Good morning. With Congress in recess this week, Andrew Hemingway of the DeSci Alliance joins us to break down DeSci and related policy considerations.

Intro

Decentralized science, or “DeSci,” uses blockchain technology to reimagine how scientific research is funded, conducted, reviewed, shared, and owned.

In today’s interview, Andrew Hemingway - Founder and Policy Head of the DeSci Alliance - explains the value proposition behind DeSci, highlights a few exciting projects, and discusses key policy and legal issues facing the community.

Q & A

Q1: For someone new to the space, how would you explain DeSci? How does DeSci differ from—or aim to improve upon—the traditional scientific research model?

A1: DeSci frees the first principles of science to flourish, speeding breakthroughs and sharing the upside with everyone involved.

DeSci is what happens when the core ideas of blockchain—open access, immutability, and community funding—are applied to research. Instead of scientists spending half of their week chasing grants, they can raise capital directly from supporters through on‑chain crowdfunding and research DAOs. Every experiment, data set, and lab note is immutably timestamped, ensuring the grad student who makes the discovery actually gets the credit and the results stay tamper‑proof. Because data, peer reviews, and methods live in the open, anyone can audit, replicate, or build on the work—no gatekeepers or paywalls.

Q2: Can you share one or two examples of ongoing research projects that are following the DeSci model?

A2: Two live DeSci efforts worth watching:

(1) Curetopia – a patient‑led BioDAO that just raised $1.77 million on Solana to fast‑track treatments for ultra‑rare metabolic diseases. By crowdsourcing capital and running high‑throughput yeast screens, the team has already surfaced two repurposed‑drug candidates for AARS2 deficiency and is gearing up for parallel N‑of‑1 trials—work that would normally take traditional labs years and a far larger budget.

(2) PeptideDAO – a fledgling research collective bootstrapping open, on‑chain studies of performance‑ and longevity‑oriented peptides. It funds early‑stage experiments that Big Pharma overlooks, publishes data and protocols openly, and lets token‑holders vote on what compounds move down the pipeline, keeping IP and incentives in the community’s hands.

Q3: What is the DeSci Alliance, and what role does it play in the ecosystem?

A3: The DeSci Alliance is the gathering spot for founders, funders, and friends of decentralized science—part amplifier, part town square. With roughly a thousand members, it sparks introductions across labs, projects,DAOs, and tooling teams so ideas, capital, and talent flow faster.

On the policy front, the Alliance serves as a daily help desk: pointing projects to practical regulatory resources, coordinating comment letters, and nudging every member to speak up when new rules are drafted. By turning that collective know‑how into a unified voice, the Alliance is steadily giving DeSci a seat at the table where research and innovation policy get set.

Q4: What are some of the key challenges builders and researches in DeSci are facing? Are there any common legal or regulatory roadblocks they run into?

A4: Builders and researchers in DeSci still hit a few stubborn walls: sustainable lab funding, wet‑lab access, IP management, and, most of all, murky rules. On the legal side, tokens that finance projects can look like unregistered securities, exposing founders (and even passive backers) to liability—recent U.S. court rulings are treating some DAOs as general partnerships and dragging investors in as well.

Once a project moves from benchtop data to human testing, it must thread the same FDA or EMA hoops as traditional biotech, and fresh guidance on decentralized clinical trials still demands IRB oversight, rigorous informed‑consent tracking, and compliant data handling.

Add in privacy laws like HIPAA/GDPR for patient data and unresolved IP ownership questions around on‑chain research objects, and you get a regulatory maze that can slow even the most agile project.

In short, the tech is permissionless, but the path to market definitely isn’t—navigating securities, clinical‑trial, and data‑privacy regimes remain the greatest challenges for DeSci teams.

Q5: How do you envision the DeSci space evolving over the next few years? For example, what types of individuals and/or institutions do you see gravitating towards the space now and in the next 2-3 years?

A5: Here’s how I see the next stretch playing out. First in the door will be the scrappy AI‑drug‑discovery and longevity founders who’ve watched BioDAOs like VitaDAO raise lab budgets in a weekend—those folks can smell momentum. Hot on their heels come the rare‑disease patient groups; they don’t have five years to wait for an NIH grant, so token‑funded N‑of‑1 trials look like a lifeline. The third wave is the “grown‑ups”: mid‑tier pharma, CROs, and university tech‑transfer teams who realize on‑chain IP deals and open data can shave months (and lawyers) off a licensing cycle. That mix drags in the supporting cast—reg‑savvy attorneys, data‑privacy pros, and policy analysts—who’ll iron out the securities, FDA, and GDPR wrinkles while keeping the permissionless spirit alive.

