Unveiling the Future: Sora Ventures' Investment in Molecule

In a recent development that promises to reshape the landscape of scientific research in Asia, Sora Ventures has committed $1 million to Molecule. Founded in early 2018, Sora Ventures is Asia’s leading venture capital firm dedicated to digital asset and blockchain investments. The firm adopts an entirely new venture model designed to scale blockchain community and help transition blockchain projects into the business world. This strategic investment aims to pioneer the integration of DeSci across the continent. The goal is to transcend physical borders and foster a culture of objective science and intellectual property sharing, leveraging the decentralized nature of DeSci.

Why Globalisation Matters to Molecule

Molecule is a proud and active supporter of the DeSci movement. Engaging in partnerships such as these is critical in ensuring the global uptake of the movement. A core principle remains the inclusion of people from around the world, opening up pockets of exceptionally valuable and previously localized knowledge.

An Open Invitation to Asia’s Scientists 

Molecule extends a warm invitation to scientists across Asia to join this transformative journey. This initiative is not just about funding; it's a call to action for scientists to be part of a movement that redefines how scientific research is conducted and shared in an open-source manner powered by the permissionless nature of tokenisation.

Empowering Innovation: Molecule's $50,000 Grant

To catalyze innovation in the field of biomedical research, Molecule is offering a $50,000 grant to a deserving scientific team or individual. By offering this grant exclusively to researchers based in Asia, Molecule hopes to set off a chain reaction culminating in a revolutionized scientific landscape. If you are interested in receiving application details once they have been released, please add your name and email address to this form. 

Why This Time is Different: The DeSci Paradigm

DeSci diverges fundamentally from its predecessor, Decentralized Finance (DeFi). While DeFi often replicated the exclusive and extractive nature of traditional finance, DeSci heralds a new dawn of inclusivity and democratization in scientific research. Today, pharmaceutical companies grapple with declining returns on innovation, facing stiff competition in discovering new medicines. DeSci emerges as a beacon of hope, empowering those historically marginalized in science - the scientists and patients.

Tokenized Science: The Unstoppable Force

The rise of NFTs has revolutionized the art world by empowering artists with a platform for recognition and fair compensation. DeSci mirrors this impact in the scientific realm, breaking down geographical and institutional barriers and valuing scientific contributions based on their merit, not their origin.

The Time is Now

The fusion of DeSci and strategic partnerships like that of Sora Ventures and Molecule heralds a new chapter in scientific innovation in Asia. This movement isn't just about groundbreaking discoveries; it's about making those discoveries accessible and impactful for every individual, regardless of location or language. The time is ripe for scientists, investors, and the public to embrace DeSci and contribute to a more inclusive, equitable, and innovative scientific future.

Join us in this journey towards a scientific revolution. Be a part of the change that shapes the future of science in Asia and beyond.

Decoding Decentralized Science

To fully conceptualize Molecule’s mission and vision, one needs to understand the arena in which we operate. Decentralized Science (DeSci) is a new approach to science that applies principles from Meta- and Open-Science and is a powerful new non-crypto application of blockchain technology. More than just a blend of Meta-Science and Open-Science, DeSci represents their next evolution. It uses web3 technology to establish a secure, lasting record of scientific contributions that enables fair credit allocation, simplifies transactions, allows worldwide resource sharing, and overcomes economic barriers. We believe, emphatically, that it is the answer to many of the problems that are plaguing the academic community today. 

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Open-Science as the forefather

Throughout recent history, scientific productivity has been decreasing steadily,  largely due to information being increasingly sequestered in institutional silos.  Recognizing these issues, researchers began to speak out, asking for more transparent communication between academics. As a result, the transformative movement of Open-Science (OpSci) was born, aiming to foster transparency, collaboration, and democracy within the scientific process. It is perhaps the most well-known and mature effort to update the scientific system and community over the past decades. 

