heart it's really enabling kind of like a internet native community of um patient patients and enthusiasts like an example of V da um of course everyone is a patient of age related diseases like Alzheimer and cancer at some point um hopefully not but uh I think thus far like everything points to uh everyone being a patient of age related diseases and and then really the goal is of course not everyone in the world cares for example about age related diseases so the goal is really to bring together also enthusiasts and researchers in a online native community no matter the Border or country and it's very cool to see like that like it's actually not just like the um speak but

actually you like in V I've met people like literally doing longevity research in like turkey Kazakhstan across the US America Asia and I think that's quite hard in a traditional system where it's often times quite local it's like people in Boston at Harvard doing research with other people at Harvard um it's not very Global and it's also very physical it's not digital native and do also creates high barrier to entry because most people in the world don't sit in har they is it somewhere in the world um so it's really truly internet first uh research organizations that are truly open and networked there's a really great book on this uh by Michael neelsen called networked science kind of

painting the picture why this is superior I think with examples like Wikipedia even we we see great examples of like open online uh Native digital organizations being uh quite Superior to physical closed uh organizations so V I've touched on it um I'll jump into some of the projects and examples what V DA has been doing on the publishing uh on the funding side publishing side and even longevity Network State side and a bunch of other experiments so this is an overview of uh how the current um research flow works for V so basically researcher applies um if they qualify like they specific

specific basically considerations um then there's a due diligence by uh by an evaluation team of experienced people um in the Dow that basically take a look and due diligence the research uh the team presents the community with the community basically then has also the evaluations from the experts so it's also a nice way for scientific communication because the whole Community um like a lot of them might not be phds but they can learn about why the research could be interesting and here also from an independent evaluator what the um pros and cons are in some of the valuations and then with this expert review taken

in the uh the experts make a recommendation to the community but at the end the community decides um and the community of course is composed of researchers uh but also just of Enthusiast and people curious to understand which research is most promising and then the end if at least 51% vote Yes the research is funded and advanced um so V funded over 5 million of of research to date I think roughly 19 projects if I'm not mistaken um and some of them are making amazing progress and you can see all of them on on the.com um what I think is interesting to highlight and less often talked about is now also experiments on all the other

verticals that I mentioned so for example V uh created longev vist which is a journal but quite nicely it um also summarizes the papers it they're uh reviewed and selected by some of the leading researchers in the world to be honest which is was pretty amazing to see and all of them are open and accessible and actually they're also onchain stored through collaboration with d labs and peer reviewed through longevity review which is kind of like a redhead online form for peer review where actually peer review happens L uh peer reviewers are compensated both of which is not the case in the traditional peerreview system like you're like it doesn't it's not happening openingly so

sometimes scientists competing with each other are reviewing each other um and in a very intransparent way and not even compensated um so I think that's an exciting uh experiment on on publishing by V and they already have the second edition and to be honest like I've it's it's one of the first uh ways for me now to keep in touch with some of the leading research coming up up because they really select also some of for some of the most promising research and vote on it on chain through Snapchat then V da um we we experiment with network states which of course through Balaji and others got popular and actually really closely teamed up with v league and many others to a a two months long pop-up City in Montenegro

they kind of like want to give us like a long-term uh place now and and the idea is really to bring together longevity uh enthusiasts and communities in physical locations we literally discussed with like monten government to uh like declare aging a disease bring in like um kind of like research labs and and support from the government to create a longevity H there so it's really exciting to see there's actually coming up early next year in prospera which is in Honduras uh one of the first kind of Charter City Network States there's a two months long longevity experiment and City and a lot of actually the leading Network States uh some of which have already have physical

places secured are Keen to collaborate with v da on the healthcare system so basically they want to consult V da buil like a longevity first little popup City and and really also tap into all the community members to uh visit their City access like Cutting Edge uh research and in the Prosper examp it's interesting they actually uh have a medical free own so they actually have um for example longevity clinics that can do Gene therapies that you can't do in the US or Europe which is of course also more risky so uh don't try at home um and then there's a few other experiments which I think are interesting to highlight uh which kind of naturally came out of of vad and I was also quite

involved in like one was a quadratic donation round which you can see on the right with vad where for example V Le put in half a man uh and a bunch of other community members actually a shout out also to Stefan for from uh GES who also put in uh money with v um and and that funded a lot of different experiments from literally open research to uh open scientific Platforms in in longevity to for example also the student Fellowship that we started which funded 55 students to a longevity prize which awarded the first prizes to different people solving different problems and Longevity and also fed things like a V haon which is like an

online hackathon for people to hack a weekend on solving important problems in longevity um okay I touched on this I want to end on a bit of a future outlook so we're just getting started kind of like I would say these are really only existed since 20 21 so it's like barely two years old I of course there was some similar movements before like blockchain for science I think in in 2018 a bit but that really died down I think molecu is the only Survivor of that era like because it already started in 2018 a bit um so I want to touch on some of the future of of dii I think one interesting one is really that I I think the future is quickly moving to digital native AI driven Clos Loop R&D and I'll uh

bottleneck it uh unpack it that what I mean by it it's basically uh you know of course CH gbt and other things and they increasingly will be able to uh come up with scientific experiments potentially even execute them through cloud Labs evaluate the results and or for example in V's case to find deal flow to evaluate deal flow to make progress on research and I think actually like a autonomous decentralized system is perfect as a playground in that while not completely disenfranchising humans so you can still see maybe the AI making a proposal to the D maybe uh even some AIS already vote on the proposal or execute the research and I think that will be very interesting and um with organizations like labow we're starting

to do some Al AI driven drug Discovery with um be down natively actually through onchain native um mechanisms then really in broadly kind of D upgrading the scientific method and stack that I touched on before like really continuously uh looking at problems devising solutions figuring out if it actually solve the problem and coming up with better experiments so I think of course not just our effort but every effort in D I think is trying to improve a specific problem um I think the increasingly will create like a truly Global autonomous and decentralized R&D world where everyone in the world can contribute um which touches on this enabling every human to

be a scientist and participate in science um enabling patient and researcher communities to govern cures and access to medications like uh diabetic um governing diabetic medicine and thus also the pricing and other aspects then making kind of like science as easy as using an a website like ideally one can loog in and uh learn about science give feedback about specific research and I think that's really the future we're trying to build then making sure that also scientists are fairly paid and incentivized for the work also in asymmetric ways like if someone in a dow like helps to come up with a cure for like a big disease uh in a free time

like they should get rewarded for it and the current scientific system like a lot of even leading scientists and and Senior scientists get sometimes less than like an intern in a blockchain setup so I think that is also something that needs to be solved um like raising of course the scientist salary not decreasing the interns um and then really making sure that science decouples from institutions so creating like a alternative to um existing scientific institutions that are often gate capped and um yeah very hard to access and then as a last call to action uh feel free to check out some of the pages or like projects that I mentioned and just join a community it's as easy

as just going into the Discord checking out the website and seeing if there's something that you're excited about um for free also of course if you're a scientist apply to get funded there's also things like the fellowships and other things where you can also just get a funding for little hackathon or or some small project and then make sure to fund a DA of your interest or research project um or get rewarded for referring research project so thank you very much and Join the daa Revolution and you can scan this QR code which basically has link tree of of every uh resource I mentioned okay thank you Vincent that was uh very insightful