At festivals and concerts, these people had taken psychedelics and flipped out or crashed out. And they were some of the people PsyDAO members have helped in recent months, volunteering for harm reduction organizations PsyCare and Zendo to create safe spaces across Cyprus, Germany, Texas, and Colorado.

Psychedelics can open doors to joy, insight, and connection—but sometimes the journey gets rough. When that happens, psychedelic harm reduction provides what matters most: soft mats, blankets, low lighting, and the simple reminder that no one has to go through it alone.

These PsyDAO volunteers said their sessions were sometimes challenging, often rewarding, but they served as inspiration and fuel for us to continue PsyDAO's mission of decentralizing psychedelic use and creating, as our tagline says, "a new set and setting for psychedelics."

Read PsyDAO: An Overview.

Why Psychedelic Harm Reduction is Essential

Psychedelic services are only legal in about 10 countries and two U.S. states, meaning the vast majority of the millions of trips that happen every year occur in situations without professional guidance.

By far, most of these everyday trips unfold without incident. At the festivals and concerts where PsyDAO members participated, tens of thousands of people used psychedelics without any need for care. Research backs up the idea that psychedelics are generally safe and well-tolerated. One survey of hundreds of psychedelics users found that about 60 percent had never had a challenging, difficult, or distressing experience.

Dealing with Difficulty

Yet research also shows that challenging experiences do happen, and they can be devastating. One survey found that 3 percent of the people who filled out the survey "sought medical, psychiatric, or psychological assistance in the days/weeks following their most distressing psychedelic experience."

The blog Ecstatic Integration catalogues psychedelic harm, and has shown that, when challenging experiences aren't properly navigated and integrated during a journey, they can leave lasting psychological difficulties. PsyDAO members themselves have gotten “spun” on ayahuasca or DMT; at least one was so convinced that silence put him in touch with “Something Greater” that he refused to speak for a week.

If you’re having trouble before, during, or after a trip, a psychedelic emergency hotline is available through the Fireside Project.

PsyDAO Members' Volunteer Efforts

The push to expand our sphere of care was boosted by a blog post about Barış, a PsyDAO core member who volunteered at a festival on the island of Cyprus. There, Baris helped people having challenging psychedelic experiences. One woman even told the team, "You saved my life."

Reading about Barış inspired other PsyDAO members to take action. "His actions had a ripple effect," said Steven Fülle, one of PsyDao’s core contributors.

Read: 'You Saved My Life': We Built a Safety Net at a Psychedelic Fest. You Can Too.

Steven's Experience: Presence as Harm Reduction

Steven Fülle's work at Germany's New Healing festival revealed a crucial insight: most harm reduction happens before anyone needs direct care. Working overnight shifts with the festival's awareness team, Steven discovered the power of visible presence.

"When I put on that vest, I felt the energy that previous generations of care providers had built," Steven reflected. "People would come up just to thank us for being there. I realized that just by our presence, we probably prevent most potential harm." Visible care spaces reassure thousands who never walk through the door: knowing help is available "makes them feel safe," reducing panic before it starts.

The variety of needs was striking during his second night shift when multiple incidents clustered around 3 AM: From helping someone experiencing breathing difficulties at the peak of their LSD trip to providing massage oil for an MDMA-enhanced threesome, the types of care required by festival goers can be just as multifaceted as the psychedelic experience itself.

Read about our new project: A Gas Pedal for Endogenous DMT

ReCap's Experience: Large-Scale Concert Care

PsyDAO core member ReCap volunteered with the Zendo project at the Texas Eclipse Festival and a Phish concert in Colorado. His experience distills why visible, low-barrier harm-reduction services matter even when acute crises are rare.

At the Phish show that drew an estimated 40,000–50,000 people, the Zendo room welcomed "eight or ten guests all night," most of whom simply needed water, a quiet mat and a calm presence while an intense dose settled. ReCap was struck by the contrast between the crowd size and the tiny number requiring hands-on help, calling it "a good illustration of how generally safe psychedelics are."

One example made the point that low-stress interventions can make a huge difference: a man on four tabs of LSD was ushered in by his buddy, barely able to speak or walk. ReCap helped lay him down, offered water and silent companionship. The work felt minimal—"I sat there and meditated," ReCap admitted—but invaluable, demonstrating how simple reassurance can avert escalation. Three hours later the guest walked out under his own power.

Later at the Phish show, police delivered a disoriented, paranoid attendee who tore at wall tapestries and feared he'd been drugged. Three sitters spent nearly an hour grounding him until he was stable enough for an Uber home. That calm presence helped him avoid a trip to jail or to the hospital.

The Zendo medical director, Case Newsom, who was at the Phish show, told Joe Moore of Psychedelics Today that he believed Zendo’s presence significantly reduced the number of patients who needed to be transported to the hospital.

Read: In Longevity Tests, PsyDAO and PumpScience Pit LSD vs Psilocin

Decentralized Organization, Decentralized Care

There's a beautiful symmetry happening here. Just as Ethereum showed the world that value could be exchanged without banks, psychedelic harm reduction shows that care can be provided without centralized institutions. Both operate on principles of decentralization, peer-to-peer trust, and collective responsibility.

This work spreads like ripples. At first, there was one PsyDAO member stepping up to provide PsyCare at a festival. Then there were two. Then three. Each act of care inspires the next, and what begins as a single vest, a quiet tent, or a simple gesture of presence can ripple outward into a global culture of safety and compassion. From Cyprus to Germany to America, these ripples are already visible—and they are growing.

Because PsyDAO has a diverse and enthusiastic community, we can take individual initiative or decentralized initiative to take action in myriad ways—whether that's participating in conferences, through teaching, through workshops, or in this growing effort at festivals and concerts.

We are now assembling a global network of individuals willing to provide PsyCare. If you feel called to contribute, reach out on our Discord. Together, we can continue building safe spaces for psychedelic journeys wherever they are needed.

Ready to participate in the future of psychedelics?

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

Yet people hardly talk about this curious, mysterious fact. And science still knows very little about how the production of this endogenous psychedelic is regulated.

In our biggest project yet, PsyDAO has helped fund an important investigation into one of neuroscience's most intriguing puzzles. The eDMT project could revolutionize our understanding of the brain's natural chemistry, and open the door to regulating the body’s own supply of DMT.

Conceived by renowned DMT researcher Dr. Andrew Gallimore, the investigation is led by prominent chemist Dr. Christopher McCurdy at the University of Florida.

eDMT is sponsored by a nonprofit called Noonautics, and is being conducted under a formal agreement with the University of Florida. Research will happen in Dr. McCurdy’s lab.

In a novel agreement, PsyDAO sent $107,000 worth of stable coins to Noonautics, to be converted into dollars and sent to the University of Florida.

PsyDAO’s funding powers one milestone in the research, which totals over $400,000.

$eDMT is here.

Read PsyDAO: An Overview.

Follow the eDMT project on X.

Picking Up Where 1977 Left Off

The eDMT project is novel, but it has a strong scientific foundation. Researchers long ago discovered that DMT is produced in a wide variety of plant and animal tissues, including humans. However, DMT’s exact pathway of creation and regulation remains a mystery.

Intriguingly, a clue has been unearthed. While researching his latest book, “Death by Astonishment,” Dr. Gallimore stumbled upon a long-forgotten 1977 research paper. In it, scientists reported evidence for peptides that apparently inhibit a well-known molecule called INMT. INMT is a “gas pedal” for DMT, converting tryptamine into dimethyltryptamine. The enigmatic peptide, which was never characterized, seems to be INMT’s “brake pedal,” and therefore limits endogenous DMT.

Despite the potential significance of this 1977 discovery, the research was abandoned and remained buried for nearly five decades. That is–until Dr. Gallimore dredged it up.

The insight could open a new window into human biology. An understanding of DMT’s gas/brake pedals could lead to new approaches to treating ischemic stroke, neurodegenerative diseases, and mood disorders. Dialing down the body’s DMT could treat mental illnesses. Ratcheting up endogenous DMT could give humans access to a legal and "drug-free" pathway to altered states of consciousness.

See Dr. Gallimore’s explanation of the project.

Rigorous Scientific Approach

Before we can regulate our own DMT, we need to verify the existence of DMT’s “brake pedal.” So the project's first phase will focus on replicating and extending the 1977 findings. The research team in Dr. McCurdy’s lab at the University of Florida will use advanced analytical techniques to isolate and characterize the unknown peptide–first in rabbit tissue, then in human cerebrospinal fluid. The study is designed with appropriate controls and follows established protocols for peptide purification and identification.

Read the press release from the University of Florida.

The eDMT Roadmap:

Community-Driven, Blockchain-powered Science

This novel research is powered by an equally novel organizational structure, the DAO. PsyDAO, like other research DAOs, operates on principles of Decentralized Science, or DeSci. DeSci is organized and funded via blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana.

PsyDAO has a strong foundation. The organization was incubated by a DeSci pioneer called Molecule, and is part of an ecosystem of DeSci organizations researching Longevity, Women’s Health, Gut Health, and more. These DAOs are controlled by thousands of token holders who vote to approve projects. In a vote using a blockchain, PsyDAO token holders signaled their support for eDMT, almost unanimously. eDMT is perhaps the first psychedelic research project that uses blockchain tech.

To fund the eDMT research, PsyDAO is issuing the $eDMT token through Molecule’s token platform, Bio.

Read How PsyDAO's Token-Based Voting System Works.

Use Molecule’s ChatGPT plug-in to ask questions about DeSci.

PsyDAO’s Broad Scope

Like many DAOs, PsyDAO members have a wide range of interests and enthusiasms, and it shows in the diversity of the group’s endeavors. Since November, PsyDAO has used blockchain tech to:

• Build an artificial intelligence agent.

• Fund the opening of a cafe in Peru.

• Launch a project on longevity.

• Research a novel dissociative.

• Give grants to small psychedelic projects.

Read about the launch of PsyDAO’s main token, $PSY, which netted 661 $ETH, about $2 million at the time.

About the Research Team

Dr. Andrew Gallimore is a chemical pharmacologist and neurobiologist, and a leading expert on DMT neuroscience. He has authored three books on DMT. With Dr. Rick Strassman, he was one of the pioneers in extended-state DMT protocols.

Dr. Christopher McCurdy is a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida with expertise in the isolation and characterization of psychoactive compounds. He has authored hundreds of research papers and appeared on the TED stage and the Andrew Huberman podcast.

Ready to participate in the future of psychedelic research?

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

Five hundred years ago, when Ponce de Leon scoured the New World for a mythical serum, the average person died at 35. In the last half-millennia, we’ve improved diet and sanitation, dentistry and infant mortality. A thousand small changes, put together, mean that people are living five decades longer.

At the same time, we’ve discovered other medicinal wonders that border on the magical. Chiefly, from the point of view of this Decentralized Autonomous Organization, psychedelics.

The West’s most common psychedelics have changed art, music, festival culture, science, and society. LSD and psilocin (which is what psilocybin breaks down to in the body) have shaped the Beatles and Shpongle, Woodstock and Burning Man, pharmaceuticals and clinical research. Dozens of trials aim to put LSD and psilocin on the doctor’s shelf as treatments for anxiety and depression.

Yet there’s still so much we don’t know. Very little research has been done on LSD and psilocin and one very important topic: what is their relationship to the fountain of youth? Meaning: could LSD and psilocin make you live longer? Or, on the other hand, could they cause you to die sooner?

Hints are peeking out from scientific studies.

Recent studies suggest that classic psychedelics may directly modulate aging biology. LSD extends worm lifespan by about 25%. (1) Psilocin extends survival in aged mice, preserves telomeres, reduces senescence markers, and enhances stress-resistance pathways. (2) Together, these findings provide convergent evidence that serotonergic psychedelics can engage conserved longevity mechanisms across species.

Race to the Finish Line: LSD vs. Psilocin

In a novel first, we are pitting these two psychedelics against each other in head-to-head trials for longevity. We’ll see which leads to longer lives in flies and mice. If results are positive and safe, we’ll move on to humans.

Directly comparing LSD and psilocin side by side offers unique scientific advantages. While both act on the serotonergic system, they differ in receptor affinity, metabolic stability, and signaling bias, making them ideal comparators. A head-to-head pipeline can reveal whether their anti-aging effects are conserved and generalizable or compound-specific, while enabling direct benchmarking across worm, flies, mice, and ultimately humans. This comparative design maximizes insight into serotonergic modulation of aging, creates a richer dataset for researchers, and fuels community engagement through a clear narrative: the first psychedelic longevity “race.”

We’ll give LSD and psilocin to flies and mice to see how the drugs affect lifespan and other measures.