OpSci encourages interaction between various stakeholders, including researchers, funders, publishers, and policymakers. It birthed the notable ‘citizen science’ movement; allowing normal people who care about scientific progress to contribute to research, capitalizing on the power of numbers to bolster data collection. This shift underscores the principle that science should be accessible regardless of socioeconomic status. However, OpSci encounters challenges such as a lack of incentivization for active participation, complications in data and code sharing, concerns about plagiarism of preprints, obstacles in resource accessibility, and instances of misrepresentation in media. Despite its noble objectives, these issues represent hurdles that OpSci still needs to overcome in order to fully revolutionize scientific practices. 

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Meta-Science as a critical analysis

Meta-Science, the exploration of science itself, analyzes the core processes of collaboration, experimentation, observation, and knowledge dissemination. While OpSci focuses on breaking down walls within science, Meta-Science aims to analyze the entire scientific ecosystem. By taking a holistic view, Meta-Science identifies the causes behind issues such as the reproducibility crisis and bias, to ultimately enhance research quality. Meta-Science also aims to look at which social processes can spark a move towards better science - while most researchers can fully conceptualize the issues that plague traditional science, there seems to be little impetus at an institutional level to improve various processes. This study of science itself gives a bird's eye view over the academic landscape, identifying classic blockers and bottlenecks, however, the movement tends to be more observational than actionable. Integrating and implementing solutions remains crucial. 

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Decentralized Science as applied Meta-Science and Open-Science, and more…

DeSci has arisen as Meta-Science and Open-Science’s natural heir; conserving their core attributes but improving upon their issues. It promises to break down barriers, offering a more inclusive and equitable platform for scientific discovery and collaboration. It does so by taking advantage of the technology available - without this, DeSci would never have been able to blossom as it has. It has matured into a fully-fledged unique cause with devoted contributors, drawing in an amazing array of expertise, all aligned with the common goal of improving science and ultimately, the world.

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The movement has anchored itself to a couple of core values:

These values are not an exhaustive list, but a sample to aid in understanding the movement. We’ve included a comprehensive reading list at the end of this article for further research. 

Fair incentives

DeSci promotes open collaboration between scientists across the world, while simultaneously creating an incentive structure through token rewards and governance. This reward system ensures motivation, which was a prevalent issue within the OpSci movement. Central to the movement is the belief that researchers should be valued for their contributions - after all, they are the champions who work relentlessly to improve and understand the world around us.

Transparency

By leveraging blockchain, DeSci also ensures traceability, fair crediting, and secure transactions. An immutable record of contributions protects researchers’ work while fostering an ethos of transparency. Valuable educational resources should not be held in ivory towers and suffocated behind paywalls. Science is for the people and thus should be accessible to the people. 

Alternative funding models

DeSci offers innovative funding models. While Meta-Science could identify bottlenecks such as inefficient grant systems, feasible solutions were hard to come across.  This is because Meta-Science is still working within the realms of traditional science. DeSci has subtle architectural differences; it creates new models that are complementary to traditional structures but not bound by them. An example of this are biotechnology Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), which are collectives of people committed to funding and pursuing innovative academic research. Well-known examples include VitaDAO, AthenaDAO, HairDAO, and ValleyDAO. 

Global connections

Democratizing access to tools enhances efficiency and inclusivity, enabling an accelerated pace of discoveries. These advancements enable ‘networked science’, a phrase that refers to the ability of one researcher to source knowledge immediately from another researcher across the world. The benefit of having the world’s knowledge at your fingertips means the discovery process can be exponentially streamlined.

Modernising workflows

As the world changes and technological developments accrue, we’d be foolish to not leap upon the advantages technology can provide. Apps, software, and protocols that exist to automate processes are welcomed, allowing humans to spend more time working on the hard things. Examples vary from funding technologies, lab work tracking, and DAO governance structures. These technologies are built to be ‘trustless’ meaning that they are created to exclude bias or tampering. Human error and politics are largely eliminated with transparent, immutable records. 

Revolutionary spirit

Core to the movement is a revolutionary spirit; we sit at the precipice of something important that has the potential to mitigate human suffering, and that will take passion and action to manifest. As a community we are embracing the creation of a new paradigm. 

