The worlds of science and finance are not often thought of in close relation to each other. After all, most of us would like to see people like scientists and doctors as devout followers of their field of study fuelled solely by their passion for the subject matter of study.
However, there is a very important codependence between these two fields and oftentimes the world of science had to face a setback whenever the world of finance struggled and vice versa.
Let us examine their relationship and expand on what Decentralized Science is and what it means for both fields.
What is Decentralized Science (DeSci)?
Decentralized Science is a new form of ecosystem comprising a wide variety of projects that use blockchain technology to aid in its funding and further growth.
The goal of Decentralized Science is to increase transparency, community involvement, and incentives in the field of science. This could also open the possibility of science being more fair and open to newer groups of people.
In the words of the Ethereum Cofounder Vitalik Buterin, he describes Decentralized Science as a collection of ideas that aim to answer the question: “What are some ways in which emerging open decentralized technologies can make science better?”
Let us find out the answer to this question in the next section by looking at what advantages Decentralized Science (DeSci) brings to the scientific research community.
advantages of Decentralized Science (DeSci) in the Scientific Community
It turns out that Decentralized Science (DeSci) can bring a lot of advantages to the scientific community some of them are as follows:
- Better accessibility to funds
- A Decentralized Science Ecosystem can make it easier for investors to make their donations or investments to their preferred projects through Decentralized Autonomous organizations or DAOs
- Better reliability and reproducibility
- The DeSci ecosystem can easily introduce incentives aimed at promoting reproducible scientific works which can induce an increase in the number of reliable projects introduced in the field.
- More data sharing
- The findings that are made through the decentralized projects are much more easily shared for use by other researchers and thus it helps in a smoother flow of information.
- Eliminating high fees
- With the Decentralized Science platform, researchers can avoid paying the high publication fees that scientific journals levy on the projects or their members.
- Less reliance on Corporate entities
- Many members of the scientific community often have to resort to collecting funds for their research through fundraisers organized by companies or other high-net-worth individuals.
These corporations or individuals will have significant control over the research data and their publication which will essentially cause hindrances to their advancement if the findings are found to be unfavourable to them.
These are a few of the advantages that Decentralized Science (DeSci) brings to the scientific community.
Response from the crypto community
A lot of investors have already expressed their excitement about the prospects of the Decentralized Science (DeSci) field. Many have vowed to put their own personal crypto assets to boost the new initiative.
Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, is one example of a person who responded in this way. He promised to liquidate 2% of his personal Coinbase holdings over the course of the upcoming year to raise money for scientific research at organizations like ResearchHub and NewLimit.
Other crypto enthusiasts also took it to X to talk about how they are planning to use their own crypto holdings to accelerate research in their favorite fields such as biotechnology, biomechanics, and so on.
Looking at the other reactions the only ones that put out a different thought about the new change were the ones who were worried about the meddling of other traditional research entities such as big pharma and other lobbying groups which could cause a problem for the crypto space.
From analysing all the data that we have seen above let us now look at what we can conclude from the recent change in the world of cryptocurrency and blockchain.
The Bottom Line
By looking at the workings, functioning, and advantages Decentralized Science (DeSci) can have on the scientific community we can say that we can look forward to seeing more and more contributions from the wider crypto community funding a lot of research of varying kinds in the coming year.
The new platform will definitely encourage everyone to take up an interest in becoming a part of the new revolution that could possibly change the whole world in the future through their valuable contributions.
