An impending new narrative? Exploring the "stepping stones" of DeSci and the possibilities brought by Arweave and the super parallel computer AO

The crypto world is ever-changing. After the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, the market has seen an upward trend ahead of the Bitcoin halving. Various sectors are rotating, with sounds of joy and noise rising and falling, but soon it returns to silence. After the market returns to rationality, the "no one takes over" theory emerges. Crypto players still tend to pursue novelty, and in this bland market, DeSci, which has not been widely noticed before, is starting to be frequently mentioned.

The concept of DeSci first appeared in a blog post by Martin Etzrodt in 2018, where he attempted to propose a new paradigm to address issues such as peer review in traditional science. After years of development, although DeSci has attracted the attention of capital from Coinbase and Pfizer, as well as crypto leaders like Vitalik Buterin and CZ, it has not yet entered the public eye. However, the potential of DeSci should not be underestimated; it is a technological innovation that directly benefits humanity. This article aims to introduce DeSci and its importance, focusing on how Arweave can promote the development of DeSci against the backdrop of the launch of the super parallel computer AO.

Interpretation of DeSci: Liberating Traditional Science

DeSci, short for Decentralized Science, refers to "decentralized science." It is seen as a movement aimed at establishing public infrastructure through the use of the Web3 stack to fairly and justly fund, create, review, certify, store, and disseminate scientific knowledge.

Nobel laureate Randy Schekman once said, "Science knows no borders and should be open." DeSci, as an open movement aimed at liberating traditional science, is similar to SocialFi and GameFi, using decentralized technology and introducing token incentive mechanisms to break the shackles of tradition. In summary, the success of DeSci has far-reaching implications for humanity, creating a space for "dreaming safely" in the field of scientific research.

How DeSci Breaks the Shackles of Traditional Science

The rise of DeSci stems from challenges and reflections on the traditional scientific system. The difficult issues in traditional science are merely the old problems of the centralized world—there are funding monopolies, information asymmetry, peer review issues, and various other problems that restrict the free flow and sharing of scientific knowledge. In addition, the rights of researchers are not adequately protected, and they cannot fully own intellectual property.

Reshaping Financing and Fund Distribution

In traditional science, obtaining funding is crucial for scientific research, but it is often a tricky issue. First, the population in the field of scientific research is continually growing, leading to tighter funding. Second, researchers need to spend time and effort writing grant applications and must meet various quantifiable application criteria. Meanwhile, funding is controlled by governments or funding agencies, which may decide which research projects to fund based on their own biases, economic interests, or political purposes, potentially neglecting important research areas. As a result, researchers find it challenging to focus on their work.

DeSci utilizes DAOs and NFT technology to break the constraints of traditional financing models. Through DAOs, researchers can obtain funding support more transparently, achieving decentralization of funding in the field of scientific research. For example, VitaDAO is a DAO organization focused on longevity science research, providing funding support for research projects through crowdfunding and secondary financing. Additionally, the NFTization of scientific achievements provides researchers with new financing channels, such as the IP-NFTs launched by Molecule.

Innovating Research Collaboration, Publishing, and Peer Review

For researchers in traditional science, both external collaboration and resource sharing are often restricted by their organizations or institutions, gradually forming information silos. In terms of publishing research results, they often encounter human biases and exploitation of power, leading to an inefficient publishing process. Furthermore, peer review in traditional science is unpaid, inevitably leading to issues of inefficiency or low quality.

DeSci addresses collaboration, publishing, and peer review issues in traditional science by creating a decentralized open platform, introducing incentive mechanisms and eliminating intermediaries. For example, ResearchHub, known as the GitHub of the scientific field, has introduced ERC20 tokens and provided a decentralized open platform that allows researchers to freely publish and discuss academic issues while incentivizing them to peer review published research results.

Protecting Intellectual Property

Whether it is copyright, patents, or trademarks, they are still controlled by research institutions, and this monopoly is detrimental to the development of the entire scientific field. Transparency and open information are crucial for scientific work, especially for these forward-looking pieces of knowledge. Researchers should have unrestricted access to relevant research results to promote innovation and scientific progress.

DeSci employs decentralized storage solutions to ensure the security and accessibility of research data, allowing researchers to openly access and share research data. At the same time, the IP-NFTs launched by the Molecule project provide a new intellectual property management mechanism, allowing researchers not only to own their research results but also to share the benefits generated in the future.

How Can Arweave Promote the Development of DeSci?

As a powerful infrastructure, Arweave can provide comprehensive support for DeSci. In addition to supporting permanent storage of any type and size of data, Arweave also has computing capabilities, with its native smart contract SmartWeave and the improved storage consensus paradigm SCP—both adopting the core concept of "on-chain storage, off-chain computation." Arweave is not only the storage infrastructure for DeSci; developers can also build DeSci applications based on Arweave. However, after the release of the super parallel computer AO, the potential of Arweave has been greatly unleashed, creating a fertile ground for the growth of DeSci.

Arweave One-Stop Platform: Encompassing Data Storage, Encryption, and Publishing

Research data is high-quality and important, with the biggest concern being data loss, and Arweave is the ideal decentralized storage solution for DeSci. The permanent storage technology provided by Arweave is naturally suited for scientific data, and all stored data is immutable, traceable, and resistant to censorship.