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Molecule’s role in DeSci

In a nutshell, Molecule is a protocol, marketplace and service provider to the DeSci community. We exist to support, empower, guide, and provide. As a team, we host a yearly DeSci conference (DeSci.Berlin) and run a biotechnology DAO accelerator named bio.xyz. However, we are most well-known for our products; Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens (IP-NFTs) and Intellectual Property Tokens (IPTs).  

The IP-NFT

Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens (IP-NFTs) are onchain intellectual property (IP) contracts. IP-NFTs register IP rights onchain. By unifying data and property rights into programmable, transactable, blockchain tokens in the internet of money, IP-NFTs represent an evolutionary step in the development and management of scientific research IP. To date, IP-NFTs have been used to register IP of more than $2M in scientific research including at many world-renowned universities.  

IPTs

IP tokens (IPTs) are onchain memberships in IP-NFTs. When IP-NFT holders mint IPTs, they create tokenized IP commons managed by their members, accelerating the progress of science through incentives to coordinate. IPTs enable IP governance, not ownership along with milestone-based fundraising for scientific research. By minting IPTs, IP-NFT holders can incentivize contributors to IP development and enable their IP to be priced by free markets.

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DeSci in action: Longevity, Dr. Korolchuk & VITA-FAST

Dr. Viktor Korolchuk knew very little about web3 when he first came across VitaDAO. In dire need of funding though, as most academics are, he decided to take a chance and proposed his project; identifying novel autophagy activators that could potentially slow cellular decline and work to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Within six weeks Dr. Korolchuk’s project was vetted and approved, granting him $285,000 to perform his research. 

The Korolchuk IP-NFT went on to become the first project tokenized in an IPT sale, representing a massive step forward in the decentralization of science. The sale was over 1700% oversubscribed, once again showing a clear community appetite for this sort of thing. The IPTs, known as VITA-FAST, were distributed to all those who contributed to the sale, along with Dr. Korolchuk, the University of Newcastle, and deal-flow contributors, demonstrating the democratization of science in real time. Now, VITA-FAST token holders are able to vote upon project developments, such as which assays to perform, which labs to engage with, and how IP licensing may occur. 

Dr. Korolchuk and the team have recently completed a tertiary screen with compounds that have been selected for their ability to induce autophagy in the two previous screens. After finding several very promising compound families, the team is now investigating which chemical series should be explored further in search of patentable and optimized lead compounds.

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Decentralized science depends on community, and we’d love to have you. 

By addressing OpSci and Meta-Sciences's shortcomings, DeSci presents a refined, democratic, and secure framework for scientific exploration, making research more accessible and incentivized. Let's build and advance decentralized science together, leveraging the power of community to create a better world for you and your loved ones. 

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Curious and want to know more? Here are some of our favorite reading materials: 

The state of academia

• Academia Constraints by Ben Reinhardt
• 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility | Nature
• Reproducibility trial: 246 biologists get different results from same data sets
• Is science really facing a reproducibility crisis, and do we need it to? | PNAS

Decentralized Science

• Open Science and DeSci: same goal, different means
• Decentralized science (DeSci) | ethereum.org
• DeSci: The case for Decentralised Science | Gitcoin Blog
• Will crypto really solve science's biggest problems? - Forbes by John Cumbers 
• Decentralized Science and Biotech - Vincent Weisser
• What Is Decentralized Science? PixelPlex’s Detailed Guide 
• Decentralized science is key to fixing academic research 

Open-Science

• Reinventing discovery by Michael Nielsen
• Open Science Knowledge Base
• Doing science online | Michael Nielsen
• The Future of Science | Michael Nielsen
• Open Access: a short summary | Michael Nielsen
• The economics of scientific collaboration | Michael Nielsen
• Open Science Resources by ChanZuckerberg Foundation

Meta-Science

• Metascience - Wikipedia
• A Vision of Metascience
• Applied positive meta-science 
• Limits and Possibilities of Metascience

Decentralized science & building a better future

A conference serves as a nexus for collaboration and impetus for growth. Sixteen months after the first DeSci.Berlin conference we reconvened to reflect on our ecosystem's growth, and to boldly forge new paths and as we continue our journey forward, at an exceptionally powerful pace.

