Does DeSci Need a Pump? Starting from the Dilemma of the Pharmaceutical Industry
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Does DeSci Need a Pump? Starting from the Dilemma of the Pharmaceutical Industry
Current DeSci projects primarily focus on the pharmaceutical field, representing one of the low-hanging fruits for improving human health, a vital resource.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsOriginal: Decentralised.co
Translation: Yuliya, PANews
Science has always been the greatest catalyst for human progress. Yet today, mentioning "science" often invites skepticism. When headlines declare "science shows...", they are more likely to provoke mockery than genuine interest. This growing disillusionment is not without reason—science has increasingly become a marketing term, diluted by corporate interests and straying from its fundamental purpose of advancing human knowledge and well-being.
Decentralized Science (DeSci) promises to rebuild scientific research on a firmer foundation as a new paradigm. Current DeSci projects primarily focus on the pharmaceutical field, one of the low-hanging fruits for improving humanity's most important resource—health.
The Funding Crisis in Scientific Innovation
The traditional scientific funding system is broken. Academic researchers spend up to 40% of their time writing grant proposals, yet success rates fall below 20%. With declining federal funding, private investment has increased but remains concentrated in large corporations.
The pharmaceutical industry has evolved into a high-risk game that discourages innovation. Consider this reality: only 1 in every 10,000 discovered compounds successfully reaches the market. The process is brutally inefficient. Only 10% of drugs entering clinical trials receive FDA approval, requiring up to 15 years and costing over $2.6 billion per successful drug.
In the 1990s, consolidation in the pharmaceutical industry seemed like a blessing—it brought efficiency, streamlined supply chains, and enabled rapid scaling of drug discovery. However, this sophisticated machine, initially an engine of innovation, has become a bottleneck. The same players now obstruct progress to maintain monopolies, driving costs ever higher.
Under the current model, a biotech startup spends years seeking NIH funding for early discoveries, then raises $15 million in Series A financing to enter preclinical trials. If successful, it licenses its intellectual property to a major pharmaceutical company, which invests over $1 billion in clinical trials and commercialization.
This is where incentives become distorted. Large pharmaceutical companies no longer prioritize groundbreaking new therapies but instead master a more profitable game: patent manipulation. Their strategy 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 of the same drug.
Take AbbVie's anti-inflammatory drug Humira as an example. For years, Humira has been one of the world’s top-selling drugs, generating over $20 billion annually. Its original patent expired in 2016, but AbbVie filed over 100 additional patents to block generic competition. These legal maneuvers delayed affordable alternatives from entering the market, costing patients and healthcare systems billions of dollars.
In a recent DeSci debate between Tarun Chitra and benjels, the stagnation of pharmaceutical innovation was raised, citing Eroom's Law (the inverse of Moore's Law).
These practices reflect a larger problem: innovation is captured by profit motives. Pharmaceutical companies channel resources into fine-tuning existing drugs—making slight chemical adjustments or finding new delivery mechanisms—not because these bring significant health benefits, but because they yield new patents and extend profitability.
Science on a Better Track
Meanwhile, the talented and creative global research community remains excluded from this process. Young researchers are constrained by limited funding, bureaucracy, and a "publish or perish" culture that values sensationalism over meaningful research. The result is severe underfunding for rare diseases, neglected tropical diseases, and early exploratory studies.
At its core, DeSci is a coordination mechanism. It brings together global human capital—biologists, chemists, researchers—to synthesize, test, and iterate without relying on traditional institutions. Funding models are also reimagined. Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and tokenized incentives replace government grants or corporate sponsorships, democratizing access to capital.
The traditional pharmaceutical supply chain is rigid, siloed, and dominated by a few gatekeepers. It typically follows a linear path: centralized data generation, discovery in closed labs, high-cost trials, exclusive manufacturing, and restricted distribution. Each stage is optimized for profit, not accessibility or collaboration.
In contrast, DeSci introduces a chain of open collaboration, reimagining each phase to democratize participation and accelerate innovation. This manifests in several key areas:
1. Data and Infrastructure
Traditional Model: Data is proprietary, fragmented, and often inaccessible. Research institutions and pharmaceutical companies hoard datasets to maintain competitive advantage.
DeSci Model: Platforms aggregate and democratize access to scientific data, creating a foundation for transparent collaboration.
Example: yesnoerror uses AI to check mathematical errors in published papers, enhancing research reproducibility and credibility.