The Swiss labs of Juvion have been tasked with testing the fruit flies. Juvion is a leader in testing compounds that could improve healthspan and preserve mobility for active aging. We’ll see how the the psychedelics affect the flies’ movement (speed, distance) and negative geotaxis–do they climb the wall of the testing chamber more slowly.

Next, we’ll dose mice with LSD and psilocin. We’ll be looking at survival rates, how well the mice run mazes, and whether the psychedelics affect their weight, temperature, plasma, and organs.

VivoArchitect will test the mice. VivoArchitect is a preclinical Contract Research Organization (CRO) in Switzerland specialized in aging, healthspan and lifespan research. It provides biotech and pharmaceutical companies with high-quality in vivo models to accelerate drug development.Follow the tests on X: X.com/PumpPsy

Pump up the Science

To bring awareness of these tests to the public, we’re happy to partner with Pump.Science.

Pump.science, a Solana-based protocol that funds experiments via token trading fees, provides the ideal platform for this work.

Pump.Science is a crypto-powered, game-like protocol that brings token-based participation into longevity research — aiming to extend lifespan and enhance healthspan, meaning the quality of life lived.

At Pump.Science, developers propose a potentially life-extending compound or "cocktail," which becomes the basis of a new token once it passes basic checks.

Experiments on fruit flies and mice are streamed live so everyone can monitor results as they happen.

This is stadium science, research for the people. It transforms traditional, slow, expensive research into an open, speculative, and dynamic process

Pump.Science was co-founded by Benji Leibowitz and is supported by other members of the BioProtocol ecosystem. Pump.Science has found success and attention testing a number of compounds. That includes Urolithin A, which exists in pomegranates and other foods and clears out old mitochondria. Urolithin A has been shown to extend lifespan in worms. Pump.science also tested Rifampicin, an antibiotic with emerging promise in aging research. Drugs made from Urolithin A and Rifampicin could someday be as common and important as Vitamin D or fish oil.

Magic mushrooms change your cellular age?

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/

$LSD and $PSILO Tokens

To fund our tests, we’re minting $LSD and $PSILO tokens, available on Solana. Trading fees are generated every time the tokens are bought and sold. If the trading volume is high, PsyDAO can fund even more science, moving on from flies and mice to decentralized human trials.

The contract addresses of the tokens are:$LSD - UcqRYpsSSnqod6jTHDY6U5xtsQ3JCxSGV8yrAcqdrug

$PSILO - UfNSoWxHgcqFLaRRvQnbAnZa7KMc5aKmXvkS1F4drug

Read about our main tokens, $PSYC and $PSY

What is PsyDAO?

PsyDAO changes how psychedelic science and art happen.

How? We're using blockchain technology to enable wide participation.

Part of the Bio.xyz network that has deployed millions of dollars into decentralized science, PsyDAO has a broad mission to improve the human condition.

**Read about our research into a novel dissociative, DMXE, how we partnered with Amazonians to build a cafe and lifestyle brand, and how we launched a multi-agent AI system to study psychedelics.

Token Buy Back

PsyDAO plans to partner with companies in the psychedelic space to sell legal products adjacent to LSD and psilocin. For example, mushroom grow kits and artistic blotter paper. The online partners will geoblock anyone who is not allowed to buy these products, preventing banned sales. We plan to have affiliate links for these products. From these links, a portion of revenues the DAO collects will be dedicated to buying back $LSD and $PSILO tokens.

Scientific Rigor

The goal of the study is to publish the data to advance the state of psychedelic science.

To ensure our results are trustworthy and unbiased, we're following gold-standard scientific practices at every step. We have strict safety rules: if either compound shows signs of harming the animals or reducing their lifespan, we immediately stop that part of the study. If we advance to human trials, participants will need institutional review board approval, full informed consent, and continuous safety monitoring—the same rigorous protections used in all legitimate research.

Research for the Ages

In the end, $LSD vs. $PSILO is the first crypto-funded, open-science investigation into whether LSD and psilocin can help us live longer and healthier. This head-to-head race makes cutting-edge science as accessible as checking your phone.

What’s more, $LSD and $PSILO holders become active participants in this historic experiment. Trading fees directly fund the lab work. Excitement and interest draw attention that leads to more research.

The search for the fountain of youth looks different five hundred years later; the goal is just the same. Who could’ve guessed that LSD and psilocin would be part of the quest?

Ready to participate in the future of psychedelic research?

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

Sources:

1. Carrilho et al. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide extends lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. bioRxiv. 2025.06.16.659936; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.16.659936

2. Kato et al. Psilocybin treatment extends cellular lifespan and improves survival of aged mice. NPJ Aging. 2025 Jul 8;11(1):55. doi: 10.1038/s41514-025-00244-x

How? We're using blockchain technology to enable wide participation.

Part of the Bio.xyz network that has deployed over $15 million into decentralized science, PsyDAO has a broad mission to improve the human condition.

Why This Matters

We face unprecedented mental health crises: 100,000 annual overdose deaths in America, skyrocketing depression rates, and teen suicide epidemics. Much of life is not colorful enough. Traditional research funding is slow and bureaucratic, often excluding the communities that created psychedelic knowledge in the first place—from indigenous peoples to counterculture pioneers.

Our solution: Use Web3 technology to create participatory research funding, ensure fair compensation for Indigenous knowledge holders, and accelerate development of life-saving psychedelic treatments. We build a portfolio of valuable intellectual property and share potential rewards across our entire community through token ownership.

How Our Governance Works

PsyDAO uses an innovative two-token system based on Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning theories of commons governance:

• PSY tokens: Tradeable like Bitcoin, but each token represents voting power in research funding decisions. We raised our initial treasury of $2M by selling PSY tokens directly to those who wish to become a part of our ecosystem and vote on its direction. As our ecosystem expands, so too will the utility of $PSY as psychedelic cultural currency

• PSYC tokens: Non-transferable membership NFTs bound to a digital and real-world Shipibo art piece called kené. PSYC holders have additional governance and IP rights in the DAO, outlined here. We currently have 34 PSYC members with deep psychedelic knowledge from a variety of disciplines who provide strategic oversight to PsyDAO. Additional PSYC slots are minted along a fibonacci scale, progressively decentralizing the DAO.

• Governance process: Community members propose projects → $PSYC holders vet proposals → $PSY holders vote on final funding decisions.

Intellectual Property Tokens

One way that we decentralize psychedelic science with tokens. For each project we fund, we create tokens that anyone can purchase to support and become involved in a project.

The first token we create upon funding a project is an IP-NFT, which represents the project’s intellectual property (broadly defined) on the Ethereum blockchain ledger. We then create a pool of tokens called IP tokens (IPTs). These tokens represent a stake in a project, and can be freely traded on decentralized exchanges. PsyDAO’s goal is to create and share psychedelic intellectual property in a “commons”.

Any individual abiding by the co-governed rules of the commons can access its benefits - a radically different approach to territorial psychedelic IP trends we’ve seen this decade.

What We're Building

Decentralized Art & Science Funding Pipeline: Our primary mandate is to pool resources and vote on how the resources are used to support our mission. To that end, we’ve constructed and enacted a deal pipeline which balances community alignment, expert diligence, and decentralized decision-making to make funding choices.

Early Career Fellowship: Our first fellow, Zeus Tipado, was accepted this year to develop deoxymethoxetamine (DMXE), a dissociative compound that may offer advantages over ketamine for treating certain health disorders.

BeeARD AI System: Multi-agent platform that scours scientific literature to identify promising research opportunities, featuring GraphSurfer for immersive knowledge exploration.

Indigenous Partnerships: KenéCafé, the first café owned entirely by Shipibo people on the Amazon River, plus Kené Life e-commerce and art licensing platform ensuring that royalties from art sales reach Shipibo artists.

Community Impact: PsyCARE harm reduction tents at festivals have literally saved lives, while token farming programs connect our community to the broader decentralized science ecosystem.

Get Involved

Buy PSY tokens to participate in funding decisions and governance votes. Participate in a working group to connect with other members and find a project to work on. Contribute time, labor, and/or expertise to become eligible for PSYC core membership. Apply for funding, grants, or even a fellowship through our various programs supporting diverse creators, builders, and researchers.

PsyDAO represents the convergence of ancient wisdom and cutting-edge technology, creating new pathways for healing while ensuring fair compensation for knowledge holders. From AI-powered research discovery to Amazon riverside cafés protecting Indigenous IP, we're building the infrastructure for a more participatory and equitable approach to psychedelic science.

Ready to participate in the future of psychedelic research?

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

When they are, most people have no real say. Governments, big pharma, and universities make the choices.

PsyDAO breaks that mold. Every holder of $PSY tokens votes on research. Transparently. On the Ethereum blockchain.

See, we’re a bioDAO. We’re incubated by Bio.XYZ–a group of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations which are democratic. Bio DAO’s are researching brain health, hair loss, women’s health, and more. The BioDAOs have deployed $15 million into research.

We do psychedelics. We’ve already funded AI, drug development, and a real-life plant medicine cafe.

What comes next will be decided by vote.

Read our blog about us as a BioDAO.

The basic principle: One token, one vote

At its core, PsyDAO's governance structure is simple. Each $PSY token represents one vote in community decisions. Hold 100 tokens? You get 100 votes. Hold 10,000? You get 10,000 votes. Those with the most at stake have the biggest voice.

How proposals make it to a vote

Not every research idea can be put up for a community vote. PsyDAO has a process.

Our process starts in the Working Groups. For science, the Science Working Group takes the lead. Tyler Quigley, PhD, is advised by scientists from America and Europe. We look for projects that fit PsyDAO’s mission of Promoting Progress in Psychedelic Science and Culture. These projects benefit PsyDAO as a whole.

Read about the difference between $PSY and $PSYC

Quorum sensing: A core team of PsyDAO members weighs in first. These 34 members are psychedelic scientists, lawyers, writers, artists and researchers with deep knowledge of the field. Each of these 34 members holds a $PSYC token. $PSYC token holders are like an advisory board.

(Note that $PSY and $PSYC tokens, though with similar names, are quite different. $PSY=money. $PSYC=membership. Read more here.)

The Science Working Group presents proposed deals to the 34 $PSYC holders, who vote on which should move forward. In our last round, $PSYC voted on about 12 proposals. Three deals got support from $PSYC holders. One is on drug development and two are on basic research.

These move toward a wider vote of $PSY holders.

The mechanics of on-chain voting

When a vote opens, $PSY holders connect their cryptocurrency wallets to a site called Snapshot. (Here’s an example of a past vote.) Voting is usually open for a few days.

Again–one $PSY, one vote.

The vote is simple: should we fund these projects … or not.

Proposals with 50.1 percent support win. They will get funded.

What happens next?

We send money to the researchers.

After that? It depends. Our deals are often tokenized, creating governance tokens of for the projects. For example–our drug research project, $DMXE, has a token. Also our AI agent system, $BeeARD.

If these projects succeed, the success accrues to the token holders.

Psychedelics are so powerful. It’s time everyone had a say in how they are researched.

One More Thing

Reminder: PsyDAO is a mission-driven organization and we rely on a lot of help.

Thank you to all our token holders; your purchase funds our art and science.

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

On the lakefront boulevard in Peru, near the Ucayali River—the main headwaters of the Amazon—sits a café unlike any other. KenéCafé sits between plant medicine retreats and the bustling energy of Peru's fastest-growing city, Pucallpa.

This is the first café owned and operated entirely by the Shipibo people, whose shamans National Geographic explorer Wade Davis called "the Harvard or Sorbonne of the Amazon: the highest reference in matters of knowledge."

The KenéCafé has a beautiful awning and outdoor seating and a view of the water. Step inside and you'll find some remarkable things, a mix of North and South: an espresso machine serving coffee beans from Ucayali, Italian cappuccino alongside Shipibo botanical drinks, plant medicine extracts next to WiFi routers, local wood-appointed carpentry complemented by air conditioning. Every element represents a careful fusion of North and South, ancient and modern, sacred and practical. KenéCafé is an embassy of the forest in the city, a meeting point for revolution, where kinship, resistance, and indigenous renaissance brew quietly behind every cup.

The Injustice of Stolen Designs

To understand what makes KenéCafé revolutionary, you must first understand the profound injustice it seeks to correct. The Shipibo people possess one of the world's richest cultures, recognized globally for their plant medicines and their intricate geometric patterns called kené. These kené designs represent thousands of years of accumulated wisdom, sacred patterns received through plant medicine visions that translate nature's intelligence into visual language.

Yet, despite creating art celebrated worldwide, the Shipibo live in material poverty and economic disenfranchisement. Their greatest potential source of wealth—their intellectual property—has been systematically extracted by outsiders. Middlemen and middlewomen profit from reselling kené handicrafts. Retreat operators employ Shipibo shamans while keeping the lion's share of profits. And countless businesses worldwide use Shipibo patterns without permission or compensation, raking in tens of millions of dollars in revenue per year.