The event took place over the 8th & 9th of September at Factory, deep in the center of Berlin. We had two jam-packed days of speakers, workshops, and panels (to put a number on it - 40 talks with over 70 individual speakers!). This year's event was centered around building a biotech Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (BioDAO), attracting a diverse group of attendees; scientists, investors, builders, developers, venture capitalists, and general decentralized science enthusiasts. The event was held in partnership with Protocol Lab’s Funding the Commons who celebrated the hands-on spirit of creation and innovation.

A quick DeSci pulse check

As always, to effectively plan a path forward, one needs to look back at how far we’ve come. Paul Kohlhaas, Molecule CEO and co-founder opened the proceedings on the 8th, sharing some promising growth metrics of the DeSci community as a whole: 

• >$8m in research funded
• More than 50,000 community members
• A cumulative market cap of BioDAOs reaching $75m

Just in time for DeSci.Berlin, UltraRareBio released their updated ecosystem map, curated by Dr. Jocelynn Pearl! Community growth and diversification are evident. 

A few key themes materialized...

Decentralized Science as a movement, culture & history

The DeSci movement arose from a need to create more effective and efficient research translation pipelines by channeling open-source collaboration, and removing classic bottlenecks, such as the ‘Valley of Death’ (if you don’t know what this is, we recommend you read this article). Web3 and blockchain technology are the tools that have allowed us to do just that. We are currently witnessing a massive disruption of science as we know it. 

“No matter where you are across the world, you should have access to bootstrapping your science.”
Paul Kohlhaas, opening talk

Tyler Golato, Molecule CSO and co-founder rallied the audience, imploring them to dig into the ‘Pattern Languages’ of DeSci over the course of the two days. He honed in on DeSci’s potential to transform into an unstoppable movement; by igniting passion, empowering participants to be champions of their own cause, and uniting diverse people over shared values. Juan Benet was interviewed by Vincent Weisser, taking a deep dive into DeSci. The full podcast is available here. 

Meet the BioDAOs!

We heard from seasoned veterans VitaDAO, growing DAOs like HairDAO, ValleyDAO, MoonDAO, AthenaDAO who have already launched their own token, as well as burgeoning DAOs like PsyDAO, CerebrumDAO and SynapseDAO. 
We were particularly excited about two developments: 

HairDAO

HairDAO has tapped into its patient population, collecting and collating the same amount of data that is produced by a Phase 2 trial ($8M) for $50K, using their patient portal. Members of the HairDAO community contribute their hair loss data, and in exchange, receive HAIR tokens. Onboarding patients and connecting patients to researchers has never been done like this before. Co-initiators Andrew Verbinnen and Andrew Baskt also announced that they will begin testing a T4 topical cream, alongside other members of the HAIRy network state, based on results produced by their funded project with Dr Ralf Paus. You heard that right - a real product is on its way to patients! 

VitaDAO

VitaDAO’s Korolchuk IP-NFT was given the spotlight this year, and for good reason! As an indication of budding web3 adoption, the University of Newcastle Technology Transfer office (TTO) and Dr. Korolchuk made wallets and received VITA-FAST IP tokens, during VitaDAO’s recent IP-NFT tokenization crowdsale. Incentivizing scientific contributions is crucial, and we’re excited to see it kicking off properly. Additionally, a computational science hackathon was announced, with the goal of exploring results produced by Dr. Korolchuk and his team!  The core thesis; it is possible to blind the data enough to protect the integrity and value of IP while simultaneously leveraging a hive-mind intelligence. We’re looking forward to sharing updates. 

Tips for nascent BioDAO builders

This year’s DeSci.Berlin catered especially to prospective builders in the ecosystem, with the aim of providing a solid foundation for attendees to go out into the world and start creating their own DAOs. Design, communication, fundraising, operations, token minting, legal - we had it all! 

