The Rising Trend: What New Opportunities Does DeSci Offer?

[TL;DR]:

Recently, the market has witnessed a rising wave of interest in DeSci.
As early as 2021, DeSci entered the public eye by establishing VitaDAO but failed to gain widespread attention.
It wasn’t until recently, with the concentrated outbreak of a series of trending events, that this once-niche field regained significant market focus.

Introduction

The original intention of DeSci is to create a shared academic research eco for scientists and scholars. Its goal is to break down funding barriers in traditional scientific research, promote global collaboration among scientists, and ensure the openness and transparency of research data. Because of this, DeSci has long been seen as lofty and unattainable, regarded as an “ivory tower” experiment, and neglected by the mainstream market. However, recently, a series of trending events have sparked interest, and DeSci has quickly become a focal point in emerging markets.

What is DeSci?

DeSci, or Decentralized Science, refers to a decentralized model of scientific research.

Why should the scientific research eco pursue decentralization? The reason is that, under the traditional scientific research , centralized entities often dominate critical elements necessary for scientific development, such as resources and funding, exerting significant control over research outcomes and progress. From a broader perspective, this characteristic has, to some extent, created practical obstacles to the advancement of science.

Under the traditional research model, balancing security, transparency, incentive mechanisms, and accessibility in the field of knowledge sharing remains an industry-wide challenge. Traditional models typically rely on centralized verification s, which may limit inclusiveness and broad participation. Furthermore, the existing model often fails to adequately incentivize knowledge contributors, thereby hindering the development of scientific endeavors.

It is against this backdrop that DeSci (Decentralized Science) has emerged. By leveraging blockchain technologies such as tokens, NFTs, and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), DeSci offers a decentralized approach to transforming various aspects of traditional scientific fields, including fundraising, data sharing, publishing, and collaboration. This provides a fairer, more transparent, and decentralized platform for scientific research.

For instance, in the area of fundraising, funders, scientists, and publishers are theoretically expected to collaborate to promote the advancement, dissemination, and application of scientific research. However, in the traditional research model, these three key components—funding allocation by funders, research conducted by scientists, and dissemination of results by publishers—are often fragmented due to issues of interest distribution. Operating as independent economic entities, they are more driven by individual interests rather than the collective goals of the scientific community. This situation leads to inefficient resource allocation and obstructed sharing of research outcomes, ultimately impeding the healthy development of scientific research.

DeSci, on the other hand, can provide transparent and efficient funding support for research projects through DAOs and tokenized economic models, thereby avoiding resource waste. Combined with blockchain technology, it can decentralize the academic publishing process, ensuring transparency and verifiability of research outcomes while reducing publishing costs and mitigating traditional publishers’ monopolistic influence. More importantly, funders can accelerate the translation of research outcomes into practical applications by introducing community-driven scientific collaboration models, thereby enhancing scientific research’s societal impact.

It is evident that, under the DeSci model, blockchain technology enhances the security of data storage in scientific research; DAOs ensure transparency in funding allocation and project governance; and tokens incentivize researchers, encouraging participation and promoting ownership of research outcomes. In this sense, DeSci is leveraging Web3 technologies to construct a more equitable and inclusive infrastructure for scientific research. Moreover, the speculative nature of cryptocurrency markets has been constructively integrated into the non-speculative domain of scientific research.

Key Events Driving DeSci’s Rise

The original intention of DeSci was to create a shared academic research eco for scientists. For this reason, from the perspective of examining the track and narrative, DeSci has long struggled to fully absorb the value that Web3 truly brings to it—namely, community effects and an efficient economic .

For instance, the foundation of DeSci lies in an active eco supported by an efficient token and community effects. The key to such an economic is broad user participation. If users cannot truly engage or lack sufficient motivation to hold and trade tokens, the token’s price, liquidity, and the entire economic will be difficult to sustain. Therefore, relying solely on scientists within the academic community as core participants cannot establish a sustainable mechanism. This is one of the main reasons why DeSci, despite entering the public eye in 2021 with the establishment of VitaDAO, has not gained widespread attention.

It was not until recently, with the emergence of a series of high-profile events, that the DeSci sector finally garnered significant market attention and became a rising star in the Web3 space.

A leading project’s community fundraising campaign hit its cap, raising an impressive $33 million. Reports soon followed that Vitalik attended an offline DeSci-themed event in Bangkok. In a podcast, Vitalik shared his hopes to see more innovation in the DeSci space. On January 3rd of this year, the BIO token launched and quickly surged to a peak price of $1.477, with public sale participants theoretically achieving returns of up to 58x. A series of high-profile events have fueled the rapid rise in DeSci’s popularity.

Even at the market level, discussions have begun about whether DeSci could lead the next bull market. According to Kaito data, the narrative surrounding the DeSci concept has grown by 2,640% from early 2024 to the end of 2024.

It can be said that the hype around the DeSci narrative has been fully ignited. However, it is worth noting that DeSci projects are still in their early performance stages in the capital market.

As of the time of publication on Gate.io, CoinGecko data shows that the total market capitalization of AI Agent-related tokens is approximately $2.1 billion. Although the total market cap has yet to achieve a large-scale effect, the growing influence of this field continues to expand. In the future, as more projects are implemented and research outcomes are applied, DeSci’s performance in the capital market is expected to steadily improve, paving the way for deeper integration between science and Web3 with broader development prospects.

Top DeSci Projects to Watch

BioDAO Protocol ($BIO)

BIO Protocol is a curation and liquidity protocol in Decentralized Science (DeSci), initially funded by Binance Labs. It aims to provide resource support for scientific research projects and drive innovation in scientific research.

The core components of the protocol include BioDAO, a curation , intellectual property tokenization and liquidity mechanisms, and an incentive . Through multiple rounds of auctions and airdrop programs, BIO Protocol has built a diverse and highly engaged community, laying the foundation for a decentralized biomedical research network.

The protocol primarily raises funds through token sales to support the development of biotechnology projects and establishes shared intellectual property ownership among its members. According to official information, BioDAO: Launch has successfully initiated seven sub-DAOs, with three additional sub-DAOs currently under development.

SCI-HUB ($SCIHUB)

SCI-HUB is a platform that allows free access to and downloads of academic papers, falling under scientific donation. It is currently a subject of controversy. Supporters argue that it provides scholars and students worldwide with free access to academic papers, breaking the monopoly of scientific publishers and representing decentralized science. On the other hand, critics (FUD) claim that SCI-HUB is a piracy site for academic papers. It bypasses publishers’ paywalls through various methods and provides millions of academic papers and works without addressing copyright issues, raising concerns about piracy compliance.

ResearchHub ($RSC)

ResearchHub is an innovative online platform that accelerates scientific discovery by fostering collaboration and open research. It enables researchers, scholars, and enthusiasts to share, discuss, and uate scientific content across disciplines within a decentralized community.

By incentivizing participation with RSC, ResearchHub enhances transparency and rewards contributions such as sharing preprints, reviewing papers, and engaging in academic discussions. Its mission is to break down traditional barriers in academia, facilitate the rapid dissemination of knowledge, and promote global collaboration. The platform was founded by Brian Armstrong, the founder of Coinbase, and is primarily used to incentivize users to publish high-quality content on the platform.