DeSci: The Science Equity Movement and the Reconstruction Revolution of the Knowledge Economy

1. Industry Background and Current Situation Analysis

1.1 Overview of DeSci

From the workshop-style production relying on human collaboration in the era of handicrafts, to the factory system reconstructed by steam power in the mechanization era; from the standardized scale economy spawned by assembly lines in the electrification era, to the global supply chain revolution triggered by computer technology in the informatization era; right up to the current AI era driven by algorithm models in intelligent decision-making networks—each technological revolution has reshaped the organizational form of production factors. The emergence of blockchain technology has, for the first time, achieved "trust automation" through mathematical protocols, making on-chain confirmation of intellectual property, decentralized circulation of data assets, and value distribution dominated by smart contracts possible. Through knowledge on-chain and data on-chain storage, DeSci is leading a disruptive technological paradigm revolution, attempting to liberate science from the closed ivory tower, and the underlying logic of human production relations is undergoing a paradigm-level leap.

Previously, the DeSci sector experienced a surge in the secondary market, which has now gradually cooled down. In the previous wave, it was a manifestation of expected finance, and we cannot deny the DeSci sector because of this. On the contrary, we should conduct an in-depth analysis at this time to understand the true value behind DeSci and its future impact on the shift in technological paradigms.

The core concept of DeSci includes the following key aspects:

1. Incentive Mechanism: Reshaping the Distribution of Research Value

DeSci has fundamentally changed the value distribution model in traditional research by introducing a blockchain-based incentive system. Researchers can gain academic recognition and economic returns through token economies, NFT papers, or reputation systems, which not only incentivizes the broad sharing of knowledge but also provides new avenues for the monetization of research outcomes.

2. Decentralization: Restructuring the Power Structure of Scientific Research

In traditional research models, funding allocation and achievement evaluation are often controlled by a few centralized institutions, leading to uneven resource distribution and limited innovation. DeSci, through community-driven models like DAOs, decentralizes power to the research community, achieving democratized resource allocation.

3. Lowering the threshold for scientific research: promoting the democratization of research

DeSci has significantly lowered the participation threshold for scientific research through decentralized infrastructure. Researchers from developing countries, independent scientists, and citizen scientists can all access global research resources and contribute equally.

4. Data Transparency: Rebuilding the Academic Trust System

The traceability feature of blockchain technology provides a technical guarantee for the transparency and verifiability of scientific research data. From experimental design to data collection, and then to the publication of results, every step can be recorded and publicly verified. This can effectively curb academic misconduct and enhance public trust in scientific research.

The essence of DeSci is a return to the nature of science—science should be a common wealth of all humanity, rather than the exclusive domain of a few institutions or elites. In the traditional research model, the creation and dissemination of knowledge are controlled by layers of intermediaries, causing science to gradually deviate from its original intent of openness and collaboration. DeSci attempts to break these barriers through technological means, allowing science to return to its decentralized essence. It is not only a technological innovation but also a revolution in scientific philosophy.

1.2 The Essential Differences Between DeSci and Traditional Scientific Research Systems

1.2.1 Collaboration Mode: From Fragmented Opposition to Organic Collaboration

The traditional research system presents a typical "triangular fragmentation" structure: funding agencies ( government/enterprise ), the scientist community, and publishers form a closed loop of interests, yet lack a value alignment mechanism.

• Funding parties often assess scientific output through short-term KPIs, forcing scientists to pursue "publishable results" rather than addressing substantive issues;

• Scientists have to invest a lot of energy in project applications and compliance processes to obtain continuous funding, rather than in-depth research;

• Publishers monopolize academic dissemination channels, charging high subscription fees without providing reasonable returns to knowledge producers.

This fragmentation leads to over 30% of global research funding being wasted annually on repetitive studies or experiments that cannot be replicated. DeSci reconstructs the tripartite relationship through a collaboration framework driven by smart contracts:

• The funding party can pool funds through the DAO and set long-term goals, with the community voting to decide resource allocation.

• Scientists earn token rewards through data contributions, open-source code, or experimental replication, with economic returns directly linked to actual value creation.

• The role of publishers has been replaced by NFT papers and decentralized storage, reducing the cost of knowledge dissemination by over 90%.

1.2.2 Crossing the "Valley of Death": From Linear Break to Closed-Loop Acceleration

The essence of the traditional "valley of death" phenomenon in the transformation of industry-university-research is the dysfunction of the knowledge transfer system: the chain from basic research ( papers ) → application development ( patents ) → commercial transformation ( products ) is led by different entities at each stage and lacks incentive mechanisms for connection. For example, the National Institutes of Health invests $45 billion annually, but only 0.4% of basic research results enter the clinical trial stage; the core issue lies in the fact that pharmaceutical companies lock experimental data to protect commercial secrets, leading to repeated trial and error; at the same time, venture capital tends to favor later-stage mature projects, making it difficult for early breakthrough research to receive support.

