Science’s original promise, rediscovered

Michael Polanyi once wrote about the “republic of science” — a vision where knowledge is a shared asset, produced collaboratively without artificial barriers. In reality, however, siloed institutions, gated journals, and opaque funding channels have hampered the global flow of scientific breakthroughs

But thanks to the convergence of blockchain and AI, we’re edging closer to that utopian dream. DeSci has been steadily gaining traction, offering decentralized platforms that disrupt traditional gatekeeping: open access archives, peer-to-peer grants, and even tokenized research assets. AI has also made its mark across scientific fields, from quantum-accelerated drug discovery to AI-driven materials research. Now, these two movements are converging into a single phenomenon we could call DeScAI. A  phenomenon that might just redefine what is possible for science in the 21st century.

The rising tide of DeSci

Ever felt the frustration of paywalls blocking your access to vital research? Or wondered why cutting-edge scientists spend half their lives filling out grant applications instead of running experiments? If so, you’ve touched upon some of the biggest problems in conventional academia.

DeSci, a movement born out of disillusionment with these outdated norms, proposes to solve them using decentralized protocols. It’s essentially the “open-source” ethos taken to a whole new level. Imagine a future where every paper, dataset, or piece of code is accessible to anyone, anywhere, without paywalls. DeSci promotes open access and transparency by placing research outputs—such as articles, data, and findings—into permissionless, blockchain-based environments. This global reach eliminates paywalls and steep subscription costs, ensuring that scientific knowledge is equally accessible to researchers worldwide and fostering more inclusive collaboration.

Moreover, scientists receive tokens not just for high-impact papers, but also for valuable but underappreciated tasks like peer review or data curation. For instance, the ResearchHub project flips the script on academic peer review, rewarding contributors with cryptocurrency for high-quality feedback—challenging the norm of unpaid intellectual labor in academia.

Pushing the boundaries of scientific integrity, immutable ledgers are rewriting the rules—locking research outputs, methodologies, and raw data into verifiable, tamper-proof archives. DeSci taps into distributed ledger storage solutions like IPFS and Arweave to make articles, datasets, and source code not just transparent, but immortal. No more buried findings, no more quiet retractions—this is science with receipts. Slashing the risks of fabrication, plagiarism, and data loss, DeSci isn’t just preserving knowledge; it’s future-proofing the truth and mitigating the replicability crisis.

On top of that, DeSci introduces tokenized research outputs through IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens), empowering researchers to own and monetize their work transparently on the blockchain. Platforms like Molecule, VitaDAO, and AthenaDAO facilitate fractional ownership and governance of cutting-edge discoveries, while smart contracts automate royalties and streamline collaboration.

Peer-to-peer funding from DAOs and crowdfunding platforms bypasses politically constrained traditional grants, letting underdogs secure resources for cutting-edge work. In this way, VitaDAO transforms scientific funding into a community-driven movement, where members buy tokens to back longevity research, gaining governance rights and a stake in potential breakthroughs. Similarly, BIO Protocol takes this even further—acting as a launchpad for global collaboration, it empowers universities, researchers, and companies to crowdfund and co-govern cutting-edge science. Within its ecosystem, specialized DAOs like HairDAO (tackling hair loss), CerebrumDAO (enhancing brain health), ValleyDAO (pioneering synthetic biology), etc. Fusing liquidity with incentive-driven mechanisms, DeSci is reengineering the way discovery meets commercialization in a decentralized world.Finally, DeSci invites everyone to contribute to science. Platforms like Pump.science aim to transform longevity research into a tokenized prediction market, while Episteme aims to open and gamify discovery by turning hypotheses into tradable assets. Even meme tokens and AI agents add extra spark—DRUGS aim to disrupt pharmaceutical monopolies and GIRLE champions accessible research. Together, these incentives are fueling a more inclusive and dynamic ecosystem for all.

In other words, DeSci, democratizes scientific inquiry and provides equitable access to knowledge. But if that’s not ambitious enough, there’s another player stepping onto this stage—one that’s already revolutionized fields ranging from finance to art: Artificial Intelligence.

AI’s scientific Renaissance

AI has taken the scientific community by storm. Modern AI-driven platforms can sift through massive datasets, spot hidden patterns, and even generate brand-new hypotheses, shaving years off the timeline for critical research breakthroughs. We’ve seen machine learning (ML) models like Google DeepMind predict protein folding (a puzzle that perplexed scientists for decades), explore new materials for renewable energy, and accelerate drug discovery. OpenAI has created an AI model for longevity science, designed to facilitate the manufacture of stem cells, illustrating how AI can unlock new frontiers in regenerative medicine and other advanced healthcare research areas. And those are just the most popular recent developments.