This isn't a case of cultural misunderstanding. Both Shipibo and Western cultures understand intellectual property perfectly. Shipibo artists know exactly whose designs belong to whom and who deserves recognition. This is a case of misuse of mechanisms for protection and neglect of fair compensation.

A Lawyer's Vision for Justice

That changes with KenéCafé. The project was started by a Shipibo lawyer, Demer (Korin Niwe) Gonzales Vasquez, one of only three lawyers in the Shipibo tribe, who wrote his dissertation specifically on protecting Shipibo intellectual property. His vision was simple yet radical: introduce modern IP protection systems to Shipibo artists while introducing the world to Shipibo concepts of intellectual property ownership. He is one of the heads of a project called IP Squared: Indigenous Peoples’ Intellectual Property.

Every artwork sold at KenéCafé—whether in person or online through the Kene Life platform—operates under a revolutionary licensing system. Here's how it works: 25% of every sale goes to royalty payments. These aren't one-time fees but ongoing compensation for each product sold. The artist receives 80% of these royalties, while 20% flows to the Kene Rao Foundation, a legal defense fund protecting the intellectual property of the entire Shipibo people.

This represents something unprecedented: a system for selling indigenous designs that actually collaborates closely with and returns revenue to the indigenous community. No one else selling Shipibo kené patterns has bothered to license them properly.

Two Technologies Converge

What makes this royalty system possible is the convergence of two powerful technologies that have never met before. From the Amazon comes an ancient technology perfected over millennia: plant medicine like ayahuasca and kené huasté that allows humans to communicate directly with nature's intelligence. The Shipibo have preserved and refined this technology for connecting with plant consciousness and translating those conversations into the sacred geometric patterns of kené.

From the North comes a different kind of technology: intellectual property systems, smart contracts, and cryptocurrency that enable fair wealth distribution on a global scale. Both cultures understand ownership and credit, but Northerners bring the technological infrastructure to track and protect that ownership worldwide.

The revolutionary moment happens when these technologies meet. After Shipibo artists create kené through plant medicine visions—weaving rugs, painting mugs, and designing textiles—lawyers working with Kene Life register the designs and ensure fair payment through smart contracts and cryptocurrency. Each sale generates royalties that flow directly back to the artists and their community, most of whom don’t have bank accounts but can receive digital cash payments through crypto.

For example: the below kené tapestry was created by a Shipibo woman named Elisia. Her authorship of the design is registered in a contract saved in Google Drive. Whoever buys the cloth knows to send royalties to KeneRao–and he did!

True Exchange, Not Extraction

The cultural exchange and technological fusion benefits both sides. For centuries, Westerners have been losing touch with nature's intelligence, forgetting how to listen to plants and understand their wisdom, while the Shipibo have preserved this crucial technology for communicating with non-human intelligence.

At KenéCafé, urban visitors from around the world encounter Shipibo guides who can still talk to plants and capture what they say in visual form. But unlike typical extraction where knowledge flows one way out of the Amazon, this royalty system creates genuine reciprocity.

A New Model for Indigenous Economics

KenéCafé is proof of concept for a completely different relationship between traditional knowledge and modern economics. As the world increasingly seeks indigenous wisdom to address ecological and spiritual crises, this project demonstrates how such engagement can be mutually beneficial rather than extractive.

Every revolution begins with an idea, and KenéCafé's idea is simple: the people who create cultural wealth should be the ones who benefit from it. Through proper licensing, traditional knowledge receives the legal protection it deserves. Royalties flow to artists. Ancient wisdom, creative talent and hard work, and modern technology create something neither could achieve alone.

This is what happens when plant medicine meets blockchain, when ancient wisdom encounters modern fairness, when sacred geometry finds digital protection. In the KenéCafé, two worlds don't just meet: they brew new cultural possibilities together, one cup at a time.

We slept beside the woman the entire night.

This was at a music festival in Cyprus. The woman was having a crisis—the kind of crisis medics and police can't help with. The type of emotional and psychological breakdown that is surprisingly common at festivals—where intense music, lack of sleep, and psychoactive substances can create mental and spiritual collapses.

These kinds of problems can be best helped by a new kind of care: peer-support. Regular people lending a helping hand to someone in need in a safe and nurturing space.

Which is what we did for the woman. We supported her family, reassured them, and helped her plan her return home safely. With just a few caring people, we helped stabilize a real life or death crisis. Afterwards, she thanked us 100 times, and  told us:

“You saved my life.”

Her words became a core memory for our team — a powerful reminder of why we do this. This was a valuable experience that made everyone on our team 'older and wiser.'

[Read our blog post: 'We're Dying Out Here.' How PsyDAO Aims to Change the Culture.]

A Chill Space for Grounding, Care, and Community

Over five days and four unforgettable nights at Dark Dreams IV Festival, in the Lefkara Mountains of Cyprus, on an island in the Mediterranean, we created a PsyCARE tent—a humble sanctuary where people could pause, ground themselves, and reconnect with safety and inner peace.

This effort is one way festivals can keep people safe—through decentralized, self-organized efforts.

Together, we welcomed 50+ people into our space. Many came to recharge — phones, minds, and bodies. Some found joy in creating art. Others simply needed someone to talk to or sit quietly. Four minor psychological cases and one major situation, outlined above, were supported.

PsyCARE became more than a chill space. It became a living experience of what’s possible when strangers choose to hold each other with presence, trust, and love.

[Read our blog post: 'Sculptural Environments Made of Feeling': How an Acclaimed Artist ‘Sees’ DMXE]

What We Offered

• A shaded chill zone with psychill music — a flow of psychedelic chillout, downtempo, and nature-inspired sounds

• Gentle trip-sitting and emotional support

• Non-judgmental space to sit, cry, create, or just breathe

• Herbal tea, water, snacks, and pillows

• Art tools—paper, stones, markers—for expression and connection

• A warm place to charge phones — and hearts

Many visitors found peace through art and creative play.

With simple tools they turned intense feelings into form. In silence or light conversation, they stayed for hours, reconnecting with their inner world.

[Buy PsyDAO’s psychedelic science hat.]

PsyCARE in Context

Most psychedelic trips are harmless, and many are helpful. Yet, "bad trips" exist. When psychedelic trips go sideways, people can find themselves anxious and fearful, with existential struggle and social disconnection. There's often no help—in part because psychedelics are mostly illegal. Bad effects can last for years.

A few festivals do have help for this. Zendo, from MAPS, works at Burning Man and a few other major American events.

In the UK, the organization PsyCare is one of the biggest and oldest peer support harm reduction services. PsyCare trains people to support people in psychedelic crisis. “Psychedelic experiences can bring about massive shifts in worldview, and if you’re not totally prepared it can push you over the edge,” a psychology professor told The Guardian in a story about PsyCare. There's a greater need for psychedelic peer support than the PsyCare team can support. That's where regular people come in.

[Buy our PsyDAO token and participate in governance decisions.]

Who We Are

We were Barış, Marianna, Joy, B, and Aurelia—five individuals from different paths, united by a shared intention: to create a safe, welcoming space for those who needed it most during the four-night journey of the festival.

We are creative professionals, healthcare workers, skilled artisans, tech specialists and passionate volunteers. There was B, a French designer who builds healing spaces with recycled materials, shaped the structure, tent, and physical space of PsyCARE. I'm a tech consultant, DJ & VJ who brings the fusion of technology and empathy. I handled digital infrastructure, QR designs, music, lighting, massage, and soft support. I also introduced many to PsyDAO, POAPs, and blockchain ideas. Joy is a nurse who has cared for refugees and people at festivals. Her medical know-how and gentle presence gave PsyCARE depth and safety. Aurelia came all the way from India to help. (Some of our team use pseudonyms, or only first names.)

Along the way, two beautiful souls — Mira and Marinos — joined our circle with spontaneous compassion and energy. Without planning or obligation, they both felt the call to help and brought their full hearts into the PsyCARE space. Mira’s gentle vocal care, aromatic teas, and healing presence held people in softness. Marinos, deeply moved by what unfolded, gave his time and effort selflessly. After witnessing how care can shift lives, he told us:

**“This is something I want to keep doing in life.”     **

[Join the PsyDAO Discord.]

Tokenized Curiosity

In our corner of the mountains, care met blockchain. We issued a limited-edition POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol) for our space. Only 7 were minted, each now carrying the energy of this special gathering.

Blockchain can be a way for people to learn about these decentralized methods of care.

This is where PsyDAO came in.

We introduced visitors to the mission of PsyDAO, a decentralized funding movement supporting progress in psychedelic science and culture. Many became curious about:

• Decentralized Science (DeSci)

• NFTs as memory tokens

• Crowdfunded, collective ownership of psychedelic research

"There are so many people who went to so many festivals and they could do it but they just don't know how," said BeataB, from the PsyDAO core team. "But when we share the idea, maybe it will spark ideas at all other festivals and all parts of the world."

Community in Action

One participant scanned our donation QR and sent $10 in USDT—our first crypto donation, and a gesture that meant more than its amount.

Our team has created a crypto wallet—0xe97B53945244490431DEF28371c1C246923b4073—if you’d like to support this work.

Crypto is the most useful, most frictionless, easiest way to transfer value. At a music festival, it’s as easy as pulling out your phone and, zoom, the money is there.

What’s Next?

We leave Dark Dreams IV changed. We held space. We were held. We witnessed healing. We helped someone stay alive. We welcomed curiosity, creativity, and shared learning.

We plan to bring our model of care back to Dark Dreams next year.

We are more certain than ever: intentional care at psychedelic gatherings is essential. And now, more of us are ready to carry this work forward.

Thank You

To the Dark Dreams IV Festival organizers, thank you for the trust, and for the tickets. To every visitor who entered our tent, thank you for your presence. To PsyDAO, thank you for inspiring us to dream decentralized.

And to the mountains — thank you for holding us all.

One More Thing

Reminder: PsyDAO is a mission-driven organization and we rely on a lot of help.

Thank you to all our token holders; your purchase funds our art and science.

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

If you haven’t done those things, there’s no good way to explain the feeling. Not the rush of wind, not the weightlessness, not the disorientation.

We can, however, strap on a GoPro to show you the sights and sounds.

With a psychedelic trip, we can’t even do that.

Which is why we appreciate artists like painter Alex Gray, filmmaker Hamilton Morris and writer Bett Williams, for the way they make you “see” a trip.

And to that list of great psychedelic creators we would like to add Dutch artist Bastiaan Woudt.

Woudt is a photographer experiencing a “meteoric” rise. He’s celebrated by publications like Vogue for his distinctive black-and-white photographs that command “astronomical prices in the international art world”

In a new collaboration with PsyDAO and our Early Career Research Fellow Zeus Tipado, Woudt created some art out of what he “saw” during a trip on a new medicine we’re researching. Woudt has written a fantastic blog post that will bring the trip to life.

(PsyDAO’s Priti Amin has created a TikTok about Woudt’s work, coming soon.)

Woudt called his project Into the Abstract: Exploring Consciousness with DMXE and Zeus Tipado.

Woudt’s ambition was simple, he writes: “to see if I could transform an invisible state into visible form.” He explains:

[C]uriosity led me to psychedelics—not as escape, but as input. I wanted to explore whether an altered state of consciousness could directly feed into the way I make visual work. Could a psychedelic experience become not just an influence, but a visual translation of something internal?

Woudt created a series of interpretations of that internal world. Here’s one:

Into the Abstract

Going deep and bringing something valuable back is usually a team effort. Our drug developer, Tipado, is a PhD candidate in neuroscience at the University of Maastricht breaking ground with his research into DMT and VR. As PsyDAO’s first Early Career Fellow, he’s exploring the healing potential of DMXE. DMXE is a psychedelic dissociative in the same chemical family as ketamine and MXE.

Zeus has already dosed 15 volunteers, found the drug to be generally safe, and gathered trip reports from them.

The DMXE project aims to study the safety of DMXE in animals, then move on to clinical trials in humans and approval as a medicine. To fund the project, PsyDAO minted the $DMXE token. The $DMXE token is at the heart of PsyDAO’s mission; tokens are a friction-free way for people to directly fund scientific research, and benefit from the successes. (The token address is GWoPQpyPV7yPssPvV3fTtM3NBCwHaYraoM1NtmvVLwPj)

A Fruitful Meeting

Woudt and Tipado were first introduced at an art show two years ago. As Woudt writes in his blog:

What struck me about Zeus wasn’t just the science—it was the sensitivity. He didn’t speak about psychedelics like a chemist or a trendwatcher. He spoke about experience. About sound. About how memory and music and spatial perception intertwine under the influence. We kept in touch.

