---
title: "DeSci DAOs"
url: "https://caper.network/wiki/desci/desci-daos"
updated: 2026-08-27
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# DeSci DAOs

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Topic** | Decentralized Science DAOs |
| **Focus areas** | Longevity · Psychedelics · Genomics · Women's health · Rare disease · Hair loss · Cryopreservation · Brain health · Dermatology · Climate biotech · Long COVID |
| **Examples** | [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao), [PsyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/psydao), [GenomesDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/genomesdao), [AthenaBIO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) |
| **Pages in this wiki** | 24 DeSci organisations and platforms — see the [directory](/wiki/desci/desci-daos) below |
| **Related** | [What is DeSci](/wiki/desci/what-is-desci), [DeSci funding](/wiki/desci/desci-funding), [What is a DAO?](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao) |

**DeSci DAOs** are [decentralized autonomous organizations](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao) that fund, govern, and commercialize scientific research. Where traditional funders (NIH, ERC) concentrate decisions in review committees, a DeSci DAO lets its token holders decide which research gets funded — and, through [IP-NFTs](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts), gives the funding community a stake in the intellectual property it backs. In the [DAO taxonomy](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/types-of-daos) they are a hybrid of grant DAO and investment DAO.

## How a DeSci DAO works

The typical pipeline: researchers submit proposals; an expert working group screens and negotiates terms; the token-holder community votes; and funded projects transfer rights to the DAO as an [IP-NFT](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) — the structure pioneered by [Molecule](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) and proven by [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao), which has deployed [$4.7M across 31 research projects](https://www.vitadao.com/research). Governance runs on the same machinery as any token-voting DAO (see [DAO governance models](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/dao-governance-models)), usually with off-chain signaling plus multisig execution.

## Directory

Every organisation below has a full page in this wiki. Therapeutic and research DAOs first, then the platform layer they run on.

### Therapeutic & research DAOs

- [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) — longevity; the flagship, with [$4.7M across 31 research projects](https://www.vitadao.com/research)
- [AthenaBIO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) — women's health (renamed from AthenaDAO in March 2026)
- [PsyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/psydao) — psychedelics research
- [CryoDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cryodao) — cryopreservation and biostasis
- [HairDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/hairdao) — androgenic alopecia and hair loss
- [Cerebrum DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cerebrum-dao) — brain health and neurodegeneration
- [ValleyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/valleydao) — climate biotech and synthetic biology
- [Curetopia](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/curetopia) — rare disease
- [UltraRare Bio](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/ultrarare-bio) — rare disease
- [Long COVID Labs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/long-covid-labs) — long COVID and post-viral illness
- [DermaLabs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/dermalabs) — dermatology, funded by a consumer skincare line
- [Quantum Biology DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/quantum-biology-dao) — quantum biology
- [GenomesDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/genomesdao) — genomics and personal genomic-data sovereignty
- [AxonDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/axondao) — user-owned health data, wearables, and compute
- [Rejuve.AI](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/rejuve-ai) — AI-driven longevity research on contributed health data
- [PeptAI](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/peptai) — peptide discovery via scientific AI agents
- [Pump.science](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/pump-science) — tokenised longevity experiments (RIF, URO)
- [VitaRNA](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitarna) — a single tokenised gene-therapy IP-NFT, governed as its own space under [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao)

### Platforms, infrastructure & funders

- [Molecule](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) — the [IP-NFT](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) infrastructure most of the above run on
- [Bio Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) — the launchpad that curates, funds, and lists new bioDAOs
- [DeSci Labs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/desci-labs) — research objects and verifiable publishing
- [ResearchHub](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub) — open publishing and peer review paid in ResearchCoin
- [Gitcoin DeSci Grants](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/gitcoin-desci) — [quadratic-funding](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/voting/quadratic-voting-and-funding) rounds for open science
- [LabDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/labdao) — open lab-compute tooling (plex); wound down, its Snapshot space never used

## Scale and trajectory

As of early 2026 roughly [50 active DeSci initiatives](https://partnersindigitalhealth.substack.com/p/decentralized-science-desci-and-the) span funding DAOs, publishing platforms, healthcare data, and IP management — and the 2025 wave of U.S. federal research-funding cuts — a JAMA Internal Medicine study ([Patel, Liu & Jena, _JAMA Intern Med_. 2026;186(1):126–128](https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2025.6088)) tied NIH grant terminations to 383 disrupted clinical trials and more than 74,000 affected participants — has pushed the model from curiosity toward credible alternative infrastructure. The bottleneck has shifted from capital to deal flow: the established DAOs report more funds than fundable, well-structured proposals.

## From grant round to launchpad

The directory splits cleanly in two, and the split is chronological. The first BioDAOs were built one at a time around a single disease area, each running its own raise and its own [IP-NFT](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) pipeline. What followed was a platform layer that industrialised the pattern: [Bio Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) curates new bioDAOs, funds them through token launches, and lists them alongside the incumbents, describing itself as “[DeSci's new financial layer, engineered to commercialize the best science, faster](https://www.bio.xyz/)”. Its own milestones mark the turn — aggregate BioDAO token market cap crossing **$200M in November 2023**, then the **BIO Genesis raise of over $33 million in November 2024**.