However, Arweave itself does not have data encryption capabilities. Due to security and privacy needs, DeSci applications built on Arweave can encrypt data using the fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) technology of Mind Network before putting it on-chain, and in the future, data can be flexibly decrypted for requesters through authorization. At the same time, the AO ecosystem is building the PADO project, which is the world's first zkFHE decentralized computing network, combining fully homomorphic encryption with zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology to provide comprehensive privacy protection for DeSci applications.

Additionally, Arweave can also serve as a decentralized publishing platform for DeSci, with examples like PermawebNews (a news portal) already existing as a Permaweb application. Data is permanently stored on Arweave, dynamically loaded into Permaweb applications through indexing, allowing users to read published content as if browsing a Web2 front-end page.

Full On-Chain DAO Governance: Solving Financing Challenges

Transitioning from traditional authoritative institutions to DAO organizations liberates from centralized constraints and eliminates lengthy intermediaries. Compared to traditional science, DeSci makes financing more democratic and intelligent. However, most DAO organizations are still in the exploratory stage. Many factors influence whether a DAO organization can operate stably in the long term, and a well-developed infrastructure is one of the key factors.

In exploring how DAOs can solve financing issues for DeSci, the governance model of PermaDAO can be referenced. Similar to Bitcoin's POW mechanism, for DAO community members, proof of work directly represents the value created, and PermaDAO uses Arweave as the ledger for the DAO organization's work, with all data being traceable and immutable. Contributors will also receive corresponding $HALO Token incentives based on their work, and then stake $HALO Tokens to gain voting rights on governance proposals. Therefore, running a dedicated financing DAO based on Arweave has become feasible.

Atomic Assets Combined with UDL Protocol: Intellectual Property Confirmation and Royalty Circulation Mechanism

Atomic Assets, a new NFT paradigm based on Arweave, may be a more suitable NFT standard for the DeSci field than IP-NFTs. Unlike most "incomplete" NFTs, Atomic Assets achieve full on-chain data, allowing for true intellectual property confirmation. Specifically, Atomic Assets permanently store asset data, metadata, and contracts on the Arweave network, all bundled under a single Arweave ID. Additionally, Atomic Assets have no restrictions on storage capacity or data types; they can even be large files like applications.

Atomic Assets not only allow researchers to fully own their research results but also, when combined with the UDL protocol, can establish a complete and usable royalty circulation mechanism. The UDL protocol, short for Universal Data License, allows researchers to personalize the usage terms of Atomic Assets through predefined labels. For example, researchers can decide whether Atomic Assets can be used commercially, for secondary creation, the duration of use, and payment methods; these terms will be treated as separate labels attached to the Atomic Assets as a license. Furthermore, Atomic Assets can be seamlessly listed on the BazAR exchange for sale, allowing researchers to immediately monetize and gain funding support while also enjoying potential future royalty income from their research results.

Stamp Protocol and Vouch Protocol: Building a Reputation System

Stamp is a native content curation protocol in the Arweave ecosystem, allowing anyone to "STAMP" any content on the Permaweb, similar to a "like" action on social media. By "STAMP"ing certain content, both users and content authors can earn $STAMP tokens, providing motivation for the peer review process in DeSci and helping to filter out high-quality research results. Additionally, the Stamp protocol integrates the Vouch protocol, which verifies whether a wallet address belongs to a real person through Vouch Twitter services; only after verification can this wallet address use the "STAMP" function of the Stamp protocol. As a result, for researchers, all their creations and reviews can be recorded. Therefore, the combination of the Stamp protocol and the Vouch protocol can create a credible and traceable reputation system for DeSci.

The Super Parallel Computer AO Expands the Boundaries of DeSci

The launch of the super parallel computer AO grants DeSci more possibilities. As a solid foundation for DeSci, Arweave provides usable middleware and can support any DeSci application. With the support of the super parallel computer AO, Arweave's potential has been significantly enhanced, and this power can cover various scientific categories in DeSci. AO allows any number of processes to run in parallel, capable of handling large amounts of data and infinite computing resources, sufficient to assist DeSci in advancing the most disruptive AI technologies. At the same time, DeSci applications built on AO can communicate through processes, greatly eliminating message silos.

Recently, the AO ecosystem launched Autonomous Finance, a financial infrastructure that introduces AI models on-chain to realize AI-driven new DeFi applications. In the near future, a batch of AgentFi financial applications driven by AI will emerge, along with ContentFi applications. ContentFi applications can assign ownership and monetize data stored on Arweave, allowing high-value data resources in DeSci applications to fully realize their potential within the Autonomous Finance ecosystem, while all participants can profit from the data market generated by ContentFi.

Conclusion

In the progressive era of intelligent automation, Industry 4.0, the rise of DeSci redefines the landscape of traditional science, bringing new vitality and opportunities to the field of scientific research. Meanwhile, Arweave plays a crucial role in this process. Arweave is no longer just a permanent database for DeSci; after the release of the super parallel computer AO, it is now fully capable of supporting the vast DeSci ecosystem.

If "greatness" cannot be planned, then we see the art of "accidental success" in the alignment of DeSci and Arweave. Arweave has been seeking self-cultivation elsewhere, yet inadvertently becomes a stepping stone, providing vast possibilities for DeSci.