Beyond that, AI is increasingly providing the necessary tools for interdisciplinary collaboration. A neuroscientist in one country can leverage the same AI-driven methodology used by a climatologist somewhere else. Whether it’s biology, chemistry, physics, or social science, AI can help unify these fields by offering a shared computational language.

Yet, despite AI’s transformative power, it often remains locked within large corporations or prestigious institutions. Access to top-tier AI usually comes with an equally lofty price tag—both in raw computing costs and data. That means most scientists, especially those in underfunded labs or developing nations, remain on the outside looking in.

That’s where DeScAI comes in. By fusing AI with decentralized science, we can unlock truly global collaboration, turning “science for the few” into “science for the many.”

Enter DeScAI: A new science paradigm

DeScAI envisions an ecosystem that tackles the biggest issues in scientific research head-on—transparency, reproducibility, funding bottlenecks, data ownership—while supercharging discoveries with AI algorithms. Here’s how it could look in practice.

At the heart of it is a global, decentralized knowledge base, a planetary library built on blockchain-like infrastructure. Every research paper, dataset, code repository, and lab protocol is permanently recorded, accessible to anyone—no paywalls, no gatekeeping. AI tools scan, summarize, and contextualize findings, freeing researchers from the drudgery of parsing endless PDFs. New results, immutably stored on a distributed ledger, become part of a collective human memory—transparent, verifiable, and forever open.

Funding science, reimagined. Gone are the days when research grants were decided in closed-door meetings by a handful of insiders. In DeScAI’s peer-to-peer funding model, proposals are presented openly to a global network of scientists, citizen enthusiasts, and investors. AI algorithms surface synergies between projects, predict success probabilities, and help match funding to the most promising ideas. Instead of chasing grants, researchers earn community-backed funding, with every milestone transparently tracked on-chain. A scientist’s reputation isn’t built on institutional prestige but on provable impact.

Then comes AI-orchestrated supercomputing. The biggest breakthroughs in AI require immense computational power—something only elite institutions can traditionally afford. DeScAI disrupts this by tapping into a decentralized network of idle computing resources, whether from home PCs or distributed data centers. Smart incentives reward participants for lending their GPU and CPU power, leveling the playing field for underfunded teams. The result? An open, AI-driven supercomputing network that puts raw processing power in the hands of anyone with a big idea.

Even peer review—one of academia’s slowest and most flawed systems—gets a radical upgrade. Instead of relying on an overburdened, thankless review process, DeScAI introduces automated, tokenized peer review. AI checks submissions for plagiarism, methodological flaws, and data anomalies before human reviewers even step in. Those with verified expertise contribute their assessments, earning tokenized rewards tied to the quality of their feedback. Over time, reviewers build an on-chain reputation—a decentralized credential that actually reflects their contributions. The outcome? A system that is faster, fairer, and more engaging than traditional peer review.

And at the core of it all is a fair data economy. AI thrives on data, but too often, that data comes from everyday people—patients in clinical trials, citizen scientists tracking climate change, or volunteers sharing genetic insights—without them seeing any benefit. DeScAI flips the script. Here, data contributors remain in control, deciding how and when their data is shared. Whether it fuels a breakthrough in drug discovery or helps train an AI to fight deforestation, contributors are rewarded with compensation or governance tokens. No more silent data extraction—just a future where individuals have agency over their own information.

The path ahead

It seems that the potential gains from DeScAI are nothing short of colossal. Imagine a borderless lab where a physicist in São Paulo, a chemist in Berlin, and a 16-year-old prodigy in Manila converge on a single dataset, their collaboration seamlessly enhanced by real-time AI translators and dynamic global funding. Picture a world where every irregular data point is instantly flagged by vigilant AI and swiftly verified by peers, nearly eradicating the risk of fraudulent findings. Envision an ethical data economy where informed consent and fair compensation are the norm, not the exception.

Whether you’re a seasoned crypto whale, an enthusiastic hobbyist, or a scientist eager to embrace decentralization, you might want to keep DeScAI on your radar. It is a new narrative and a radical transformation in how we approach research, innovation, and the democratization of knowledge.