Not long ago, Woudt traveled from his home near Amsterdam to Tipado’s lab in Maastricht. Tipado is as much an artist as a researcher, and his lab is a kind of canvas for tripping. There, Tipado gave Woudt 52 mg of DMXE. Here’s Woudt again: After a short talk, I put on my blindfold and dropped into a sea of soft textures: bean bags, pillows, blankets. Music began to play—his own playlist, curated to guide the experience through sound, not structure.

Woudt Discerns What Makes DMXE Special

Every psychedelic has its own personality. DMXE, as a trip, is wholly distinctive from, say, mushrooms–as different as scuba diving is from space travel–yet so hard to describe.

“You go to the DMXE space and you see these things and they're so distinct, they’re right there in front of me, you're part of them, and then you get out of it and you're like, how can I show people this?” Tipado says. “That’s why it’s so important to have a person who’s actually capable of building these visuals, to create these DMXE landscapes, to show the world. Bastiaan really hit it on the head. I’ve shown these pieces to people who have tried DMXE and they always say ‘Damn, that is it.’”

Woudt’s sensitivity, for example, allows him to discern the nuances between a psilocybin trip and a DMXE trip–and explain them in words and art. Woudt recounts:

DMXE was less about what I saw, and more about what I felt. Emotion became visual…

Rather than showing me foreign visions [as mushrooms might], DMXE plunged me into personal visual memories—artworks I had made, moments I had felt, atmospheres I had only half-forgotten. …

The spaces I moved through were not filled with people or beings. They were vast and abstract, like sculptural environments made of feeling.

‘Sculptural environments made of feeling.’

Imagine that! “Sculptural environments made of feeling.” The description reminds you: what other human experience can wrap around you like a trip? Sure, VR can immerse you in sights and sounds, music can drop you into a sweeping landscape, but only psychedelics can build a world around you. It’s a world made of you, and also something greater than you. It’s sort of like Minecraft, but with consciousness. That “sculptural environment made of feeling” that Woudt describes is what bowls you over about DMXE, why DMXE can be so profound. It’s also why it feels so important to many of us at PsyDAO to unlock this medicine and rescue it from the purgatory of gray markets and Dark Webs. Right now, with DMXE unavailable in most of the world (though unscheduled in the Netherlands), it’s as if dreaming or music were controlled substances.

Sadly, most of the world will never try DMXE. Yet they can glimpse its import through Woudt’s art and his writing.

“Sculptural environments made of feeling.” Wow.

Read: ‘Emotions, Visible.’ PsyDAO Developing ‘Remarkable’ New Psychedelic and watch our TikTok about Early Career Fellow Zeus Tipado.

A Common Trip

Tipado, too, has the tools to parse out the differences between types of trips. And he’s now used to the trippers he’s given DMXE describing similar scenes.

“If you take DMT and you’re tripping on weird entities or elves or some weird psychedelic thing that you haven't seen before,” Tipado says. “But with this, you’re tripping on aspects of your past or places you’ve been.”

During Woudt’s trip, the artist found himself inside a particular work of art he’d already created. He was in his own art, like an architect walking into a house he’d designed. Could DMXE help us all to see inside our own worlds? And yield insights into ourselves that are as important as what we get with therapy?

As Woudt writes:

Psychedelics aren’t shortcuts. They aren’t aesthetics. And they’re definitely not answers.

But in the right hands, under the right conditions, they can become mirrors—strange, shifting mirrors that reflect parts of yourself back to you in new languages.

New Sets & Settings

The DMXE project now has multiple outputs: data for the journals and the regulators, art for public understanding. The DMXE project embodies perfectly what PsyDAO’s science and creative directors believe–which is that, while we see the value in sterile, double-blind, lab-driven psychedelic science, we believe it’s wise and fruitful to mix psychedelic art and psychedelic science.

Our KeneLife project is about Amazonian plant medicine art–the way Nature sings to artists from the Shipibo tribe, and the artists capture the notes on tapestries, napkins and tablecloths.

Look for our e-commerce site soon. We’ll anchor our KeneLife brand with an IRL cultural portal on the banks of the Amazon in Peru.

A window into the circuits of consciousness 🌺🌐

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/

Our alchemist grants have supported science and artists bringing forth their own visions, in one case creating real-life sculptures of their own emotions.

Even our AI agent, BeeARD, reports its scientific findings on beautiful knowledge graphs that, in their own way, rival Rembrandt.

PsyDAO’s best projects aim to measure what can be measured, and make art out of the rest.

A Worthy Goal

Reminder: we are a mission-driven organization and we rely on a lot of help.

Thank you to all our token holders; your purchase funds our art and science.

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members coordinate.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly, and tell us how it went.

Enter Bastiaan Woudt, a Dutch artist who had seemingly been everywhere and seen everything—from rural Uganda to Parisian art galleries.

On a recent weekend, Woudt stepped into the lab of researcher Zeus Tipado, a PhD student in Maastricht (and also PsyDAO’s first Early Career Fellow). Tipado provided Woudt with 52 milligrams of a white powder called DMXE and a carefully curated setting. Woudt put on a blindfold, settled into a beanbag–and experienced new realms.

Woudt said he floated on soft fluffy clouds through a cotton candy valley, and stepped into one of his own artworks. The trip provided him new insights into art, memory, and the senses.

“DMXE…feels like a dream,” Woudt wrote later in a trip report, “where emotions are so intense they almost become visible.”

Woudt will soon unveil new art based on his DMXE trip. Look for the drip in mid-May. The project perfectly fits PsyDAO’s mission of joining up psychedelic science and art.

What is DMXE?

DMXE belongs to the arylcyclohexylamine family, alongside famed compounds such as PCP and ketamine. Arylcyclohexamines were first examined by pharmaceutical companies for their anesthetic properties.

Although it belongs to a family of dissociatives, and certainly shares some properties, descriptions of DMXE are reminiscent of psychedelics like DMT. Like other psychoactives, DMXE has its own vibe, its own aesthetic, its own world.

“The DMXE experience is so hard to explain,” says Tipado. (Some things are beyond words, the way a monkey wouldn’t be able to explain going skydiving.) “Once you see DMXE, and you tell other people about it, it’s like you share a secret.”

There’s more though: DMXE’s potential goes beyond “showing someone something new.” Based on his observations of the effect DMXE has on users’ subjective experience, bodily sensations, senses, and emotion, Tipado suspects DMXE may have therapeutic potential. Used in careful ways by trained people, DMXE may contain a secret that, if shared more widely, could change lives.

Over the past six months, Tipado has given DMXE to more than a dozen people. He does so in a carefully curated setting–like a NASA capsule for inner space. The trip reports he’s gathering are providing valuable data about DMXE's effects and potential applications. Our preliminary research suggests DMXE could have applications similar to ketamine, which has become a billion-dollar medicine. In fact, DMXE might even offer advantages over ketamine for certain therapeutic applications.

(Note: arylcyclohexylamines, like all psychoactives, can have downsides–especially when mixed with other substances, taken in a poor set and setting, overused, or in people with certain mental illnesses.)

[Read about PsyDAO’s Early Career Fellowship and our first fellow, Zeus.]

Propelled by a Token

PsyDAO’s mission is to progress psychedelic art and science, and we are doing so with new, community-forward models of research funding. Collectively, our strategies are part of a larger movement: Decentralized Science (DeSci).

DeSci brings pharma development to the people. PsyDAO is a pioneer in DeSci, using Web3 tools to involve anyone with a crypto wallet.

For our DMXE research, we've minted the $DMXE token. The trading fees fund our project. Don’t have a crypto wallet? Here are some easy instructions on how to get a popular wallet.

(The Contract Address for $DMXE is: GWoPQpyPV7yPssPvV3fTtM3NBCwHaYraoM1NtmvVLwPj)

As Tipado shepherds DMXE through the first phases of its development, we're planning a netnographic study, an animal study, then a Phase 1 trial. If we find success, it's on to a clinical trial in humans.

“This scientific voyage will be remarkable,” Tipado says of his project, “as remarkable as a DMXE experience.”

Working together, the PsyDAO community can **bring this substance to the world.
**
(Watch our cheeky launch video here, and follow DMXEscience on Twitter)

DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members yap.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly and legally, and tell us how it went.

PsyDAO is working toward a future where psychedelics are better understood and respected, while helping to shape the evolving culture around them. We’re a decentralized group powered by regular people who buy our tokens, yap with us, and work toward our goals of promoting psychedelic science and art. Our members are pouring enormous resources into AI agents, tokenized research, a cultural portal on the Amazon River, and drug development. All of these, we believe, will help people live fuller, happier lives.

Our Alchemist Grant Program reflects our belief that achieving our goals requires diverse approaches. Our team has selected four talented individuals to receive our initial grants, each bringing their own unique perspectives to the field.

We offer $100 to $2,000 grants for researchers, writers, artists, developers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, and curators—anyone with a compelling idea.

We’re currently reviewing applications for the next grantees. Apply here.

Well Read: A Literary Portal to Psychedelic Culture

Our latest grantee, Kaitlyn Davies, brings us the installation "Inquiries in Alchemy." At Well Read, her Lisbon bookstore, Davies has curated hallucinogenic texts from Tao Lin to Michael Pollan, alongside an events program exploring psychedelics. We helped sponsor her recent “mycelial gathering,” a mushroom growing workshop.

Well Read is more than a bookstore—it's a sensory experience reflecting Davies' eclectic vision. Housed in a former warehouse with ornate ceilings, the space is a vibrant community hub, where the collection spans experimental music, literature, contemporary fiction, design, and hand-crafted zines. "This curation is very important in an age of algorithms. I want people to see themselves in these books," Davies has said.

As co-founder of FWB FEST—an interdisciplinary symposium in California—she's ideal for our Alchemist Grant.

The Cosmic Womb: Healing Through Art and Spirit

La Curandera Morgana Sin, a PsyDAO Alchemist grant recipient, has created "The Cosmic Womb," an installation embodying psychological transformation and prototyping innovative psychedelic therapy. With a heritage that is partly Native Mexican, Morgana blends indigenous healing with modern psychology.

Her journey began in 2018, using psychedelics to confront childhood trauma. Through plant medicines, she addressed depression and her relationship with her body.

She had a profound experience with ayahuasca in which she experienced her own rebirth. Her new art installation guides visitors through a soft, red chute creating a sensory rebirth experience. She believes play can be healing.

Currently pursuing a psychology master's, she continues developing her cross-cultural methodology.

Read our blog post about Morgana.

Psychosis and Psychedelics: Always Contraindicated?

Joseph La Torre used his PsyDAO Alchemist Grant to investigate psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for people with a history of psychotic symptoms. Through expert interviews, he explored potential benefits, risks, and why this population is often excluded from clinical trials.

La Torre argues against automatic exclusion of people with a history of psychosis from psychedelic therapy. The research suggests that some substances could be safer than others, with MDMA being one of the more amenable drugs. Researchers cautioned against more intense psychedelics, such as ayahuasca. And the research cautions against "one-shot" trips without wraparound care like therapy, advocating instead for nuanced, individualized approaches.

His findings were published in the International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction and presented at Harvard Medical School's "Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy: Promises and Perils" conference.

With scholarly background in Buddhism, mushrooms vs. synthetic psilocybin, and Amanita Muscaria, La Torre now leads research at University of Washington, co-leading a three-year Phase 2 psilocybin safety trial. He also teaches psychedelic therapy at University of Ottawa.

Hype or Hope? Breathwork Pioneer Investigates

Breathwork rockstar Guy William Fincham at Brighton & Sussex Medical School was our first grantee. Breathwork is the act of breathing in and out quickly, and in a certain way, to induce an altered state that can feel a lot like taking a psychedelic. Fincham discovered breathwork during an unexpected yet profound experience, and it helped him heal from chronic fatigue syndrome.

Fincham used his grant from PsyDAO for participant payments to study the effects of high ventilation breathwork, and thanked us in his thesis. (His answer to the question: “Does Breathwork Work?” is, essentially, “sometimes.”)

His study, Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials“, was published in Nature’s Scientific Reports. It found “small-medium effects of breathwork on self-reported/subjective stress, anxiety and depression.” The Huberman Lab, Time Magazine, and the BBC have all featured his work.

Opening a Portal, Connecting the Amazon to the West

KeneCafé is a blend of an Alchemist Grant and a profit-seeking project.

KeneCafé is many things. It is an ecommerce platform. It is IP embedded onchain. Ancient wisdom with modern tech.

It's a many-faceted vision to bring Shipibo wisdom of nature to the West. We're partnering with a Shipibo nonprofit, KeneRao, to co-fund the creation of a café and shop on the Amazon River. This physical space anchors an online store selling Kene, one of the hidden gems of world art.

