---
title: "Pump.science (RIF, URO)"
url: "https://caper.network/wiki/desci/ecosystem/pump-science"
updated: 2026-09-01
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Pump.science (RIF, URO)

| Name | Pump.science (RIF, URO) |
| --- | --- |
| Type | Decentralized-science (DeSci) funding platform — a tokenized-experiment launchpad, not a token-voting DAO |
| Focus | Financing longevity / healthspan research by turning individual compounds into openly tradeable tokens whose market attention pays for real lab experiments |
| Chain | Solana |
| Tokens | $RIF (Rifampicin) and $URO (Urolithin A) — one token per compound under study |
| Launched | November 2024 (a spin-off of the pump.fun memecoin launchpad) |
| Backers | Founded by Paul Kohlhaas, founder/CEO of [Molecule](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) / [BIO Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) |
| Lab partners | Ora Biomedical (WormBot, _C. elegans_) and Tracked Biotechnologies (FlyBox, fruit flies) |

## Overview

**Pump.science** is a Solana-based protocol that finances [decentralized-science](/wiki/desci/what-is-desci) research into longevity compounds by _gamifying_ the funding step. It is a spin-off of the memecoin launchpad [pump.fun](https://pump.fun): instead of launching a joke coin, a researcher launches a token that stands for a specific real-world compound, and the trading demand for that token pays for the compound to actually be tested in a lab ([Unchained](https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-science-jumps-54-led-by-vitadao-as-well-as-pump-sciences-rif-and-uro/)). It launched in November 2024 and its first two experiments, **$RIF** and **$URO**, briefly became two of the most-watched tokens in crypto, drawing wide attention to [DeSci](/wiki/desci/desci-daos) as a category.

Pump.science matters to a DAO reference because it is the sharpest live example of a funding model the rest of the field treats cautiously: **market speculation as the grant committee**. Where a research DAO like [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) deliberates over which projects to fund, Pump.science lets an open market decide by buying — and it wires that market directly to a bench experiment.

## How a compound becomes a tradeable experiment

The pipeline is deliberately simple. A compound is issued as a token on pump.fun's [bonding curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve). According to founder Paul Kohlhaas, once a compound's token crosses a **$10,000 market cap**, "the experiment data is deployed live on Pump Science" — the trading interest has cleared the (very low) bar to fund a real trial, and results then stream back against the token ([Unchained](https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-science-jumps-54-led-by-vitadao-as-well-as-pump-sciences-rif-and-uro/)). Because a single automated experiment costs on the order of **$300**, even a modest speculative market can bankroll a full run.

The result is a feedback loop unlike anything in traditional grant funding: attention becomes capital, capital becomes an experiment, and the experiment's data feeds back to the people holding the token. Its critics note the obvious hazard — the same loop rewards hype over rigor, and a compound's token price is not evidence about the compound.

## RIF and URO: the first two experiments

**$RIF** represents [rifampicin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifampicin), an antibiotic being screened for whether it slows aging in model organisms; **$URO** represents [urolithin A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A), a pomegranate-derived compound studied for cellular "clean-up" (mitophagy). Both launched in November 2024 and spiked violently — on 18 November 2024, RIF's token reached roughly a $227M market cap and URO around $112M, each up tens of thousands of percent over the prior week ([Unchained](https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-science-jumps-54-led-by-vitadao-as-well-as-pump-sciences-rif-and-uro/)).

Those valuations then fell sharply from their peaks, and the team said it would **focus on RIF and URO** — running mouse experiments before introducing any new compound tokens, and pausing further launches until security audits of the application and smart contracts were complete ([ChainCatcher](https://www.chaincatcher.com/en/article/2154094)). The episode is now a standard case study in how a gamified funding mechanism can pull enormous capital and attention into obscure geroscience overnight — and how quickly that attention leaves.

## The lab layer: WormBot and FlyBox

What separates Pump.science from a pure memecoin is that the experiments are real and outsourced to specialist labs. Compounds are screened in worms (_C. elegans_) at **Ora Biomedical** on its **WormBot**, and in fruit flies at **Tracked Biotechnologies** on its **FlyBox** ([Unchained](https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-science-jumps-54-led-by-vitadao-as-well-as-pump-sciences-rif-and-uro/)). Ora Biomedical describes the WormBot as "a high-throughput robotics platform combined with neural net AI to perform high-throughput health and survival analysis in worms," feeding a broader effort to screen compounds for lifespan extension at scale ([Ora Biomedical](https://orabiomedical.com/science/)).

This layer is why holders receive something other than price action: standardized survival-curve data on the compound their token names. It is also the honest limit of the model — worm and fly lifespan screens are early, exploratory signals, several translational steps removed from a human longevity claim.

