Science has long been humanity’s greatest catalyst for progress. Yet, mention “science” today and you’re likely to be met with scepticism. When headlines proclaim “Science says…” they’re more likely to elicit eye rolls than genuine interest. This growing disillusionment isn’t without cause—science has increasingly become a marketing buzzword, diluted by corporate interests and divorced from its fundamental purpose: advancing human knowledge and well-being.

Decentralised Science is a new paradigm that promises to rebuild scientific research on stronger foundations. The current spotlight of DeSci projects focuses on pharmaceutical drugs, one of the low-hanging fruits for improving the most important resource for humanity - our health.

The Funding Crisis in Scientific Innovation

Traditional science funding is broken. Academic researchers spend up to 40% of their time writing grant proposals, with success rates below 20%. As Federal funding dipped, private funding increased but is heavily concentrated in the hands of big businesses.

The pharmaceutical industry has evolved into a high-stakes game where the odds are stacked against innovation. Consider this: for every 10,000 compounds discovered, only 1 makes it to market. The journey is brutal. Only 10% of drugs that enter clinical trials ever receive FDA approval, with the process taking upto 15 years and costing over $2.6 billion per successful drug.

In the 1990s, Pharma’s centralisation seemed like a boon—it brought efficiency, streamlined supply chains, and enabled the rapid scaling of drug discoveries. But what started as a well-oiled machine for innovation has devolved into a bottleneck, with the same players guarding their monopolies at the expense of progress and ballooning costs.

In the current model, a biotech startup spends years seeking NIH funding for early-stage discovery and then raises a $15M Series A to move into preclinical trials. If successful, it licenses the IP to a Big Pharma company which invests $1B+ to take it through clinical trials and commercialisation.

Here’s where incentives get twisted. Instead of focusing on groundbreaking new treatments, Big Pharma has mastered a more profitable game: patent manipulation. The playbook is simple. When a lucrative drug patent nears expiration, file dozens of secondary patents on minor modifications— new delivery methods, slightly altered formulations, or even just new uses for the same drug.

Take the case of Humira, an anti-inflammatory drug by AbbVie. Humira has been one of the best-selling drugs in the world for years, raking in over $20 billion annually. Its original patent expired in 2016, but AbbVie filed more than 100 additional patents to block generic competition. This legal manoeuvring delayed affordable alternatives from entering the market, costing patients and healthcare systems billions.

In the recent Desci debate between @tarunchitra and @benjileibo, this stalling of pharma innovation was brought up with the observation of Eroom’s law. (Reverse of Moore’s law)

These practices are symptomatic of a larger issue: the capture of innovation by profit motives. Pharmaceutical companies funnel resources into tweaking existing drugs—making slight chemical modifications or finding new delivery mechanisms—not because they offer major health benefits but because they can secure fresh patents and extend profitability.

Science on Better Rails

At the same time, the global research community, brimming with talent and creativity, remains locked out of this process. Young researchers are shackled by limited grant funding, bureaucratic red tape, and a publish-or-perish culture that priorities headline-worthy topics over meaningful but less glamorous work. As a result, rare diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and early-stage exploratory research are woefully underfunded.

DeSci is fundamentally a coordination mechanism. It aggregates human capital—biologists, chemists, researchers—across the globe, enabling them to synthesise, test, and iterate without reliance on traditional institutions. Funding, too, is reimagined. Instead of government grants or corporate sponsorships, decentralised autonomous organizations (DAOs) and tokenised incentives democratise access to capital.

The traditional pharmaceutical supply chain is a rigid, siloed process dominated by a handful of gatekeepers. It typically follows a linear path: centralised data generation, discovery in isolated labs, high-cost trials, exclusive manufacturing, and restricted distribution. Each step is optimized for profitability, not accessibility or collaboration.

In contrast, DeSci introduces an open and collaborative chain that reimagines each stage, democratising participation and accelerating innovation. Here’s how they compare:

1. Data & Infrastructure

• Traditional Model: Data is proprietary, fragmented, and often inaccessible. Research institutions and pharmaceutical companies hoard datasets to maintain a competitive edge.
• DeSci Model: Platforms aggregate and democratise access to scientific data, creating a foundation for transparent collaboration.
• Example: @yesnoerror uses AI to scrutinise for mathematical errors in published papers, enabling reproducibility and trust in research.