We're also embedding some Kene into NFTs so they can be licensed globally and their intellectual property protected.

Kene are visions of Nature woven into tapestries. Artists connect with plant medicine and perceive what they describe as the architecture or song of Nature. These patterns are then meticulously stitched into rugs, hoods, and skirts. Kene represent a treasure in art history, as stunning and evocative as Picasso's cubist paintings or [the Moche portrait vessels](https://Moche portrait vessels) from ancient Peru that likely influenced him (which are similarly connected to psychoactive plant traditions).

Alchemy Turns Raw Materials Into Magic

Our first round of grantees have completed impressive projects, and we're ready to fund more creative minds in our next Alchemist Grants cycle.

Our committee selects recipients based on their potential for positive social impact, sustainability, and meaningful change. We especially welcome applications from underrepresented groups, including BIPOC, LGBTQI+ individuals, and people from the global south.

If you're working in psychedelics—whether through science, art, or community building—we want to help fund your project. Submit your application through our online portal.

We look forward to reviewing your proposal and supporting your work.

[One last note: DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord. Discord is the main way DAO members yap.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly and legally, and tell us how it went.]

On a sidewalk in America, a 5-year-old girl steps around a guy passed out. Other guys are huddled around pipes and tin foil. The little girl grasps her mom's hand, worried.

A hundred thousand people die in America each year from drug overdoses. Depression is through the roof. Suicide is climbing, especially in teen girls.

When you see a person struggling, you might give them a dollar and a granola bar. If you could, you might offer a better gift.

While there is no instant cure for addiction, homelessness or sickness, studies have shown for 60 years—everywhere from Boston to Colorado to the Amazon—that psychedelics can help treat addiction.

What the microscope and the stethoscope are to the body, psychedelics are to the mind and spirit. Dozens of cultures think so. Amazonian shamans drink ayahuasca to find sickness. Mazatec curanderos eat mushrooms to see the roots of family strife. Psychedelics like ibogaine, Ayahuasca and mushrooms famously show people how they got hurt, who loves them, and who they love.

In every case, people do psychedelics together to solve problems. That’s what we’re aiming at here at PsyDAO—the psychedelic decentralized autonomous organization. We believe in Web3—the blockchain—as a way to bring people together, too. And so psychedelics and Web3, we believe, could help the West in our death spiral. So the next time you see someone addicted or despairing, why not give them a ticket to an Ayahuasca ceremony and some Bitcoin, or some mushrooms and some $PSY.

Watch our Manifesto:

Humanity stands at a crossroads. Ruin or revolution. - PsyDAO manifesto

We need better psychedelic microscopes and more skilled operators. For instance: ibogaine kills about one in every 200 or 300 people who try it. Psilocybin microdosing may damage heart valves. In today's Psychedelic Renaissance, researchers, therapists, and shamans search for new molecules, shape old ones, and find better uses for old ones.

The imperfection of psychedelic compounds is precisely one reason why we've launched DMXE—our groundbreaking research initiative into a novel dissociative psychedelic, led by our first Early Career Fellow, Zeus Tipado. DMXE has many of the properties of Ketamine, one of the most useful medicines on the planet, used for pain and depression, while lasting longer and being described as “softer” and “more visual,” two potentially useful traits. Our DMXE research could build upon the therapeutic potential of psychedelics and dissociatives, the things that make these substances so valuable for treating depression and PTSD.

Psychedelics have provided the human race with radical shifts in human consciousness. - PsyDAO manifesto

Too often, psychedelic progress isn't happening very quickly. No major new molecules have been approved by the FDA.

Things are moving slowly because we’re developing and legalizing psychedelics with old, dull, tools. Funding comes in trickles. Scientists waste their energy writing grants. Citizen scientists can't work without risking jail.

PsyDAO will revolutionize R&D and ownership of psychedelics IP using the permissionless, trustless, decentralized, and censorship-resistant web, web3 - PsyDAO manifesto

How are we different? First, we are a decentralized autonomous organization, a DAO. While there are leaders of a DAO, there's not a hierarchy. We're more like a cooperative, dozens of people working together on projects big and small. So we can take chances, and we're less bound by the directives of a few decision-makers.

Our OPSY initiative exemplifies this approach. OPSY is a Tokens for Data research framework that rewards participation in surveys. The idea was brought forth by community members who wanted a tool to help themselves do their job better, by paying people in tokens to do surveys about microdosing. Their idea was quickly funded by the community and now stands ready to be deployed. At PsyDAO, we’re creating a global community of researchers who can safely contribute to and benefit from collective discoveries, all tracked and verified on the blockchain.

PsyDAO members will be able to vote to allocate funding towards the studies and research they believe is most relevant, choose which data is shared, and govern how the output of these studies will come to market. - PsyDAO manifesto

After we make moves, we capture value using IP-NFTs—that is, non-fungible tokens containing intellectual property. This will allow the ideas behind new molecules or art to move with the speed of a Bored Ape to reduce the friction involved in everything around psychedelics.

This intellectual exchange is about to find a new home at Kene Cafe, a soon-to-open IRL space on the banks of the Amazon where Shipibo artists can gather and sell their tapestries. Kene Cafe—named after the intricate geometric patterns seen in plant medicine visions—is a real-time collaboration between indigenous wisdom-keepers and PsyDAO’s Web3 regens. We’re supporting the Cafe with funds and logistics.

Psychedelics have elevated the human mind beyond its humble limitations to help us grow and flourish. - PsyDAO manifesto

Our token raise validated our hypothesis. On Bicycle Day, April 19, we offered our $PSY token, the essential unit of value in PsyDAO, and we raised 661 ETH—about $1.4 million at today’s prices—for psychedelic science and culture.

Will $1.4 million worth of $PSY really solve anything real?

We hope so. In any case, we have to try something. After all—like in an action movie—the stakes keep rising.

It wasn't too long ago that we realized our true position: that we are an infantile civilization on the edge of an abyss. As communicated best by Carl Sagan—an unrepentant stoner—the sun will eventually expand and incinerate this planet.

If we are to preserve the light of consciousness, we need to make a shift in the consciousness of our society and ourselves. Psychedelics are an essential part of that shift. - PsyDAO manifesto

Our AI initiative, BeeARD (Bioeconomic Environment for Autonomous Research Discovery), puts many of our principles into practice. Funded through a democratic vote of our $PSYC token holders, BeeARD is a multi-agent AI system that addresses key challenges: generating high-quality proposals, streamlining data analysis, and unlocking fragmented datasets. Originally conceived as PsyBEE for psychedelic research, it has evolved to support any scientific field. We've minted an IP-NFT for the project—$BeeARD—allowing the community to govern and benefit from its development.

Our projects have multiple ways of doing things, but all of them aim for the same thing: a better, healthier life for as many people as possible.

If we're lucky, before the Earth explodes and leaves us homeless on a cosmic scale, we'll get on a spaceship and head out. To see this truth—and see yourself more clearly—think about getting yourself an ibogaine ceremony and some $PSY.

[One last note: DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• Join our Discord and add your knowledge. Discord is the main way DAO members yap.

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly and legally, and tell us how it went.]

The fellowship helps PhD students and early-career researchers whose work might slip through the cracks of old-school funding. While their findings could reshape our understanding of psychedelics, they might not yield quick profits—and that's okay. PsyDAO steps in where others step back.[Read how BioDAOs like PsyDAO use tokens to fund science.]

Zeus Tipado, the first chosen fellow, shows what PsyDAO seeks. As a PhD student at Maastricht University, Zeus has broken new ground by linking DMT trips with virtual reality and brain scans. But what truly sets him apart is his unwavering trust in science over speculation.

Psychedelic lovers often believe in mysticism and spirit. In contrast, Zeus tends to stand firm in data and reason. He boldly states that DMT entities are brain-made, not outer-world visitors, and that hallucinations aren't proof we live in a computer simulation. While many psychonauts hype small amounts of psychedelics as cure-alls, he calls out microdosing as likely nothing more than a placebo.

"In this psychedelic renaissance," Zeus says, "it's important to keep your mind open, but not too open where your brain falls on the floor."Such iconoclasm might ruffle feathers, but it wins respect. Zeus's words have reached millions through Snoop Dogg's MERRY JANE network and Doubleblind Magazine.

(Other data from PsyDAO researchers may quibble with Zeus’s microdosing interpretation; they suggest microdosing increases energy—but different readings of data are OK!)

[Read about our main tokens, $PSY and $PSYC. Get $PSY tokens here.]

Under the fellowship, Zeus will conduct research on deoxymethoxetamine (DMXE), an NMDA receptor antagonist with unique properties. He'll use PsyDAO's decentralized funding models to push this work forward, showing how the fellowship bridges old-school research with new-world methods.

Tyler Quigley, science lead at PsyDAO, lays out the aim of the fellowship clearly: "We initiated the Early Career Fellowship to enable a funding mechanism for PsyDAO to support early-career researchers whose projects align with advancing psychedelic science but may not have immediate commercial potential."[Read about PsyDAO’s other projects: tokenizing psychedelic surveys, building multi-agent AI systems, token farming, and giving artist grants.]

What do PsyDAO’s Early Career Fellows get? First, they get money to fund their work. But that's just the start. They gain tools to work in the new world of decentralized science (DeSci), where research flows freely and funding comes through web3 networks. Fellows join a web of sharp minds and helpful hands, all pushing toward better understanding of psychedelics.

By backing bold thinkers like Zeus, PsyDAO's fellowship does more than fund research—it builds bridges between lab bench and blockchain, between careful science and cutting-edge tools. It opens new paths for psychedelic research to grow and thrive.

Through this fellowship, PsyDAO stamps its mark as a leader in making psychedelic science more open and more likely to help heal humans.

[One last note: DAOs are powered by regular people working toward their passions. If you believe in the power of psychedelics and Web3 and want to contribute to PsyDAO, please:

• **Join our Discord and add your knowledge. Discord is the main way DAO members yap. **

• Follow PsyDAO on X, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn, and engage.

• Follow our AI research bot, BeeARD, on X.

• Use psychedelics responsibly and legally, and tell us how it went.]

His trips eventually brought him to PsyDAO, which is promoting decentralized psychedelic science and culture through the democratizing force of tokenization. We are building AI agents and research tools.

This month, Aqueous "farmed" tokens for the first time, under PsyDAO’s first farm, The Psymple Life. Farming means putting your tokens into a place—called a smart contract—and leaving them there for a while to earn rewards. In our case, he farmed our $PSY token to get $BIO, the token of the BIO Protocol. Bio is the leading voice in Decentralized Science; it's the financial layer of a group of DAOs, including VitaDAO for longevity and CerebrumDAO for brain health.

The Psymple Life brought Aqueous deeper down the DeSci rabbit hole. "Farming led me to discovering other DAOs, their purpose, and what they’re working on, such as AthenaDAO and ValleyDAO," he writes. AthenaDAO researches women's health, while ValleyDAO works on synthetic biology. "I’m hoping to use my $BIO to swap for their tokens," Aqueous writes.

Farming Engages the Community

Token farming emerged during "DeFi Summer" in 2020. In DeFi, the practice is very popular, and growing faster than mushrooms after a rain.

Farming is not particularly common among DeSci DAOs, but that may change. "By locking tokens into a smart contract, you are showing community alignment and willingness to participate," writes PsyDAO member daoking. Participation is important for Decentralized Science, which works best when people give scientists the chance to cook.

[Read about our unique two-token system of governance, $PSY and $PSYC.]

Farming Reaps $BIO Rewards

PsyDAO's first token farm went like this: four months ago, PsyDAO members voted to buy $BIO. Over 10 days starting on Jan. 8, PsyDAO distributed 1 million $BIO to farmers. To farm, $PSY holders went to our website and clicked on the "Freebase" tab in our dropdown menu.

"By enabling active PSY holders to stake PSY to farm IP (governance) tokens and other tokens from the DAO, the DAO is taking care of its holders," Jesse, one of PsyDAO's initiators, wrote in the community Discord.

[Follow PsyDAO on X, TikTok, and Instagram.]

The Future of PsyDAO Farming

PsyDAO is still farming $PSY; about 500,000 $BIO tokens will be distributed to farmers over the next 140-some days.

Some PsyDAO members want to continue farming with other tokens in our ecosystem, including $BeeARD, the governance token of our multi-agent AI system, and the forthcoming $OPSY, the governance token for our Token-for-Data system. Any decision on future farming will depend on community consent, through Discord discussions and Snapshot votes.

As always, PsyDAO's goal is to promote psychedelic science and culture. Let us know in the Discord tokenomics channel if you think farming furthers this goal. At least some participants plan on coming back.