Our favorite kernel of wisdom came from the talk “Traditional Ops vs. DAO Ops: Where's the intersection?”; decentralization happens on a spectrum. Founding stewards and core members need to be chosen carefully and be able to generate their own momentum, as they will still ultimately be steering the ship. 

"You don’t need a PhD to make a difference in a DAO - you just need to be a hard worker.”
James Brodie. 

Investing in biotechnology and healthcare

Mike Baran spearheaded Pfizer Ventures' early investment into VitaDAO last year. He joined us to talk about the pharma juggernaut’s involvement within DeSci; Pfizer analyzes the deal flow within the DAO and uses their strategy and skill to identify potential areas of collaboration. His advice to the DAOs? Without a deep focus on maturing their assets to validate the DeSci pipeline, the DAO puts itself at risk of losing momentum over the next few years.

Our investor's panel was a crowd favorite - we were joined by Zen Chu (UCLA), Chris Leiter (Atria Ventures), James Brodie (ID Theory), Elad Verbin (Lunar Ventures) and Dr. Friederike Ernst (Gnosis). They expressed the importance of involving patient groups, as no one knows a disease better than the people who live with it every day. If you're looking for funding, there were a couple of specific areas of interest that were raised; obesity, rare diseases, ADHD & autism and computational chemistry.

Scientist tooling

We heard from a host of innovative teams creating tools that will ease the labor that goes into doing academic scientific research. Less time spent on menial tasks and organization means more brainpower going into the bigger questions, accelerating the pace of discovery. 

• Memex.Garden is a platform introducing workflows for collaborative reading and research of various materials, enabling a seamless and organized research experience. 
• Foresight Institute's Technology Trees provide a comprehensive roadmap for the development and integration of advanced technologies. 
• ScieNFT tackles publishing paradigms by leveraging blockchain technology for pre-print NFTs. 
• Ceramic is a tool dedicated to notarizing scientific datasets.
• JOGL v2 is an improved collaboration platform designed to meet the unique needs of DeSci communities.
• bloxberg utilizes blockchain technology to provide a secure and transparent ecosystem for scientific data sharing, collaboration, and validation.
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Noteworthy insights

A real-world use case of crypto

DeSci remains one of the most important use cases of crypto because it is solving real-world problems. The act of uniting a smart contract and a legal contract, and minting an IP-NFT demonstrates that blockchain transactions and crypto mechanisms are capable of actualizing real scientific results, ushering in a better world. 

Translating science to market

Efficiently translating scientific advancements to the market requires a blend of skills. This involves nurturing cross-disciplinary collaboration and streamlining operations to eliminate inefficiencies. Secondly, and somewhat more importantly, integrating the perspectives of patients and patient advocacy groups is DeSci’s golden ticket to success. No one knows better than the patients themselves, and onboarding them into the ecosystem will truly give us a competitive edge against traditional biotechnology ventures. 

Widespread adoption is essential 

The DeSci community needs to focus on accessibility: for widespread adoption, reduced barriers to entry are critical. Improved communication as well as increasingly user-friendly interfaces will aid in community growth and DAO voter turnout.

"Joining a DAO shouldn't be harder than joining a Facebook group."
Dr. Freiderike Ernst

Couldn’t make it? We’ve got you. 

We're currently uploading all the talks from the main stage on Day 1 and the DeSci.Berlin stage from Day 2 onto Molecule's Youtube: DeSci.Berlin 2023 YouTube playlist.

Over and out!

We’re grateful that we get to work in DeSci, and that we have your support in doing it! We can’t wait to see what the community is able to achieve over the next year. Till then!

A special thanks to our sponsors

None of this could’ve happened without our generous sponsors: CODE, VitaDAO, LabDAO, bio.xyz, Molecule, Gnosis, DeSci Labs, AthenaDAO, Beaker DAO, JOGL, ValleyDAO, Ocean Protocol, and PsyDAO.

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