Cerebrum DAO is a Bio Protocol BioDAO that, in its own words, is "a community-powered network organization to source, fund, and translate research that accelerates solutions to extend healthy brain lifespan" (cerebrumdao.com/about). Its first focus area is Alzheimer's disease — a condition it notes affects some 6.7 million Americans, with cases projected to rise sharply by 2050 (Bio Protocol). Founder Brian Magierski has said the effort was motivated by his daughter's Down syndrome diagnosis, which carries a near-certain lifetime risk of Alzheimer's dementia.
Cerebrum follows the VitaDAO model pioneered across the Bio Protocol pipeline: a freely-tradeable governance token funds early-stage translational research, and the resulting intellectual property is tokenized on-chain as an IP-NFT owned by the community rather than a single lab or fund.
What Cerebrum DAO funds
Cerebrum treats neurodegeneration as tightly coupled to biological aging, and concentrates on the upstream drivers of brain decline: neuro-inflammation, metabolic stress, mitochondrial dysfunction, and vascular changes — with particular attention to blood-brain-barrier dysfunction (cerebrumdao.com). Researchers apply for funding directly, with a stated 6–8 week response window depending on the pipeline (cerebrumdao.com/researchers).
When the DAO backs a project, the IP is tokenized "using the IPNFT protocol, ensuring equitable distribution of license and governance rights," and licensing proceeds are split between the researchers and the DAO (cerebrumdao.com/about). This is the same Molecule-built mechanism used by HairDAO and VitaDAO — funding research before a company exists and giving the community an on-chain claim on its upside.
The IP-NFT portfolio
As of mid-2026 Cerebrum reports roughly $1.3 million committed across seven projects (cerebrumdao.com/projects):
| Project | What it is | Instrument | Allocated |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fission Bio | Protein–protein interaction inhibitor severing the link between chronic inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction | IP-Token | $400,000 |
| Percepta® | Patent-protected brain-health supplement (PTI-00703® cat's claw + MemorTea® oolong extract); tokenized as IP-NFT #129 | IP Portfolio License | $400,000 |
| Project Transfidelity | Enhancing protein-translation fidelity to combat neurodegeneration (Dr Dimitri Scherbakov, University of Zurich) | IP-Token | $254,000 |
| Arctic Therapeutics (AT-001) | Oral NAC-amide (NACA) disrupting amyloid plaques; Phase IIa data in HCCAA patients (Dr Hakon Hakonarson) | Equity | €75,000 |
| SK-Channels | Small-molecule modulator for tremors and ataxia | IP License | $60,000 |
| Neuron-Gale | Galectin-3 inhibitors for neuro-inflammation (Dr Maryna Polyakova) | — | $50,000 |
| Xponetiq | Mobile app for brain-healthy habits | Product | $50,000 |
Cerebrum describes the Percepta deal as "a world's first tokenization of a robust patent portfolio and a world's first tokenized crowdsale for a clinical evidence study" (cerebrumdao.com) — an illustration of how a BioDAO can pool retail capital behind a specific clinical study rather than a whole company.
NEURON token & governance
Cerebrum raised its treasury through a Dutch auction of the NEURON token on the Bio Protocol launchpad, with a deadline of 3pm CET on 30 April 2024; every participant paid the same clearing price and lower bidders were refunded, with US persons excluded and Persona KYC required (Bio Protocol). NEURON is a freely-transferable ERC-20 on Ethereum (0xab81…4a6b).
Holding NEURON confers governance rights over which research the DAO funds, plus exclusive access to the DAO's IP Tokens, discounted access to future brain-health products, and early access to any therapeutics it brings to market (cerebrumdao.com/neuron-token). Voting is token-weighted but off-chain, and the DAO's own site says where: every governance link on cerebrumdao.com points at the Snapshot space cerebrumdao.eth, where a ballot is a signed message rather than a transaction. Weight is not raw balance either: the space runs two strategies, a with-delegation wrapper over erc20-balance-of so delegated NEURON counts for the delegate, and a sablier-v2 strategy on the reserved recipient of a stream, so NEURON still vesting counts for the person it is vesting to. The distinction between signing and transacting is the subject of on-chain versus off-chain governance.
The governance record
The cerebrumdao.eth space has carried 20 proposals against a quorum of 3,870,000,000 NEURON. Read on 18 August 2026, the five most recent all passed unanimously and all cleared quorum comfortably: CDP-20, funding dark-microglia and lipidomics work, closed on 31 December 2025 with 7,360,852,054 NEURON For, zero Against and zero Abstain from twelve voting addresses; CDP-19 drew 6,879,399,526 from sixteen, CDP-18 6,213,626,585 from thirteen, CDP-17 9,471,106,026 from twelve and CDP-16 6,639,917,945 from sixteen. Not one of the five recorded a single vote against.
CDP-20 is also the most recent proposal of any kind: it was still the newest row in the cerebrumdao.eth space when the record was queried on 2 September 2026, so the gap runs from its close on 31 December 2025. It is dated from that close rather than published as an elapsed-day figure, which would be wrong the day after it was written. Proposal creation is restricted to an author allowlist of three addresses, so a NEURON holder can cast a ballot but cannot open one – the pattern this wiki measures across the whole BioDAO cohort under proposal throttles and rate limits, where ten of twelve DeSci spaces gate proposing the same way. Twelve to sixteen voters and no dissent across two years is a small electorate ratifying a pipeline it did not assemble, which is the shape voter apathy describes and quorum design cannot fix on its own.
How Caper approaches this
Cerebrum shows both the promise and the tension in token-governed research funding. The promise is real: a community, not a single fund, decides which neuroscience gets backed, and owns the resulting IP-NFTs. The tension is that NEURON is a freely-tradeable token — so control over which science gets funded has a spot price. A large enough buyer can accumulate NEURON and tilt the funding pipeline, and the voice a long-time contributor earned is worth exactly the same as the same balance bought yesterday.
Caper keeps token-weighted stake but adds a factor that cannot be bought off another holder. Every ranked ballot mints one soulbound proof-of-vote token, and every buy and every sell mints 0.01 more per XRD of gross value — non-transferable and fractional (DIVISIBILITY_MAXIMUM, and mintable/depositable only by the DAO component so it can never move between holders; contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs). A member's voting weight is (t·v)/(V·T) — held governance tokens t multiplied by their earned vote record v, over supply — and the treasury exit share is computed by the very same formula. So a big NEURON-style bag still counts (t is a multiplier, not ignored), but it cannot by itself capture the pipeline: the decisive part of governance weight is a record you accumulate by trading and voting yourself, and once minted it can never be sold on.