2. Discovery and Research
Traditional Model: Discovery occurs in closed academic or corporate labs, constrained by funding priorities and intellectual property concerns.
DeSci Model: DAOs directly fund early-stage research, enabling scientists to explore breakthrough ideas without institutional bureaucracy.
Example: VitaDAO has raised millions of dollars to fund longevity research, supporting cell senescence and drug discovery projects that would otherwise struggle for funding. HairDAO is a collective of researchers and patients documenting experiences with various compounds for treating hair loss.
3. Markets
Traditional Model: Controlled by intermediaries. Researchers rely on traditional publishers, conferences, and networks to share findings and obtain resources.
DeSci Model: Decentralized markets connect researchers with funders and tools globally.
Example: Bio Protocol provides a platform for researchers to create BioDAOs—DAOs dedicated to researching new compounds, providing continuous funding for newly generated biotech assets, and offering liquid markets for tokenized IP. Compared to the AI agent space, Bio can be seen as Virtuals in the DeSci world.
Big Pharmai, as the counterpart to ai16z, launched investments in DeSci tokens on Daos.fun. Their AUM has exceeded $1 million, with plans to launch their own Bio agent framework.
4. Experimentation and Validation
Traditional Model: Preclinical and clinical trials are expensive and typically limited to large pharmaceutical companies. Transparency is minimal, and failures are often hidden.
DeSci Model: Platforms decentralize trials, enabling global participation and funding through tokens.
Example: Pump Science uses bonding curves to crowdfund longevity experiments, advancing compounds from worm testing to fruit flies and then rats, ultimately reaching commercialization.
Medical researchers can submit drug research proposals on Pump Science, which helps test these drugs on worms and transmits results in real-time to the platform frontend. Users can speculate on tokens representing these drugs. Two popular tokens, Rif (Rifampicin) and URO (Urolithin A), are currently being tested on worms. If lifespan extension is confirmed, these compounds will move toward commercialization, and holders will share in the profits.
The results of these trials are recorded and livestreamed on Pump.science
5. IP and Monetization
Traditional Model: Intellectual property is locked in patent monopolies, creating barriers to innovation and inflating drug prices. Filing patents for new compounds is both costly and painfully complex.
DeSci Model: Protocols tokenize IP, allowing researchers to transparently share and monetize discoveries.
- Example: Molecule's IP framework enables researchers to fund projects by splitting IP rights into NFTs and tokens, aligning incentives between scientists and funders. However, this model remains in its early stages. Only a few researchers have experimented with tokenizing their IP, and it remains difficult to estimate how profits flow to holders upon commercialization. Additionally, to ensure adequate protection, researchers may still need to register IP with traditional government agencies.
BioDAOs have collectively held over $33 million in tokenized IPT via the Molecule framework
Accountability Challenges
DAOs face difficulties in coordinating complex tasks and maintaining accountability—few have demonstrated sustainable success in managing long-term projects. DeSci faces even greater challenges: it requires researchers to coordinate on complex problems, meet research deadlines, and uphold scientific rigor without traditional institutional oversight.
Traditional science, despite its flaws, has established peer review and quality control mechanisms. DeSci must either improve these systems or develop entirely new accountability frameworks. Given the high stakes involved in medical research, this challenge is particularly severe. A failed NFT project might lose money, but a poorly executed medical trial could endanger lives.
Critics argue that DeSci is merely speculative—a trading game. This claim is not entirely unfounded. History shows that new technologies often go through struggling phases before achieving breakthrough successes that capture public imagination. Just as AI agents gained mainstream attention through projects like aixbt, DeSci may also need a defining moment to shift perceptions.
The future may not unfold exactly as DeSci advocates envision. Perhaps it won’t fully replace traditional institutions, but instead create parallel systems that drive innovation through competition. Or perhaps it will find specific niches—such as rare disease research—where traditional models have already failed.
Imagine a world where brilliant minds, unbound by borders or budgets, work together to solve humanity’s greatest medical challenges—the breakthrough in a Chinese lab instantly verified in Singapore and scaled in São Paulo.
Pioneers are building this future step by step. Take Bryan Johnson, for example—the independent biohacker experimenting with off-label drug use and unconventional therapies. While his methods may alarm traditionalists, he embodies the spirit of DeSci: experimentation over gatekeeping.
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