2. Discovery & Research

• Traditional Model: Discovery happens in closed academic or corporate labs, constrained by funding priorities and intellectual property concerns.
• DeSci Model: DAOs fund early-stage research directly, empowering scientists to explore groundbreaking ideas without institutional red tape.
• Example: @vita_dao has raised millions to fund longevity research, backing projects on cellular ageing and drug discovery that would otherwise struggle for funding. @HairDAO_ is a collective of researchers and patients who log treatment experiences with different compounds to solve hair loss.

3. Marketplaces

• Traditional Model: Controlled by intermediaries. Researchers rely on traditional publishers, conferences, and networks to share findings and access resources.
• DeSci Model: Decentralized marketplaces connect researchers with funders and tools on a global scale.
• Examples: @bioprotocol provides a platform for researchers to create BioDAOs— DAOs dedicated to researching new compounds, provide ongoing funding for new biotech assets produced , and liquid markets for tokenised IP. If you compare this to the AI agent space, Bio can be considered the Virtuals of the Desci world.
• @Big_Pharmai operates as the counterpart to ai16z, having launched on Daos.fun to invest in DeSci tokens. They’ve already crossed $1M in AUM with plans to launch their own Bio agent framework.

4. Experimentation & Validation

• Traditional Model: Preclinical and clinical trials are prohibitively expensive and often limited to large pharmaceutical companies. Transparency is minimal, and failures are frequently hidden.
• DeSci Model: Platforms decentralise trials, enabling global participation and funding through tokens.
• Example: @pumpdotscience leverages bonding curves to crowdfund longevity experiments, progressing compounds through worm testing to flies to rat testing towards commercialisation.
• Medical researchers can submit drug research proposals on Pump.science, which helps test these drugs on worms, and transmit the experimental results in real-time to the platform’s front end. Users can speculate on the tokens that represent these drugs. Two popular tokens, Rif(Rifampicin) and URO(Urolithin A), are being tested on worms and if found to increase lifespan, these compounds will go for commercialisation and holders will have a share in the profits.

Results of these trials are recorded and streamed on Pump.science

5. IP & Monetization

• Traditional Model: Intellectual property is locked in patent monopolies, creating barriers to innovation and inflated drug prices. Filing patents on new compounds is expensive, painful and complex
• DeSci Model: Protocols tokenise IP, allowing researchers to share and monetise discoveries transparently.
• Example: @Molecule_Dao’s IP framework enables researchers to fund projects by fractionalising IP rights into NFTs and tokens, aligning incentives between scientists and funders. However, the model is still in its early stages. There have only been a few trials where researchers tokenised their IP, and it remains difficult to estimate how profits will flow back to holders when IP is commercialised. Moreover, to ensure their IP is fully protected, researchers might still need to register with traditional government bodies.

BioDAOs hold over $33M in IPT tokenized through Molecule’s framework

The Accountability Challenge

DAOs struggle with coordinating complex tasks and maintaining accountability - very few DAOs have demonstrated sustainable success in managing long-term projects. DeSci faces an even greater challenge: it needs researchers to coordinate on complex problems, meet research deadlines, and maintain scientific rigour, all without traditional institutional oversight.

Traditional science, for all its flaws, has established mechanisms for peer review and quality control. DeSci must either adapt these systems or develop entirely new accountability frameworks. This challenge is particularly acute given the high stakes involved in medical research. A failed NFT project loses money, but a poorly executed medical trial could cost lives.

Critics argue that DeSci is merely speculative—little more than a trading game. They’re not entirely wrong. History shows that new technologies often struggle until a breakthrough success captures the public imagination. Much like how AI agents gained mainstream attention through agents like @aixbt_agent, DeSci likely needs a defining moment to shift perceptions.

The future might not look exactly as DeSci proponents envision. Perhaps it’s not about replacing traditional institutions entirely, but creating parallel systems that force innovation through competition. Or maybe it’s about finding specific niches—like rare disease research—where traditional models have failed.

Imagine a world where brilliant minds tackle humanity’s greatest medical challenges unrestricted by borders or budgets—where a breakthrough in a Chinese lab can be instantly verified in Singapore and scaled in São Paulo.

Pioneers are building towards this future, one experiment at a time. Take @bryan_johnson—an independent biohacker experimenting with off-label drugs and unorthodox therapies. While his methods might alarm traditionalists, he represents the ethos of DeSci: experimentation over gatekeeping.

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