Marie Curie once said, “Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” In an era punctuated by pandemics, climate crises, and exponential technological shifts, harnessing the power of DeScAI could help us shed those fears faster than ever before. By smashing barriers to entry, opening data for analysis, and rewarding genuine contributions, we stand a chance to transform the pursuit of knowledge from a privilege for the few into a global right for all—a vision that is not only ambitious but also a moral imperative.

TL;DR

-$90B in DeFi this week, currently at ~ $89.74B, with Maker dominance 15.15%.

-Yearn Finance goes multichain with the launch of Iron Bank Fantom and the first Fantom vaults on beta.yearn.finance. Yearn Finance Newsletter #48.

-Aave Arc gears up for launch: Aave Arc, a permissioned version of the popular DeFi lending platform Aave, is getting ready for its first deployment. Latest Aave News: Avalanche Growth, Voting Delay Period, and Fantom Fork. Follow the Aave governance forum.

-$66M has been recently added to the vulnerable Compound contract, making more funds available for exploitation. Compound proposals 64 and 62 successfully passed. Find the latest Compound proposals here.

-Cross-chain quoting on Dharma has been introduced: Dharma now gives quotes for assets users want to buy by checking multiple chains such as Ethereum and Polygon’s PoS chain. Swaps on Dharma are now powered by 1inch.

-Polygon bolsters Augur betting platform with $1M liquidity program. Augur is looking to expand into betting markets such as the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball.

-Layer 1 Wind Down: The dYdX team will be winding down dYdX Layer 1 spot trading, margin trading, and borrowing on November 1, 2021 at 18:00 UTC. XMR now live: XMR-USD is now live. Start trading Monero (XMR) today on dYdX, with up to 10x leverage. Review of Epoch 1: Second round of updates from the dYdX team on the ecosystem, community, mining programs, and more. The dYdX Boom | Antonio Juliano (SotN 10/4).

-UMA KPI Options for SMART Alpha are now live. UMA Range Token Retro: Analyzing the first implementation by a DAO. State of KPI liquidity mining: Taking a look at the current teams launching KPI based liquidity mining.

-0x turns 5! Clipper Integrates with 0x.0x Protocol is now live at Rubic.exchange.

-Matcha launched Gasless Trading into open beta.

-Loopring Quarterly Update: 2021/Q3: Updates on Loopring’s NFT support, the Loopring Exchange, counterfactual Loopring wallet and more. Loopring L2 Liquidity Mining: Round 15: Get ready for round 15 of incentives on Loopring’s L2 AMM & Orderbook exchange, which began on October 7, and will be lasting 28 days. During the event, the settlement cycle will be every seven days. With a total of 4 cycles, rewards will be distributed on the seventh day of each cycle.

-Ren updates: September Development Update: This month the core development team has been focused dominantly on improving tools and testing the stability and security of upcoming features. September Ecosystem Update: RenVM continues to march onward with its cross-chain expansion with some of the biggest mints we’ve seen to date and Host to Host right around the corner. RenVM continues to gain consistent traction in each ecosystem it expands into.

-The 1inch Network is integrated into Dharma: All swaps on the Ethereum wallet are now powered by 1inch. 1inch teamed up with Unstoppable Domains as a founding member of The Wallet Alliance to accelerate the adoption of wallet payments and change the way crypto is sent around the world.

-The Curve EURS yvault has now been added to Enzyme. Check out MFP: Enzyme Funding Proposals here.

-mStable’s Q4 Roadmap: This post covers a list of short term goals that the core contributor group is working on along with our Metanauts, and includes some soon-to-be-made proposals which will be voted on by Meta governors. Highlights include changes to the MTA emissions, Factory Feeder Pools and targeting of new EVM compatible ecosystems. Check out mStable’s latest proposals here.

-Alchemix roadmap: In this post, the Alchemix team details their long-term development roadmap including their layer 2 plans, the path to decentralization, the AlchemixDAO and much more.

-Index Cooperative launches Data Economy Index ($DATA) in collaboration with Ren: The Data Economy Index (DATA) is a basket of 7 tokens designed to provide accessible, passive exposure to the second largest Web3 sector, the data economy. Filecoin is a major component of the data economy and one of the top holdings within the DATA Index. Index Coop vs. Bitwise. The Definitive Guide to the Bankless BED Index. Conversations with the Coop — BoredElonMusk. Find the latest Index Coop proposals here.

-Introducing Bancor Bounties on Layer3: The team announces that they’re working with Layer3 on incentivizing content that educates users on Bancor. The Bancorian | A Weekly Summary-October 3rd 2021: This is a weekly publication where we cover dev, ecosystem, social media, governance, and community updates. Latest proposals.