## Tokens, IP rights, and the BIO connection

Pump.science's tokens are pitched as more than speculation: they "represent real-world [intellectual property](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) governance rights to the underlying compounds' data and to the experiments being traded" ([Unchained](https://unchainedcrypto.com/decentralized-science-jumps-54-led-by-vitadao-as-well-as-pump-sciences-rif-and-uro/)). That threads the platform into the wider [Molecule](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) / [BIO Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) ecosystem, since founder Paul Kohlhaas leads both. On 25 December 2024, BIO Protocol announced it would airdrop **50 million BIO** tokens proportionally to existing RIF and URO holders, pending governance approval to bridge BIO to Solana ([Bitget News](https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604452292)).

So the token a speculator buys nominally carries a claim on a research asset — a design that borrows the [IP-NFT](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) logic Molecule pioneered for [VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao), but delivers it through a freely tradeable, meme-launchpad token rather than a deliberative DAO treasury.

## Is Pump.science a DAO?

Not in the token-voting sense, and this reference says so plainly — much as it does for [ResearchHub](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/researchhub). Pump.science is a **funding platform and market**, not a governed organization: there is no proposal-and-vote treasury steering the protocol, and the decisive mechanism is a price crossing a threshold, not a member vote. Its tokens confer nominal IP-governance rights over specific experiments, but "which compound gets funded" is decided by open-market buying, not by governance.

It earns a place in the DAO-industry directory precisely as the boundary case: the point where [DeSci funding](/wiki/desci/desci-funding) stops looking like a DAO and starts looking like a prediction-and-speculation market wired to a lab bench. That makes it the most useful contrast in the [BioDAO](/wiki/desci/desci-daos) set for thinking about who should actually control community-funded research.

## Where RIF and URO stand now

Both tokens still trade, and the distance they have fallen is the clearest measure of what the model actually funded. Read from [Dexscreener's public API](https://api.dexscreener.com/latest/dex/search?q=Rifampicin) on **13 August 2026**, against the November 2024 peaks reported at the time:

| Token | Peak market cap (18 Nov 2024) | Fully diluted value (13 Aug 2026) | Change | 24h volume |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [$RIF](https://dexscreener.com/solana/a8inixg97ajk5kcxtdi5oodg2drkeebpnw2ghchpe4j1) (rifampicin) | ~$227,000,000 | ~$168,000 | -99.93% | ~$174 |
| [$URO](https://dexscreener.com/solana/3hsdbmfsich3ycsxofjgx4tvpxecsue9nrmgvaoyveqt) (urolithin A) | ~$112,000,000 | ~$151,000 | -99.87% | ~$182 |

The volume column is the one to read twice. The Raydium pair for $RIF recorded **15 buys and 14 sells** in the twenty-four hours to 13 August 2026, on roughly $174 of turnover across a pool holding about $123,000 of liquidity. Both tokens are, in market terms, dormant - they have a price because liquidity is still parked against them, not because anyone is trading the science.

That is the structural risk of speculation-as-grant-committee stated as a number rather than a worry. The funding event is instantaneous and the research is not: a compound's token clears its threshold, the experiment is commissioned, and the market that commissioned it has moved on long before survival curves come back. A [treasury](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-treasury-management) that raised into the spike keeps the capital; a mechanism that funds each experiment out of live trading demand does not get a second round from an audience that left. Nothing here says the compounds were the wrong ones, and the [lab layer](https://orabiomedical.com/science/) is unaffected by a token's price - the point is narrower: **attention was the funding, and attention has a shorter half-life than a research programme**.

The platform itself is still up. [pump.science](https://pump.science) answers behind a Vercel bot checkpoint (HTTP 429 to an automated request, not an outage), so this page's status reflects the on-chain reading rather than a claim about the site.

## How Caper approaches this

Pump.science and [Caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) sit at opposite poles of one question: how much of a community-funded effort's steering should be _for sale_. Pump.science makes almost all of it tradeable — a compound gets funded when its freely transferable token clears a market-cap bar, so buying pressure is the allocation mechanism. Caper puts the decisive slice beyond resale: taking part in a caper mints a _soulbound, non-transferable_ proof-of-vote token — one per ranked ballot cast, and 0.01 per XRD of gross value on each leg of a trade (fractional, and locked to its holder — its deposit authority is the component itself, with updates permanently denied, per `contracts/core/src/caper_dao.rs`). A member's on-chain weight is `compute_vote_weight = (t·v)/(V·T)` in `contracts/common/src/lib.rs` — their token holdings _times_ their earned votes, over the totals — and that same weight sets each member's [exit](/wiki/foundations/leaving-a-caper) redemption before the vote tokens are burned.

The honest read is that each optimizes for something real. Pump.science maximizes liquid, permissionless attention — its whole thesis is that an open market can fund obscure science faster than any committee. Caper's earned, un-sellable weight is built for the opposite case: when you specifically do not want who-decides to be purchasable, and you want the people steering to be the ones who can't simply cash out of the consequences.