"Yessir," Aqueous writes. "I be farmin."

Balázs Szigeti is a researcher at the University of California San Francisco, studying some tricky subjects, such as the effects of psychedelics for chronic pain, eating disorders, and depression. He conducted one of the largest real-world, placebo-controlled studies on psychedelics, along with Robin Carhart-Harris, Amanda Feilding and David Nutt. In it, psychedelic microdosers were sent surveys and asked to self-report on cognitive tasks at various time points—to see if microdosing is helpful, harmful or neutral.

With a study like this, there is, of course, a huge hurdle: People are people—they get distracted, they lose track of their survey logins, and the questions go unanswered.

"You launch these studies and the attrition rate tends to be very high," Szigeti says. "Only about half of the people who sign up are actually completing them."

High dropout rates mean a huge waste of time for the researchers, and big gaps in their knowledge. No research team has yet found a way out. And attrition is a systemic problem in subjects beyond psychedelics.

"Attrition is a headache, but dropping out is understandable," Szigeti says. "After all, participants are not compensated in any form."

A New Ecosystem Arrives

Today, Szigeti is teaming up with PsyDAO, a community owned and governed research funding network, to use new technologies to launch an exciting solution. He's working with Chris Byrnes, a lawyer with Calyx Law, re-imagining intellectual property, Tyler Quigley, a technical specialist at Calyx Law, and Warren Winter, a developmental neuropsychology researcher turned data scientist.

They've created OPSY—the Open Psychedelic Science ecosYstem. OPSY is a portal through which data can be submitted to a research project and participants are rewarded.

Like so many projects at PsyDAO, OPSY aims for more participation in science—and therefore better results.

The Magic of Tokens

In the past, researchers have rewarded survey participants with money or gift cards.

OPSY uses tokens.

Tokens, as you might know, are valuable digital assets—the most famous token is Bitcoin.

Tokens open an exciting world of possibilities that has never existed before, for both participants and researchers.

“In traditional survey studies, value is created only for the researcher who publishes the data,” says Szigeti. “With OPSY we want to change that, and reward participants, so now the value creation is bi-directional.”

OPSY tokens not only have monetary value, but they can also represent partial intellectual property and governance rights.

Using the tokens, people can vote on the project’s future. If someone has 5% of the tokens, they could have about a 5% vote in some governance decisions about the project's future. This gives study participants the ability to have a say in how their data is collected and used by researchers.

OPSY tokens can be provided to participants more anonymously than dollars. And in some cases, token holders can track project funding.

With these perks, the team hopes to motivate participants to stay in studies for longer, increasing the size and quality of datasets. Larger, quality datasets can provide valuable insights into how substances work in the real world, which could lead to better medicines in the long run.

OPSY integrates with a tool researchers already use to gather data, Qualtrics. Once a participant finishes a Qualtrics survey, the data is submitted through OPSY, and tokens can be sent to their wallet.

Meanwhile, researchers can capture rare/difficult datasets, including those pertaining to naturalistic psychedelic use over long periods of time.

Beyond Psychedelics

OPSY will begin with psychedelics, because there is a need for real-world evidence of their effects in humans. However, OPSY can be used for any real-world research that faces financial or privacy-related challenges in recruiting and retaining human research subjects. For example:

• How do lifestyle changes affect diabetes?

• What side effects did a clinical trial miss?

• How effective are existing drugs for off-label use?

[Read more details in the OPSY Whitepaper]

Tokens are Here Now

Tokens may seem like some futuristic abstraction. Yet, Bitcoin's price is discussed on the evening news, and financial systems are adopting cryptocurrency for international payments.

With all this press attention, awareness and use of blockchain technology is growing. One estimate is that, while less than half of Americans knew about the technology in 2021, now 80 percent do. And somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of Americans now own tokens.

OPSY is tapping into that growth, putting the power of tokens and DeSci in the hands of any researcher who wants it. OPSY Mints as IP-NFT

This week, OPSY took a technical step that is, nevertheless, important for the future of science: it registered the intellectual property of OPSY on the blockchain, minting its IP-NFT with Molecule, a leader in DeSci. IP-NFTs are non-fungible tokens representing intellectual property rights, which enables programmatic licensing and revenue sharing.

[For more, read "Intro to IP-NFT" and "Why mint an IP-NFT?" by our incubator, Molecule.]

DeSci: A New Scientific Funding Mechanism

OPSY lets any research team get in on the ground floor of an exciting new field: Decentralized Science, or DeSci.

DeSci is a new financial layer built on crowd participation and the magic of the blockchain to pay for research and dole out intellectual property. This crowdfunding model can give scientists more independence from traditional grant systems.

“If you have a good idea and you can convince the community, you can get money,” says Szigeti.

PsyDAO is part of the BIO Protocol, a group of DeSci DAOs using blockchain technology to fund research on fertility, long COVID, neurodegeneration and other underfunded areas of science. BIO's project was recently opened to the public and is now valued over half a billion dollars. The public who are backing BioDAOs are betting that this new financial layer can lead to quicker and better science.

Funders can directly back PsyDAO on its BIO funding page.

Ready for Some Technical Details?

OPSY's tokens are built not on the Bitcoin blockchain, but on Ethereum—a decade-old, well-trusted blockchain network used by computer scientists, artists, and innovators using the programmability of tokens and smart contracts to solve real-world problems. Ethereum can handle complex tasks like managing scientific data and automatically sending rewards.

OPSY's smart contracts guarantee that when participants submit data through an OPSY-facilitated study, they will be rewarded with Ethereum-based tokens such as the stable coin $USDC—which can easily be exchanged for dollars—without compromising their privacy along the way. Participants will also be awarded OPSY intellectual property tokens (IPTs), which give them governance rights over OPSY, empowering participants to play an active role in how their data is used.

The USDC tokens will work for anyone who has a crypto wallet, including very common ones like CoinBase and Metamask.

[Read about PsyDAO's tokens, and how our $PSY token sale raised $2 million for psychedelic science and culture.]

First Projects

The OPSY team is in talks to launch our first collaborations with some of the best and brightest in the psychedelic field. The first project planned will focus on long-term psychedelic use. Why is this important? The vast majority of studies focus on what happens after a few psychedelic drug sessions. Here, the team instead wants to focus on how years, and decades, of psychedelic use affects people in ways that are not feasible in traditional clinical trials.

Soon, OPSY will mint IPTs for the project. A portion of the OPSY IPTs will be sold to the general public to fund the initial OPSY projects.

“Everybody understands traditional academia is broken, we just do not have an alternative yet," says Szigeti. "Experimentation is the heart of science and DeSci is an experiment to fix science. I am beyond excited to be a part of this experiment."

The data, and the breakthroughs, are closer than ever before.

To learn more about OPSY or use the tech in your research, email tyler@psydao.io or join the PsyDAO Discord channel about OPSY.

Our psychedelic research and culture organization is fortunate to be able to fund artists and storytellers at the heart of psychedelics with our Alchemist grants.

With a grant from PsyDAO, artist and facilitator La Curandera Morgana Sin has created an installation called The Cosmic Womb.

It's a stunning, physical embodiment of a psychological process—and it's a prototype for a new form of psychedelic therapy she is developing.

In Search of Inspiration

Initially, Morgana didn't turn to psychedelics to heal.

It was the fall of 2018, and Morgana felt she needed new business ideas.

She remembered reading how Steve Jobs used psychedelics for creative inspiration. "If it worked for him," she thought, "it could work for me." She brewed San Pedro tea and waited for the creative spark.

Instead of insight, she was confronted with buried memories of childhood abuse.

After weeks of contemplation, she finally chose to confront the darker aspects of her life through psychedelics. Uncertain about where it would lead, she experimented with freebase DMT, mushrooms, and ayahuasca.

At the time, she was pre-diabetic and weighed nearly 300 pounds. "Every step was a struggle," she says.

With the help of mushrooms, she discovered the deep-seated hatred she had developed toward her body. Raised in a conservative Catholic Mexican household, she was expected to adhere to strict rules as a woman, while the men were treated like royalty. This imbalance fostered a resentment toward her female body, rejecting the conventional roles of womanhood, motherhood, and caregiving—including the sexual aspect, which she associated with shame.

Psychedelics helped her confront her depression, her suicidality, the darkest aspects of her past, and some of the roots of her unhappiness—including sexual abuse that started at age 4. At just 5 years old, her father attempted to murder both her and her mother.

She came to understand that, having been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, sex was viewed as something dirty, disconnected from love, a source of disgust she preferred to ignore.

The extra pounds she carried were, in fact, a form of armor.

"Being morbidly obese created this false sense of security," she says. "Like, if I made myself unattractive to men, they wouldn’t want to touch me."

(Read more about how PsyDAO works, including our tokens.)

From the Shadows, Ayahuasca Offered a New Path.

She says:

In one particular vision in 2019, I was faced with my deeply rooted discomfort and disgust toward the female anatomy. I found myself in what appeared to be a vaginal tunnel, and to my surprise, it was connected to a sexual energy. In the distance, I saw a dark, blob-like figure coming toward me. Trapped in the tunnel, I was forced to face my past sexual abuse. As the energy approached, it conveyed the beauty of what resided within me. I felt the essence of female energy—though not defined by societal standards of femininity. It wasn’t about gender; the energy chose the vessel, and my strength wanted to emerge, to shift my perspective on the female body. I realized that everyone had come into this world through such a spiritual portal. I understood the beauty and power in the creation of life and the strength inherent in that process.

As she began to shift her behavior patterns, she noticed a gradual transition in her life from darkness to light.

She recognized it was time to begin healing the trauma stored in her body. This realization ultimately led her to have a gastric sleeve procedure in January 2024.

A year later, she stays fit pole dancing, and weighs 175 pounds. "I feel like a completely different person," she says. "My energy has returned. It’s such a joy to feel free, even in small moments like picking clothes off a rack."

(Read about how PsyDAO funds psychedelic science and culture.)

Becoming a Guide for Others

“Psychedelics aren’t a miracle cure, but they can be powerful tools for healing deep emotional wounds.” Psychedelics played a pivotal role in helping her confront her struggles, ultimately allowing her to reclaim her life.

"The healing I’ve done has changed everything about my life," she says. "After what I experienced with psychedelic healing, staying silent wasn't an option anymore."

She stepped out of the shadows, and now she is currently pursuing a master's degree in psychology, furthering her education with a focus on integrating indigenous methods with modern psychology.

Born and raised in Southern California, she is the first in her family born in the U.S. Her ancestry traces back to an isolated and poor Purépecha community in Santa Cruz de Morelos, Michoacán, Mexico—a place so remote that it remained unaware of the modern world for many years.

She is dedicated to researching a healing approach that combines three essential elements: mind, body, and spirit, inspired by ancient Mesoamerican traditions. These traditions taught that true healing requires the balance of all three components.

[Read about PsyDAO’s new AI research project, BeeARD.]

Transformative Groups

In her home in Berlin in August, she brought people together to teach the ceremonial use of DMT and mushrooms, blending Western psychological practices with indigenous healing methods.

She says:

This idea of the cosmic womb naturally grew out of these healing circles.

I noticed that for the first two hours of the journey, it was a very introspective journey. Nobody was moving—everyone was deep in their own mind, going through the experience. Then, there came a moment where it felt like they were emerging from a cocoon, like butterflies. They started becoming more active, so I provided a space where they could move around freely and explore.

I had set up different things for them to interact with, almost like a little playground. Since I didn’t have all the materials at the time, we pretended—like children—that they were going through a tunnel under a bush. It was as if they were returning to the womb. When they were ready, they passed through the "vagina tunnel," symbolizing a rebirth.

I started inviting participants to imagine themselves entering a tunnel that embodied the feminine, life-giving energy of the womb.

Facing trauma is hard enough, so I wanted to create a space that nourishes the inner child. I firmly believe that if you want to connect with Spirit, you can do it more easily by tapping into the wonder and playfulness of a child.

As children, life feels full of amazement, wonder, and joy—things we often lose as we grow older.

The Cosmic Womb

With the grant from PsyDAO, Morgana was able to develop the first prototype of the Cosmic Womb. Visitors are guided through a soft, red chute, lined with plush material, creating a sensory experience that evokes the feeling of being reborn.

By constructing the Cosmic Womb, she realized she was confronting her shadow self—unresolved feelings about her own female anatomy.

As she created this spiritual portal, she reconnected with her inner child—the part of her that had been hidden beneath layers of self-defense. Through this creative process, she began to explore a new form of psychedelic healing, one that emphasizes play and imagination.

“Why not approach difficult emotions with a sense of wonder?” she reflects. "What if there was a psychedelic playground designed to explore how integrating play into the healing process could awaken the inner child and restore its happiness?"

