--- title: "What is Decentralized Science (DeSci)" url: "https://caper.network/wiki/desci/what-is-desci" updated: 2026-08-25 license: CC-BY-4.0 license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # What is Decentralized Science (DeSci) | | | | --- | --- | | **Topic** | Decentralized Science (DeSci) | | **What it is** | Funding, publishing & governing research on public blockchains via DAOs and token incentives | | **Core primitives** | [IP-NFTs](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts), [DeSci DAOs](/wiki/desci/desci-daos), [novel funding](/wiki/desci/desci-funding), [open publishing & review](/wiki/desci/decentralized-publishing) | | **Reference** | [ethereum.org/desci](https://ethereum.org/en/desci/) | ## Overview **Decentralized Science (DeSci)** is a movement to reform how science is funded, published, and governed using public blockchains, [DAOs](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao), and token incentives. As the [Ethereum Foundation's DeSci hub](https://ethereum.org/en/desci/) frames it, the goal is to build public infrastructure for “funding, creating, reviewing, crediting, storing, and disseminating scientific knowledge” — addressing systemic failures of the traditional research system. ### The problems DeSci targets - **Funding bottleneck** — grant capital is scarce, slow, and gate-kept; low single-digit acceptance rates push researchers to optimize for grant committees rather than discovery. - **Closed-access publishing** — publicly-funded results sit behind paywalls, and peer review is opaque and unpaid. - **IP lock-up** — promising early research stalls in university tech-transfer offices, unable to attract capital or reach the public. - **Misaligned incentives** — the [reproducibility crisis](/wiki/desci/reproducibility-crisis) and negative results are undervalued because they don't advance careers. ### Core primitives - **[IP-NFTs & IP Tokens](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts)** — tokenize the legal rights to research so a community can own and fund it. - **[DeSci DAOs](/wiki/desci/desci-daos)** — token holders collectively decide which research to fund and how to commercialize the results. - **[Novel funding](/wiki/desci/desci-funding)** — [quadratic funding](https://wtfisqf.com/), retroactive public-goods funding, and token-curated grants replace the single grant committee. - **[Decentralized publishing & peer review](/wiki/desci/decentralized-publishing)** — open-access research objects and on-chain attestations that give reviewers reputation and, increasingly, payment. - **[Research data ownership](/wiki/desci/research-data-ownership)** — data NFTs, data unions, and Data DAOs that let the people who generate genomic and clinical data keep ownership of it and a share of the value. ### Why now: the 2025–26 public-funding shock DeSci's funding-bottleneck thesis stopped being abstract in 2025. Over the year the U.S. government [terminated or froze more than 3,800 NIH and NSF research grants — roughly $3 billion in unspent, already-committed funds](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nih-nsf-cuts-2025-data), the NIH alone accounting for nearly 2,500 grants (about $2.3 billion). One analysis found the terminations disrupted [roughly 1 in 30 active clinical trials, affecting more than 74,000 enrolled participants](https://www.ajmc.com/view/nih-grant-terminations-disrupt-1-in-30-clinical-trials-impacting-over-74-000-participants). When the dominant grant pipeline contracts this sharply, community- and token-based funding stops being a novelty and becomes a lifeline — the clearest demand-side tailwind DeSci has had. ### The 2026 landscape DeSci has consolidated around a few coordination layers. [Bio Protocol](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) — which describes itself as “DeSci's new financial layer” — now coordinates [ten BioDAOs](https://www.bio.xyz/), counted off its own ecosystem listing on 15 August 2026, having raised over $33M in its [BIO Genesis](https://www.bio.xyz/) round – Binance Labs' first DeSci investment, November 2024, both dated on Bio's published timeline. The ten span longevity ([VitaDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao)), women's health ([AthenaBIO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao)), psychedelics ([PsyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/psydao)), synthetic biology ([ValleyDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/valleydao)), hair loss ([HairDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/hairdao)), cryopreservation ([CryoDAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cryodao)), brain health ([Cerebrum DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/cerebrum-dao)), rare disease ([Curetopia](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/curetopia)), Long COVID ([Long COVID Labs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/long-covid-labs)) and quantum bio-imaging ([Quantum Biology DAO](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/quantum-biology-dao)) – all ten covered here. The listing is not the whole cohort: [DermaLabs](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/dermalabs) came off the same launchpad — its $SKIN Ignition Sale ran in December 2025 and Bio published [its own profile of the project](https://www.bio.xyz/blog-posts/every-bathroom-mirror-is-a-laboratory-how-dermalabs-is-rebuilding-skincare-science-from-the-ground-up) in February 2026 — but appears in neither the live listing nor the Internet Archive’s [12 June 2026 capture](http://web.archive.org/web/20260612112102/https://www.bio.xyz/) of it, so a count read off the listing and a count read off the launchpad’s own history differ by one. At [DeSci.Berlin in June 2026](https://cryptobriefing.com/bioprotocol-openlabs-desci-berlin/) it launched **OpenLabs** — backed by a fresh [$6.9 million round](https://manufacturingchemist.com/bio-protocol-launch-ai-powered-decentralised-ai-platform) — pairing AI-assisted project development with community funding votes in a single interface — the same launcher that issues Bio's [BioAgents](/wiki/desci/ecosystem/peptai) — a sign that DeSci's frontier is moving from tokenizing IP toward operating the full research workflow on-chain. ### Relevance to Radix Radix's [asset-oriented programming](https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/asset-oriented-programming) is well-suited to DeSci: [IP-NFTs](/wiki/desci/ip-nfts) are native resources (not contract state), DAOs benefit from [engine-level access rules](https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/access-rules-and-auth-zones), and complex funding flows compose atomically via [transaction manifests](https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/transaction-manifests). See [DeSci on Radix](/wiki/desci/desci-and-radix). ### How Caper approaches this A research collective doesn't need a bespoke platform to run the DeSci playbook. A [caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) gives any group a [bonding-curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) treasury to raise from supporters and a proposal system to direct that treasury toward a lab, a milestone, or an IP acquisition — with a [participation-gated pro-rata exit](/wiki/governance/voting) so contributors who lose conviction can withdraw their share rather than being locked in. It's the same “community funds the science, community governs the outcome” loop that DeSci pioneered, without a research group having to deploy its own contracts. See [DeSci funding](/wiki/desci/desci-funding).