The consequence for anyone reading this directory as a map: a new BioDAO in 2026 is far more likely to arrive as a curated token launch on a launchpad than as an independently bootstrapped collective, and its treasury is more likely to be denominated in its own token than in stablecoins. That is a real change in the risk a research programme carries — funding tied to a token price is continuous when the market is up and absent when it is not, which is the trade the older grant-round model did not make.

## How much of the cohort is still voting

A directory maps organisations, not activity, and in DeSci the two have come apart. Twelve of the pages above cite a [Snapshot](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/voting/snapshot) space as the venue where their votes are cast. Queried keylessly against [hub.snapshot.org/graphql](https://hub.snapshot.org/graphql) on **27 August 2026**, every one of the twelve had **no open proposal**, and the median space had gone **297 days** since one last closed.

| Snapshot space | Followers | Proposals | Last vote closed | Days silent |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `qbio.eth` — [Quantum Biology DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/quantum-biology-dao) | 34 | 29 | 19 Aug 2026 — DP-33 | 8 |
| `vote.cryodao.eth` — [CryoDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cryodao) | 115 | 30 | 31 Jul 2026 — CRYO-26 | 27 |
| `psydao.eth` — [PsyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/psydao) | 51 | 29 | 14 Jul 2026 — PDP-29 | 44 |
| `researchhub.eth` — [ResearchHub](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub) | 89 | 29 | 22 Jan 2026 — RIP-24 | 217 |
| `cerebrumdao.eth` — [Cerebrum DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cerebrum-dao) | 91 | 20 | 31 Dec 2025 — CDP-20 | 239 |
| `bioxyz.eth` — [Bio Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) | 1,127 | 32 | 3 Nov 2025 — BIOPSY-31 | 297 |
| `longcovidlabs.eth` — [Long COVID Labs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/long-covid-labs) | 12 | 6 | 7 Oct 2025 — LCL DP-6 | 324 |
| `vote.vitadao.eth` — [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) | 1,554 | 129 | 16 Sep 2025 — VDP-163 | 345 |
| `athenadao.eth` — [AthenaBIO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) | 56 | 18 | 3 Sep 2025 — ADP-013 | 358 |
| `vitarna.eth` — [VitaRNA](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitarna) | 11 | 5 | 19 May 2025 — VRNAP-5 | 465 |
| `genomesdao.eth` — [GenomesDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/genomesdao) | 123 | 21 | 18 Feb 2025 — $GENOME staking APY | 555 |
| `labdao.eth` — [LabDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/labdao) | 20 | 0 | never | — |

Three spaces have closed a vote inside the last ninety days — Quantum Biology DAO, CryoDAO and PsyDAO. Eight of the remaining nine last did so in 2025 or earlier, and [LabDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/labdao) registered a space in December 2021 and never used it at all.

What the directory cannot show is the inversion at the top of it. The two largest spaces by followership are [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) (1,554 followers, 129 proposals) and [Bio Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) (1,127 followers, 32 proposals), and both sit among the quietest at 345 and 297 days. The three spaces still voting have 34, 115 and 51 followers. Across this cohort, audience size and governance activity run in opposite directions — the same relationship [voter apathy](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/voter-apathy) describes inside one DAO, reproduced across a sector.

Silence has several causes here and none of them is automatically dissolution. [Long COVID Labs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/long-covid-labs) stopped voting because its last proposal authorised the treasury multisig to act “without requiring new governance proposals”, so its research programme runs on while the governance record stands still. [AthenaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) stopped because it restructured and renamed itself AthenaBIO in March 2026. [LabDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/labdao) stopped because it wound down — without ever holding the [dissolution vote](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/analysis/dao-wind-downs) that would have dated the ending. And ten of the twelve spaces measured at [proposal throttles and governance rate limits](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/voting/proposal-throttles-and-rate-limits) restrict who may open a proposal at all, so an ordinary token holder in most of this cohort could not break the silence even if they wanted to. Reading a quiet space correctly means reading its case, which is why each row above links to one.

## Funding models

DeSci DAOs mix [several funding mechanisms](/wiki/desci/desci-funding): token-curated grants (the IP-NFT pipeline above), [quadratic-funding rounds](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/gitcoin-desci) for smaller open-science work, retroactive rewards for demonstrated impact, and — the newest layer — token launches that fund a treasury continuously from an open market.

## How Caper approaches this

Caper gives a lab or research community that last option natively: launch a [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) and its treasury fills from a [bonding-curve token sale](/wiki/markets/raising-funds), then the member community directs funds by on-chain vote — **PAYOUT** proposals pay for experiments and equipment, **INVEST** proposals let one research caper back another, and every member who has voted keeps a participation-weighted [exit right](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) the whole time. See [DeSci on Radix](/wiki/desci/desci-and-radix) for why the platform fits research assets.