-Kyber updates: Jarvis Network enhances jFIATs token liquidity on Polygon with KyberDMM. The Rome Terminal launches with KyberDMM DEX integration. DeFi Yield Protocol enhances DYP token liquidity on Avalanche with KyberDMM. Find out all Kyber proposals here. Check them out on GitHub.

-Introducing Fei v2: Fei v2 brings with it a host of new features including robust peg maintenance, efficient management of risk, liquidity and yield, aligned incentives between TRIBE and FEI holders and more.

-Balancer Grants Monthly Update #2: The Balancer Ecosystem is continuing to grow. Gerg from Balancer Labs posts another community update. The latest Balancer Report is here.

-UniCode — a community hackathon for Uniswap — now has $125k+ on the table. Join the global Uniswap community online Oct. 29th — Nov. 10th and build the future of DeFi. UGP Wave 5 — The Community & Beyond. Latest Uniswap proposals are here.

-The Inaugural Treasury Council: The first Synthetix Treasury Council was elected alongside the other DAO’s within the Synthetix governance system. As per SIP-155 the Treasury Council has been established to undertake many of the responsibilities of the now-dissolved synthetixDAO. It was one of the last remaining areas of centralisation and this transition marks the end of an important but opaque function which the synthetixDAO, as a proxy for the previous foundation structure was performing. The Sargas Release: This release brings some new features to Synthetix on the Optimistic Ethereum L2: SIP-135 — L2 Shorting: This SIP brings shorting capabilities (that have been available on L1) to L2.

-3,2,1,…Close your channels: The new Raiden smart contracts to be deployed on the mainnet soon are not backward compatible. To be safe and before upgrading your Raiden Clients, the team advises you to withdraw your tokens from your channels until October 15th. [GIT] Weekly Update 189: Have you read the latest update this weekend? Edition 189 covers: UX/UI testing of the Raiden dApp, still ongoing testing phase before mainnet release, progress on the Arbitrum deployment research.

-xDai Weekly Recap October 8, 2021 was published.

-Check out the latest Gnosis community call on their Youtube. Find out the latest GnosisDAO proposals here.

-Lido Ethereum staking dashboard introduced: Users can now track their Lido staking deposits, daily rewards, average staking APR and much more — at the click of a button.

-Introducing FundMovr: seamless cross-chain bridging: FundMovr is the Google Maps for the multi-chain world: it helps users move their funds between chains via the best possible route.

-Cryptotesters Academy launched: This academy has tutorials on the most basic things a beginner needs to know to start their DeFi journey.

-Merit Circle raises $4.5 Million: The seed round had participation from DeFiance Capital, Mechanism Capital, Digital Currency Group and more with some angels also joining the round.

-Officials from the Fed are reportedly preparing for a review of a central bank digital currency.

-The Bank of America has recently launched its digital asset research.

-How the Greatest Decentralizing Force for Crypto Projects Is the SEC on Unchained.

-The Golden Age of Ethereum on The Daily Gwei.

-A Vision of Ethereum: 2025 on Polynya.

-Why ETH Will Hit $20K on Bankless.

-And more!

Read the full report here.

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Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) play a unique role in the blockchain landscape, and in 2021, they are certainly taking this space by storm. They’ve been big news ever since Beeple’s ‘Everydays’ $69.3 million sale hit the headlines, the CryptoPunks collections successfully auctioned on Christie’s & Sotheby’s and fetched millions, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sold his first-ever tweet as an NFT for more about $3 million and Elon Musk tweeted the techno song about NFTs as an NFT. And while some argue about the longevity of this phenomenon, and others are convinced that the NFT hype is here to stay, the numbers speak for themselves. In the first six months of 2021, NFTs’ sales reached $2.5 billion, up from just $13.7 million in the first half of 2020 (according to DappRadar). At the same time, this figure is greatly underestimated since the source tracks only on-chain sales, that is, on the blockchain, without taking into account large off-chain sales, for example, from auctions. Moreover, the demand remains at a consistently high level and continues to break records; over the past thirty days, the top ten NFT marketplaces did $1.86 billion in volume.

So what makes NFT technology so attractive for content creators and collectors? Are there any drawbacks or pitfalls that need to be looked at and addressed?

Without further ado, let’s sketch the answers.

What is an NFT?