DeSci aims to break the barriers of interest distribution in traditional scientific research by introducing blockchain and Web3 technologies, promoting more efficient research collaboration. Unlike the isolated nature of traditional models, DeSci enables deeper cooperation among funders, scientists, and publishers through decentralized mechanisms, addressing issues of funding, data sharing, and transparency of research outcomes. DeSci builds a transformation accelerator through technological-economic paradigm innovation:

• Technology IP Tokenization: For example, the Molecule platform converts drug research and development intellectual property into IP-NFTs, allowing investors to purchase rights in segments. Research shows that this method shortens the financing cycle for early-stage biopharmaceutical projects by 60%;

• Data liquidity: Platforms like Ocean Protocol establish data trading markets, allowing researchers to securely share data through privacy computing technology and earn income, with over 20PB of biomedical data already on-chain.

• Community Support Mechanism: VitaDAO utilizes a "Research-Development-Commercialization" three-stage token distribution model, allowing foundational researchers to continue receiving a 5%-15% ongoing share through smart contracts after a drug is launched, creating a closed-loop incentive.

• Efficient fund allocation: Through DAO and tokenized economic models, DeSci provides transparent and efficient financial support, avoiding resource waste.

• Decentralized Publishing: DeSci has changed the way research results are produced and disseminated, ensuring that results are transparent and verifiable through blockchain, reducing publishing costs and minimizing the monopolistic influence of traditional publishers.

• Ownership of Research Achievements and Transparent Review: The immutability of blockchain ensures the ownership of research achievements, and smart contracts record the review process, enhancing review transparency and ensuring the fairness and efficiency of research.

Overall, DeSci promotes the transparency, efficiency, and collaboration of scientific research through decentralized technology, addressing various shortcomings of traditional research models. It not only changes the processes of funding allocation, data sharing, and publication, but also accelerates the transformation of research results through community cooperation, fostering a more open and inclusive science and creating a research environment with greater potential.

1.2.3 Value Distribution: From Centralized Extraction to Ecological Win-Win

In traditional systems, the value of scientific research is monopolized by a few centralized nodes:

• Publisher Elsevier's gross profit margin has long maintained at 37%, far exceeding that of tech giants like Apple.

• The processing fee for a single paper in the top journal "Nature" can reach up to $11,390, yet 97% of reviewers work for free.

• Pharmaceutical giants profit tremendously from patent barriers, while the original discoverers are often marginalized.

In contrast, DeSci reconstructs allocation logic through programmable value flows:

• Contribution Quantification: Utilizing the on-chain reputation system, behaviors such as paper citations, code submissions, and experimental reproductions are converted into tradable credit assets;

• Dynamic Allocation: Smart contracts automatically distribute profits. For example, the BioDAO project injects 30% of patent income into the community treasury, allocates 45% to researchers based on their contributions, and rewards early investors with 25%;

• Long Tail Activation: African scientists reduce research costs by 70% through LabDAO shared laboratory equipment and gain global funding support through data contributions.

The difference between DeSci and traditional scientific research is not only an upgrade of technical tools but also a reconstruction of production relations. When scientific breakthroughs are no longer constrained by institutional boundaries, geographical limitations, or power rent-seeking, humanity may enter a new era of "collective intelligence explosion." Just as the GitHub open-source community gave rise to ChatGPT, the collaborative innovation of millions of researchers in the DeSci ecosystem may solve complex problems that individual countries or companies cannot tackle in the next decade. The ultimate goal of this transformation is to return science to its purest essence: evidence-based, open-sharing, and serving the welfare of all humanity.

1.3 Market Size and Key Players

1.3.1 Market Size

Currently, the market size of the DeSci field has approached $1 billion. Although it is still in the early exploration stage, its compound annual growth rate is expected to exceed 35% in the next five years, demonstrating the potential for exponential expansion. This growth is not only due to the mature application of blockchain technology but also benefits from the pain point of imbalanced global research funding allocation: the traditional research market invests over $200 billion annually, but a large amount of funding is wasted due to bureaucratic processes and the inefficient management of centralized institutions. The rise of DeSci is reconstructing this pattern: through tokenized incentives, decentralized governance, and open-source collaboration, its market size is expected to surpass $50 billion before 2030, becoming a vertical track in the Web3 field that runs parallel to finance and AI.

The potential of DeSci has attracted dual attention from both the crypto industry and academia. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly emphasized the disruptive significance of DeSci for "open science"; crypto leaders such as Binance founder CZ, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, and Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong have endorsed it through investments and platforms. In addition, top investors like Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan have viewed DeSci as the core direction for "next-generation research infrastructure." Leading VCs such as a16z, Polychain Capital, and Digital Currency Group are also making investments, with biomedical DAOs and decentralized data protocols becoming key focus areas for capital.

1.3.2 Major Players

1.3.2.1 Molecule

Molecule was established in 2021 and is a decentralized protocol dedicated to disrupting the traditional biotechnology research and development model. The project aims to create a brand new financing ecosystem for early-stage biological research and innovatively brings biotechnology intellectual property on-chain, pioneering the concept of IP-NFT, and is hailed as the "OpenSea of the biotechnology field."

Based on IP-NFT, Molecule has built a market aimed at conversion research, designed to facilitate efficient connections between researchers and funders. On the Molecule Discovery platform, researchers can submit research proposals, while funders can evaluate the proposals and negotiate collaboration terms with the research teams. In this way, Molecule provides strong support for the conversion of basic research into practical applications, accelerating the rapid implementation of medical research from theory to practice. As a decentralized drug development platform, it has tokenized biomedical intellectual property through the IP-NFT model, facilitating over $200 million in research funding flow.