This playful approach to healing helped her reclaim her inner worth and rediscover the joy and creativity she had lost.

Now that the art installation is complete, she's seeking the perfect location for its launch. An art gallery or studio space would be ideal. She's also looking for investors/sponsors to help cover the costs for a booth at Psychedelic Science in Denver in June 2025, the largest psychedelic conference in the world.

She's also developing a psychedelic brand that offers high-quality psychedelic products.

A New Perspective

The spirit child enters the world full of wonder, curiosity, and limitless potential. However, as life unfolds, this sense of awe begins to fade, and with it, the child within starts to lose its soul.

The Cosmic Womb represents the unity of all beings, a reminder that everyone enters the world in the same way and shares a deep connection to the Earth. By embracing what was once feared, they can discover the return of laughter, with humor drawing them closer to the source of all life.

One thing I’ve learned is that when you’re going through your own suffering, it’s easy to think you’re alone. I used to believe I was the only one going through such a dark period. But as I started interacting with more people, I realized I wasn’t alone.

[PsyDAO is a collective of people organizing around the tools of Web3 and crypto to do psychedelic research and art in a new, decentralized way. Join us on Discord and Twitter to guide our evolution and be part of a team. Apply for an alchemist grant here. If experimenting, use psychedelics responsibly, either in low doses or as part of a group, with supervision.]

BeeARD was designed by Jay, a member of PsyDAO and an AI researcher. We chatted with Jay about his creation.

Could you start by telling us how BeeARD originated and evolved?

BeeARD began at PsyDAO, originally as PsyBEE, an initiative leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) to improve the scientific research process. We recognized key challenges: limited high-quality research proposals, complex IP negotiations, slow research pipelines, and siloed data management. These issues were not unique to PsyDAO; many bioDAOs faced similar problems. As a result, it evolved from being psychedelic-specific PsyBEE into BeeARD (short for Bioeconomic Environment for Autonomous Research Discovery) a multi-agent platform designed to accelerate scientific dealflow, simplify IP acquisition, streamline data analysis, and unlock fragmented datasets across scientific communities.

So BeeARD isn't limited to psychedelic research only?

No. While BeeARD’s initial development was created for PsyDAO and funded by its community, the platform’s design is field-agnostic. It can be adapted to any research domain, ensuring that the same approach—autonomous agents working with human researchers and verified knowledge—can accelerate innovation in fields well beyond psychedelic science.

Where did the idea for BeeARD come from?

I’ve been following the decentralized science movement since its early days and was inspired by the community’s vision for reimagining how we conduct and fund research. My collaborations with Jesse from PsyDAO, alongside our shared interest in scientific innovation and psychedelic research, led me to pivot from a traditional academic background to building a multi-agent system that would boost the volume and quality of research proposals within the PsyDAO community. Over time, that concept expanded into BeeARD’s broader mission.

[Learn more about PsyDAO tokens and governance.]

What exactly is BeeARD?

BeeARD is a decentralized research ecosystem where AI agents and human collaborators join forces to drive scientific innovation across various fields. It is a multi-agentic system, enabling AI-driven tasks like data extraction, hypothesis generation, and IP management. In essence, BeeARD provides the infrastructure for AI agents to operate as autonomous researchers, continuously learning and improving from both human feedback and a verified knowledge base of scientific literature.

What makes BeeARD’s ecosystem unique?

The heart of BeeARD is its multi-agent system (MAS). Here, human researchers, AI agents, and knowledge graphs are integrated into a collaborative research network. In this framework, AI models function not as isolated tools but as active collaborators—supporting data collection, hypothesis refinement, and research workflow optimization. This synergy allows BeeARD to tackle some of the biggest hurdles in scientific research, from improving the interpretation of complex data to speeding up the entire research pipeline.

[Are you a researcher looking for funding from PsyDAO? Click here.]

How does BeeARD address the limitations of language models, like hallucinations?

Language models often “hallucinate” because they predict the next word based on statistical patterns rather than grounded facts. BeeARD is designed to overcome this by anchoring the AI agents in a well-curated, verified dataset of open-access scientific literature. We are going to train specialized LLMs for scientific reasoning and integrate them with a knowledge graph of validated data. This knowledge graph serves as an external, fact-checked resource, helping the models reason more reliably and reducing the likelihood of fabricating information.

So the AI agents improve over time within this system?

Exactly. By tying the AI to a structured knowledge graph and continuously feeding it new, verified information, the models evolve into more robust reasoning engines. This process helps them synthesize evidence-based insights, supporting more informed responses to complex scientific questions. Human-in-the-loop feedback plays a crucial role in aligning the models with the bioDAOs' values and interests, guiding their development toward becoming advanced research assistants rather than just text generators.

[Read the PsyDAO whitepaper here.]

How can AI, as implemented in BeeARD, transform scientific and healthcare innovation?

I believe AI can accelerate the entire continuum of scientific discovery, both through capabilities already in use and those likely to emerge in the future. First, AI can quickly generate novel hypotheses or research directions that humans might not think of. Next, it can predict the viability and success rate of these ideas, effectively becoming a built-in prediction market for emerging science. Finally, with enough personal biometric data, it could suggest personalized interventions or treatments. Over time, this integrated approach has the potential to reshape both research and patient care, leading to more efficient innovation cycles and individualized healthcare solutions.

What are you working on now?

Right now, our primary focus is tweaking the tech, securing funding and expanding the core team.

Will there be a new roadmap soon?

Yes. We plan to release a new roadmap alongside our website this winter. Once funding is confirmed, we’ll share detailed milestones and strategies that outline how the BeeARD ecosystem will evolve over time.

Can you share a bit about those plans?

We aim to make BeeARD a platform for newly-created AI agents, bootstrapping the acceleration of scientific discovery in various niches.

What’s your background, and how is the team structured?

I have a background in mathematics, statistics, and machine learning, with experience in building large datasets, training/fine-tuning language models, and improving them through continual learning, primarily in academic settings. This expertise aligns with BeeARD’s goal of creating a continuously evolving AI-driven research network.

Our core team is small but diverse, covering AI/ML development, tokenomics, legal, operations, and communications. We actively engage regularly with advisors, investors, and the DeSci community. We’re currently expanding the team to ensure that AI and machine learning guide every layer of BeeARD’s research ecosystem.

**

PsyDAO is a collaborative effort. To be part of the development of BeeARD and PsyDAO, join the BeeARD Telegram group, follow BeeARD on Twitter, join the PsyDAO Discord or Telegram groups and follow PsyDAO on Twitter.

Before Bitcoin powered trillion dollar financial markets, it powered the psychedelic renaissance. The Silk Road marketplace, launched in 2011, became cryptocurrency's first major use case. By anonymously connecting buyers and sellers through Bitcoin, the Silk Road became the Amazon for all things taboo - including psychedelics. Before its dramatic shutdown in 2013 and the incarceration of its founder Ross Ulbricht, the notorious marketplace processed $1.2 billion in transactions and left a lasting impact on both the cryptocurrency scene and psychedelic culture.

But the connection between psychedelics and cryptocurrency runs far deeper than a digital black market. The cypherpunk movement—which ultimately gave birth to Bitcoin—emerged directly from the same countercultural soil as the psychedelic revolution. Both movements shared the fundamental vision of fostering individual autonomy and challenging traditional systems of control by utilizing tools, whether technological or chemical, to empower individuals to explore new dimensions of freedom and consciousness. The infamous prophet of psychedelics, Timothy Leary, recognized this parallel early on when he declared that "computers are the new LSD."

Today, this historical alliance between psychedelics and crypto technology is experiencing a renaissance of its own. From memes claiming that Satoshi smoked DMT to rumors about ayahuasca-spiked Soylent at Ethereum meetups, today's crypto culture pulses with psychedelic energy. But the true fusion of these worlds is happening in science itself, where a movement called Decentralized Science (DeSci) is revolutionizing how research is funded, conducted, and shared.

To explore these possibilities, PsyDAO recently partnered with the Psychedelic Society Maastricht to facilitate a groundbreaking series of talks on DeSci's potential to transform psychedelic research. The series brought together experts from across the field to envision a future where scientific collaboration transcends traditional boundaries—tackling everything from funding mechanisms to citizen participation in research.

The Promise of Decentralized Science

In our first session, Dr. Lukas Weidener, a medical doctor turned blockchain innovator, provided a comprehensive introduction to Decentralized Science (DeSci). As a co-author of a foundational paper on DeSci, his insights helped frame how this movement is reimagining scientific research.

Current Challenges in Traditional Science

Lukas highlighted several critical issues facing modern scientific research:

• Access Barriers: Many scientific publications remain behind paywalls, limiting global access to knowledge

• Reproducibility Crisis: Current systems don't incentivize the reproduction of studies, leading to challenges in validating research

• The "Valley of Death": A critical funding gap exists between early discovery and clinical trials, particularly in biomedical research

• Limited Participation: Traditional science often restricts participation to those with formal credentials

Follow PsyDAO on Twitter/X.

From Open Science to DeSci

Lukas emphasized that DeSci isn't emerging in isolation, but rather building upon and extending the established open science movement.

Open science has long advocated for:

• Making publications freely accessible to everyone

• Opening access to research data

• Removing institutional barriers to scientific knowledge

• Promoting transparency in research methods

DeSci can be understood as the next evolutionary step where:

• Technology Enables Implementation: Rather than just advocating for openness, blockchain technology provides the infrastructure to ensure it

• Incentives Are Built-In: Unlike traditional open science initiatives, DeSci incorporates token-based incentives for sharing and collaboration

• Governance Is Decentralized: Instead of relying on institutional goodwill, decision-making power is distributed through Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)

• Participation Is Permissionless: Beyond just access to read papers, DeSci enables anyone to actively participate in the scientific process

While blockchain technology enables DeSci's evolution beyond open science, what truly sets the movement apart is its fundamental values. Lukas emphasized that DeSci is, at its core, a value-based movement that reimagines not just how we do science, but who gets to participate and how they're incentivized to contribute.

PsyDAO: Decentralized Psychedelic Science

The story of PsyDAO began with one of its founders, Jesse, whose journey took him from the pioneering pages of Erowid to the Amazon rainforest and ultimately to the forefront of technology. His unique background as an anthropologist and lawyer, combined with a deep respect for indigenous wisdom and his role at the decentralized science infrastructure provider Molecule, helped shape the vision that would become PsyDAO.

You can listen to his psychedelic origin story here:

The challenges of Psychedelic Science

PsyDAO emerged from a recognition that the traditional funding model for psychedelic research faces several critical challenges:

• Clinical Trial Bottlenecks: Traditional psychedelic clinical trials struggle with both participant recruitment and diversity issues, limiting the scope and applicability of research findings.

• IP Ethics Crisis: The psychedelic patent landscape has become what Jesse describes as "a warzone with an ethical minefield," with increasing concerns about monopolistic practices and ethical IP rights.

• Indigenous Knowledge Gap: Despite being the original stewards of psychedelic knowledge, psychedelic-endogenous indigenous tribes remain impoverished and often excluded from the benefits of modern research and commercialization.

Learn more about PsyDAO’s new Autonomous Research Discovery System BeeARD.

How PsyDAO Works

PsyDAO addresses these challenges through several innovative mechanisms:

Community-Driven Governance PsyDAO's dual-token system ensures ethical oversight and community participation:

• Core members (PSYC holders) provide strategic direction and ethical oversight

• Broader community (PSY holders) participates in funding and research decisions

• Transparent decision-making process

• Built-in mechanisms for sustainable growth and development

IP Tokenization Framework One of PsyDAO's most innovative contributions is their implementation of tokenized IP through IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens) and fungible IPTs (IP tokens). This framework:

• Allows for fractional ownership and governance of research IP

• Creates transparent revenue sharing mechanisms

• Enables community funding while preserving researcher incentives

• Protects rights through smart contracts

Indigenous Wisdom Integration PsyDAO has developed unique frameworks to bridge traditional knowledge with modern science:

• Direct partnerships with indigenous communities like the Shipibo-Conibo

• Fair compensation through built-in royalty systems

• Preservation and protection of traditional knowledge

The Dawn of Decentralized Discovery

PsyDAO is moving from vision to implementation through several key initiatives:

• BeeARD: A swarm of AI research assistants functioning like tireless PhD candidates, continuously analyzing new research papers and identifying promising areas for new scientific research

• OPSY (Open Psychedelic Science ecosYstem): A web3-native platform bridging clinical trials and naturalistic experiences through:

  • Token-incentivized participation

  • User data sovereignty

  • Creation of a collectively owned knowledge library

• Research Facilities: Development of centers in St. Vincent, where psychedelics are legal for medical use

• Funding: With about $2 million in Ethereum raised, PsyDAO is now actively funding psychedelic science

Researchers and PhD candidates of all disciplines are encouraged to submit their proposals and contribute to decentralized psychedelic science. If there are any other ways you’d like to contribute to PsyDAO, feel free to connect with us on Discord.

