Tony Kim
17 Aug 2024 08:32
Decentralized Science (DeSci) leverages blockchain to promote transparency, collaboration, and open access in scientific research, and addresses the centralization issues of traditional science.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) leverages blockchain technology to decentralize research, promoting transparency, collaboration, and open access. This approach aims to address the centralization and innovation challenges inherent in traditional science (TradSci), which is often dominated by major institutions and publishers.
Problems plaguing traditional science (TradSci)
One of the major challenges in TradSci is the “valley of death,” the period between basic research and the development of practical applications. This gap often means that groundbreaking discoveries struggle to secure funding and support, and potentially life-saving treatments are delayed or abandoned. In addition, the centralization of research control among a few institutions stifles innovation and creates a biased publication process. Prestigious journals often prioritize research from well-known institutions, making it difficult for independent researchers to publish. Paywalls further impede collaboration and reduce the potential impact of scientific advances.
What is Distributed Science (DeSci)?
Decentralized science is a new approach that uses blockchain technology to revolutionize scientific research. It focuses on four core principles: transparency, decentralization, incentives, and collaboration. DeSci promotes open access to scientific data, transparency in the peer review process, and incentives for research collaboration by reducing reliance on centralized institutions. Blockchain technology reduces barriers to entry while ensuring the integrity of the scientific record and fostering an environment of openness and accountability.
How does DeSci work?
DeSci uses blockchain for secure data storage, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for decision-making, and tokenization to incentivize research contributions and control intellectual property. The blockchain ensures that data cannot be altered once stored, while the DAO enables transparent financial allocation and project governance. Intellectual Property NFTs (IP-NFTs) allow researchers to claim ownership of their work and tokenize papers, studies, datasets, and patents on the blockchain. These tokens align incentives within the decentralized research community and encourage innovation and information sharing.
Use Cases for Distributed Science
Research Funding
Smart contracts can facilitate decentralized funding mechanisms and transparency in the allocation of research funds. DeSci can leverage decentralized networks to crowdfund research projects and reward contributors.
Collaboration and data sharing
The DeSci platform facilitates secure and transparent data sharing, enabling researchers to tokenize and monetize their data while ensuring ownership.
Peer Review
Blockchain-based reputation systems can enhance the credibility of scientific publications. DeSci can promote transparency and accountability by creating an immutable record of researchers’ contributions and peer review activities.
Academic publishing
The DeSci platform serves as a decentralized repository for scholarly publications, allowing researchers to self-publish their work and ensuring wider accessibility.
Advantages of DeSci
DeSci lowers the barrier to entry, promotes inclusion, and allows scientists from diverse backgrounds to participate and contribute. It facilitates open access to data, fostering greater trust and openness. DeSci enables decentralized collaboration, accelerating innovation and problem solving, fostering greater collaboration. Using tokens and DAOs, it encourages greater participation by paying researchers fairly. IP-NFTs can monetize research by giving researchers control over their intellectual property, and democratize access to research data by removing paywalls.
TradSci vs Desi
Collaboration and Innovation
While traditional science is decentralized, DeSci promotes collaboration by leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate interaction and resource sharing.
Incentives and Funding
TradSci relies on grants and institutional funding, which creates inefficiencies. DeSci uses a decentralized funding mechanism to incentivize and reward researchers based on the quality of their work.
transparency
TradSci often relies on centralized institutions for research validation in an opaque manner. DeSci leverages blockchain to promote transparency and trust by ensuring data immutability and integrity.
Greater accessibility
DeSci democratizes access to scientific data, promoting open access to publications and data. Traditional science, on the other hand, uses subscription models, creating barriers to access and limiting the reach of research results.
BNB Chain and DeSci
BNB Chain has recognized the potential of DeSci and recently included it in a hackathon. The focus is to leverage DeSci to open access to scientific data, implement crowdsourced peer review, facilitate decentralized research funding, and introduce NFT-based scientific data ownership. The goal is to enhance transparency, improve funding mechanisms, and foster collaboration within the scientific ecosystem.
In conclusion
Distributed science has the potential to transform the scientific landscape by solving problems faced by traditional science. DeSci uses blockchain technology to drive innovation across a range of research fields by facilitating greater collaboration and democratizing access to knowledge.
For more information, please visit the BNB Chain Blog.
Image source: Shutterstock