Q6: What policy areas are most important to the DeSci community right now? Are there any specific reforms or proposals the community would like to see?

A6: Policy chatter in DeSci keeps circling the same three pressure points. First, securities law clarity: a project’s tokens fund research but can look like unregistered securities, so builders are pushing the SEC for a “token‑safe‑harbor” rule that treats early‑stage utility tokens like Kickstarter perks instead of shares.

Second, clinical‑trial rules: once lab work reaches patients, everything passes through FDA—and the community wants the agency’s new decentralized‑clinical‑trial guidance to explicitly cover token‑funded N‑of‑1 studies and remote data capture so small DAOs aren’t forced into big‑pharma budgeting.

Third, data and IP: HIPAA/GDPR compliance and patent ownership for on‑chain IP‑NFTs still live in gray zones, so folks are drafting open‑license templates and lobbying for a sandbox where privacy‑preserving storage can be deemed compliant by default.

Q7: If you could leave policymakers and their staff with one key takeaway about why DeSci matters, what would it be?

A7: DeSci is science, unleashed. For too long discovery has been captive to grant panels and paywalled journals; now the tools of funding, data‑sharing, and collaboration flow directly to the public. By opening the purse strings and the lab notebooks at the same time, DeSci restores science’s original magic—curiosity that anyone can act on, innovation that doesn’t wait for institutional permission. Give that model room to grow and you’ll see faster cures, cleaner tech, and a citizenry re‑engaged in the wonder of finding things out.

Policy ask: carve out a clear token‑funding safe harbor and streamlined rules for decentralized trials so these community‑driven labs can operate compliantly and at full speed.

Q8: For readers looking to learn more about DeSci and use cases, what are some helpful resources to help them get up to speed? Any projects, platforms, or communities you recommend they check out?

A8: If you’re ready to dig in, start with DeSci Alliance—its X community give newcomers a one‑stop orientation and a direct line to builders, funders, and policy chatter.

Next, explore DeSci World: a live, crowdsourced map of the entire ecosystem that lets you filter by research focus, tooling layer, or open‑roles and see where your interests fit desci.world. For concrete use‑case inspiration, check out Circular Protocol, a purpose‑built Layer‑1 that’s securing clinical data and HIPAA/GDPR‑compliant health records on‑chain circularprotocol.org, and Causality Network, a dApp that proves the authenticity of IoT‑generated lab data with secure‑enclave signatures and zero‑knowledge storage—tackling reproducibility head‑on https://www.causality.network.

Those four stops—the Alliance hub, the ecosystem map, and two very different project blueprints—will bring any policy watcher or curious researcher up to speed fast. But most of all simply engage, ask questions, and reach out.

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Look Ahead

Congress

Congress is in recess next week.

PGP for Crypto

• Wednesday, April 23 - Crypto Briefings and Roundtable Discussions.

SEC Roundtable

• Friday, April 25 - Know Your Custodian: Key Considerations for Crypto Custody.

Quick Hits

House E&C Moves Blockchain Bills: Last week, House Energy & Commerce advanced the Deploying American Blockchains Act of 2025 (Voice Vote) and Promoting Resilient Supply Chains Act (50-1). Full summary in Pro Newsletter.​

PROOF Act: Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) reintroduced legislation to prohibit crypto exchanges from commingling customer and company funds, and to require crypto exchanges and custodians to obtain monthly proof-of-reserves attestations from an independent third party. Full summary in Pro Newsletter.

DoJ Pushback: In a recent letter to the Deputy Attorney General, six Democratic Senators urged the DOJ to reconsider its recently announced shift in priorities when it comes to prosecuting cases involving digital assets.

Debanking: In a new article, Nic Carter catalogs the lead up to the collapse of Signature Bank, offering up evidence that the “FDIC seized Signature bank to invoke the Systemic Risk Exception, which would allow uninsured depositors at SVB and other banks to be made whole, even though Signature was solvent.”

• Full Article in Pirate Wires: “Signature Didn’t Have to Die, Either”

Trivia

Last Week’s A: Rep. Rick Allen represents Augusta, Georgia, home to the Augusta National Golf Club.

This Week’s Q: Which President started the first official White House Easter Egg Roll?

-GSL