DeSci in Action: The Future of Citizen Science

Aleksandra Wingert, a PhD candidate at the Center for Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, presented her work on the Microdosing 2.0 trial, which exemplifies DeSci principles in practice. Building upon Balázs Szigeti's pioneering self-blinding study, this project demonstrates how decentralized approaches can transform psychedelic research from an exclusive academic pursuit into a community-driven scientific endeavor.

Democratizing Research Through Citizen Science

Citizen science refers to research conducted by regular people who step into researchers' shoes without necessarily having formal scientific training or credentials. In psychedelic research, this approach offers several key advantages:

• Cost-effective way to collect large-scale, real-world data

• Enables participation from diverse populations

• Bridges the gap between controlled trials and naturalistic use

• Creates opportunities for broader community involvement

While this approach presents challenges in controlling variables and standardizing procedures, the Microdosing 2.0 study demonstrates how rigorous methodology can be applied to citizen science research.

The Self-Blinding Protocol: Where Scientific Rigor meets DeSci

The Microdosing 2.0 study investigates the effects of psychedelic microdosing on people with mood problems through a unique self-blinding protocol. Unlike traditional clinical trials where researchers provide substances, participants use their own materials and follow a structured protocol:

• Participants prepare their own microdose and placebo capsules

• QR codes enable reliable self-blinding, ensuring participants don't know which days they take active doses

• Home testing kits verify substance content and quantity, ensuring research quality

• A combination of online questionnaires and laboratory measures tracks outcomes

This innovative approach enables the study of real-world microdosing while maintaining scientific rigor through careful measurement and controlled conditions.

Beyond Self-Reports

While traditional citizen science often relies solely on participant questionnaires, the Microdosing 2.0 study incorporates laboratory measurements to provide objective data. This combination of subjective experiences and biological markers offers a more complete picture of microdosing effects:

• EEG measurements of brain connectivity

• Blood samples for BDNF levels and immune response

• Sleep and heart rate monitoring

• Special focus on female health markers, including menopause and hormonal effects

By incorporating these rigorous measurements, the study aims to validate (or challenge) anecdotal reports with hard scientific data while maintaining the advantages of real-world research settings.

Beyond the Gateway: A New Scientific Frontier

This three-part series has taken us from the theoretical framework of decentralized science, through PsyDAO's practical implementation, to hands-on citizen science. The Microdosing 2.0 study demonstrates how research can become more accessible while maintaining scientific rigor. It only seems natural that future projects like this will be supported by the DeSci infrastructure that PsyDAO is building. With platforms for open science psychedelic research like OPSY on the horizon and an engaged community ready to contribute, it becomes obvious that the historic alliance between psychonauts and cypherpunks has come full circle. What began as a shared vision of individual freedom has evolved into something far more powerful: a revolution in how humanity explores consciousness and reality itself.

The sale netted the decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) about $2 million to deploy towards its mission of progressing psychedelic science and art.

What Happened

The token sale started on Bicycle Day, anniversary of a great psychedelic science achievement.

This weekend, the DAO sold out its initial mint of 20% of all the PSY tokens. In total, the sale brought in 661 ETH. That much ETH is worth, as of this writing, about $2 million.

This new pile of ETH means that the DAO has new opportunities to work on research, provide grants, and develop our intellectual property strategy and portfolio.

(Contribute to PsyDAO on our Discord.)

What Are People Buying

Those who buy PSY tokens (i.e., $PSY holders), become participants in our ecosystem, as well as active stakeholders in our DAO's governance. They will have the right to vote on proposals that determine how funds are allocated, which research projects are pursued, and ultimately how the DAO evolves.

Their voting power is nested within the votes of holders of PSYC—a soul-bound token that grants more governance rights. Read more about PsyDAO’s two-token governance system based on Nobel prize winning economics.

(What's the difference between PSYC and PSY? Read our blog post.)

Riding a Bio Wave

PsyDAO sold out its tokens in the midst of a wider rush of enthusiasm for decentralized science.

A key factor was the announcement that Binance Labs, a leading venture capital firm investing in early-stage Web3 projects, was investing in the BIO Protocol. BIO, like PsyDAO, enables decentralized funding and ownership of scientific projects. BIO seeks to address key challenges in traditional research funding by focusing on areas like rare diseases, longevity, cryopreservation, and mental health treatments.

The DeSci excitement was further stoked at the DevCon Ethereum conference in Thailand. At a DeSci meetup there, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and Binance founder CZ were bullish on the DeSci future. 99 Bitcoins quoted CZ as saying he hoped he'd see “1,000 DeSci projects next year.” Vitalik and CZ's excitement seems to have gone viral, which sparked more interest in DeSci coins across the Etherum ecosystem, and leading to the end of PSY's sale.

Watch our intro video:

Beating Psychedelic Headwinds

The timing in the psychedelic world is notable. For the past few months, traditional psychedelic research initiatives and companies have been faltering.

One key reason was the denial by America's FDA of MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD this summer. Psychedelic science companies have cut their staffs and lowered expectations, and as these companies and nonprofits face difficulties, psychedelic stock values have plummeted, optimism has waned, and state-level initiatives are seeing serious defeats.

Though most watchers expect psychedelic research to recover, most are slow-moving and dependent on grant funding or top-heavy institutional investors. Government investment in psychedelics is scarce.

PSY's sale, on the other hand, may suggest that a more democratic, transparent, and collaborative research landscape can earn the interest of token buyers — everyday stoned apes.

The successful fundraising for our DAO suggests growing interest in decentralized models for scientific advancement. We are hopeful that this innovative approach will lead to groundbreaking discoveries in the field of psychedelic science, ultimately benefiting humanity's collective well-being.

Decentralizing Science through IP-NFTs

One basis of our DAO is the IP-NFT. That is: intellectual property around psychedelics that can be bought or sold as a non-fungible token. The same way you'd buy or sell a bored ape yacht club NFT, you can buy or sell intellectual property generated by PsyDAO-funded projects.

Our first token is BeeARD. BeeARD is a project that uses an AI agent to scour the landscape of psychedelic science articles for potential intellectual property to invest in.

PsyDAO follows the lead of other decentralized psychedelic DAOs such as VitaDAO and CryoDAO, each targeting areas of science with huge potential—expanding and preserving life.

In VitaDAO, for example, holders of their tokens vote on the use of pooled funds to support longevity research proposals. A recent VitaDAO vote affirmed the deployment of funds into a project on preventing eyesight degeneration, for instance. In exchange, VitaDAO will retain partial ownership of the resulting intellectual property in the form of tokens, and holders of Vita tokens will own part of that intellectual property. VitaDAO has deployed more than $4 million in funding for longevity research, and just spun out its first company.

Psychedelic Science Finds New Paths

We know that the field of psychedelic science has immense potential to unlock breakthroughs in mental health treatment, addiction recovery, and personal well-being. And we know that traditional research funding models are often sluggish, filled with red tape, and constrained by vested interests.

Ways to Contribute

If you share our vision for a more democratic and collaborative future for psychedelic science, we want to hear from you. Take a microdose —of whatever is legal in your jurisdiction—and contribute:

• Learn more about our DAO and its governance structure by visiting our website and reading our blog.

• Become a token holder by buying Psy here.

• Join our Discord to drop memes or buy our merch (coming soon).

• Follow us on Twitter to spread the word.

[Cover image: A Kene tapestry. These woven textiles are an integral part of the Shipibo-Conibo culture. This particular textile is connected to one of PsyDAO’s PSYC soul-bound NFTs. As you can see in the PSYC NFT, this textile was woven by Elena Vargas Guerra, a member of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe. PsyDAO partners with a Shipibo nonprofit to ensure revenues from the textiles flow back to the Amazon.]

PSYC look like this:

PSYC are at this smart contract

PSY = money

PSY looks like this:

PSY are at this smart contract

PSYC are membership NFTs (ERC721 with an ERC1155 extension). PSYC supply increases along the fibonacci scale. 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55… and today there are 13 PSYC. When we mint the next batch, 8 tokens, there will be 21 PSYC.

PSYC control psydao. They can:

• Call smart contract functions with a vote like:

  • enableRageQuit a.k.a. egoDeath, turning on the switch that enables PSYC holders to burn their PSYC for their pro rata portion of the PSYC sales treasury

  • mintNextBatch, minting the next batch of PSYC to reach the next Fibonacci band

  • transferNftsToAuction and setAuctionContract to sell the next batch of PSYC

  • updateTreasury for the psydao treasury to fund psychedelic science and art

• Call other smart contract functions on their own like:

  • mintSublicenses to mint new tokens, ERC1155s which are prints and sublicenses of the attached IP

  • rageQuit to ego death, burning their PSYC and exiting psydao

  • Access the token-gated spaces of psydao

• Claim PSY from a pool of 29% of of the PSY supply depending on how active they are in voting on proposals

As specified in the whitepaper PSYC have claim to 29% of the PSY supply.

That 29% is divided into 40 buckets of 767,506.16 PSY each to be distributed to the first 40 bands of Fibonacci PSYC.

Therefore, the last PSY claims for PSYC holders will happen around the 40th Fibonacci number, ending when there are hundreds of millions of PSYC minted.

A PSYC holder can only claim PSY if they participate in 1 - 3 of the onchain votes during a Fibonacci band.

So only active members get rewarded:

• Non-participants receive nothing

• Partial participants receive a portion based on their participation

• Full participants receive the largest share

• Leftover tokens are distributed proportionally among all participants

PSY is money.

Money is power. PSY holders have power to:

• Call kick on the PSYC smart contract, vote-kicking a PSYC holder

• Distribute treasury assets with delegated authority from PSYC holders

• Farm IP tokens

On that last point:

Yield farming, pioneered during defi summer, presented a solution to the great problem of distribution using smart contracts developed by wizards at compound, synthetix, and the ethereum open source community used pool1/2 dynamics to discover a fair price for new tokens with varying degrees of success, from Sushi to Yearn.

As a result of the yield farming explosion, the MasterChefv2 yield farming contract is one of the most forked and deployed contracts across all chains, e.g. vfat.tools.

There is one place it hasn’t been tested yet, one place better than the rest, and that’s here, in the context of biodaos in orbit of BIO.

Farming psydao IP tokens using PSY solves the problem of free and fair IP token distribution and price discovery in bioDAOs.

PSYC Token Overview

PSYC tokens are soulbound tokens (SBTs), a unique form of transfer-restricted NFTs derived from pioneering work in decentralized society. Unlike traditional NFTs, PSYC tokens represent real-world assets (RWAs), specifically the intricate and culturally rich kené art of the Shipibo-Conibo tribe. These tokens foster a deeper connection between token holders and Indigenous culture.

Benefits and Utilities of PSYC

1. Art and Culture: Each PSYC token is linked to a specific kené artwork, allowing holders to claim physical woven kené pieces which will be mailed to you. This dual claim fosters cultural preservation and supports the Shipibo-Conibo, as we are sending money back to the artists.

2. Royalties and IP Rights: Holders have the right to issue tokenized sublicenses for derivative works from their kene tapestries, with royalties flowing back to the artists and the tribe, ensuring ongoing support and ethical use of the art.

3. Governance: PSYC holders gain the ability to participate in all of PsyDAO's governance, operating like a cooperative, overseeing authority delegated to PSY over the treasury, minting new tokens, and more

4. EgoDeath Function: A unique feature allowing PSYC holders to burn their tokens in exchange for a share of the PSYC treasury, promoting a balanced and sustainable economic model.

Whitelist Raffle and Community Call

To kick off the sale, we will be holding a community call this Thursday, Aug 8th to discuss the details and answer any questions you might have. In addition, we are launching a whitelist raffle to offer early supporters a chance to secure their place in the PSYC ecosystem.

The Road Ahead

The PSYC token sale is the first step in the decentralized growth of PsyDAO along the Fibonacci sequence, a natural model of sustainable development. This innovative approach ensures a balanced and organic expansion of the community and its assets.

Call to Action

We invite you to join us on this exciting journey. Participate in the whitelist raffle, attend our community call on Twitter/X, and become part of a groundbreaking initiative that bridges the digital and physical worlds, honoring and preserving Indigenous art and knowledge.

Read more about PSYC in our earlier blog post, and stay tuned for more updates. Connect with us on Discord, share your thoughts, and help us build a future where technology and tradition thrive together.

Together, let's embark on a journey of cultural preservation, decentralized governance, and innovative growth with PSYC.

And get PSYChed!