Adjective ‘non-fungible’ is usually used in economics to denote the possession of unique items and to describe things that cannot be replaced by others because they have a set of exceptional properties. A ‘token’ as a unit of account is a record in a distributed ledger that is controlled by a computer algorithm of a smart contract, in which the values of the balances on the accounts of token holders are recorded, making it possible to transfer them from one wallet to another.

The term non-fungible token (NFT) refers to a crypto asset that represents an intangible digital file, such as image, audio, video, in-game collectible, and other creative products. Moreover, today, it seems like anything that is digital could be an NFT. Thus, they may be created, or ‘minted’ from the World Wide Web’s source code (which was recently sold by its inventor, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, in the form of NFT for $5.4 million), to designer sneakers, real estate, or even genetic data.

All NFT data, including the information about their creators and owners, is recorded on the blockchain, which allows an NFT to be traded easily as a replacement for the digital item it represents. Specifically, NFTs are typically held on the Ethereum blockchain, although other major blockchain ecosystems support them as well.

NFT technology advantages

NFT technology provides content creators a unique opportunity to monetize their work. Due to this, they no longer have to depend on the creative industries middleman — artists no longer rely on galleries or auction houses to sell their art, musicians no longer are controlled by the major record labels, etc. Instead, content creators can sell their digital items directly to the audience in the form of NFTs, which also allows them to retain most of the profit. They can program royalties so that they receive a percentage of the sales whenever their work is sold to a new collector. This is a catching feature as artists generally do not receive future proceeds after the first sale of their creations.

In a nutshell, the main benefits of the NFT technology are as follows:

• Unlike cryptocurrency, which requires all tokens to be identical, each NFT is unique or limited in quantity as well as not replaceable with similar tokens;

• Ownership records are stored on the blockchain, every NFT has an owner and this is of public record;

• Due to advantages of the blockchain technology, content creators can claim royalties directly;

• Content creators can access global markets, easily reach the collectors and the community of like-minded artists.

NFT technology flaws

Despite the apparent advantages of NFT solutions, it is difficult not to pay attention to several problems that formed in the industry alongside their rapid proliferation. Some known issues are:

• Difficulty in finding the original owner of the NFT;

• Difficulty in assessing the uniqueness and understanding how many copies exist;

• Difficulty in determining the value of the NFT.

Concerning NFT sales, authenticity and copyright protection issues are arising more and more often. When uploading content to open non-curated NFT-platforms, never stop wondering that absolutely any media file can be sold on your behalf (no matter if it is a selfie taken a few seconds ago, a picture found on the Internet, or the masterpiece of a well-known artist). A case in point was the recent incident with an NFT drawing by Jean-Michel Basquiat, which was put up for auction in April 2021 and removed two days later after discovering that the sellers did not own it.

All these problems still exist, and Humanode researchers are puzzling over their solutions.

Biometrics as a solution

Biometrics as a technology and a form of identification and access control based on the measurement and statistical analysis of human unique physical or behavioral characteristics can be used for everything from everyday life to yesterday’s science fiction. And it’s no wonder it may grant an original solution to some main NFT technology demerits.

Traditionally, to solve the copyright problem, researchers distinguish three possible ways of proving content creator’s identity:

• Using something a content creator has, whether it is an identity document.

• Utilizing something a content creator knows, like a secret phrase or a password.

• Through what a content creator is, i.e. through biometrics, whether it is a face, a finger, etc.

Since biometric identifiers are unique to individuals, they are more reliable in verifying identity than other methods, without saying that it is fast and easy to use.

Utilizing biometrics as one of its core technologies, Humanode creates the decentralized biometric identification layer that is not only used on the native Humanode platform but can be used in a variety of platforms and decentralized applications, including popular NFTs marketplaces and services. These biometric identifications ensure that the particular NFT is unique, authentic, or original and eliminate the copyright problem.

Humanode biometric identifications are likely to be tied in as an option for user identification in the NFT platforms in form of a wallet’s browser extension or as a full-fledged app. They will provide a simple way to interact with blockchain-based services and offer the most user-friendly interface for the non-techy members of art communities. Furthermore, content creators and collectors will be able to stay pseudonymous while utilizing blockchain-based applications without the need of revealing their identity but only by proving they are real human beings. They will effortlessly access their wallets, mint and sell tokens, and sign transactions in the most accurate and secure way.

It is known that the collection of biometric data raises privacy concerns about the ultimate use of this information. The Humanode team is working on it. Besides biometrics and blockchain technologies in the broad sense, the project utilizes crypto-biometrics which is based on a stack of various disciplines and technologies such as cybersecurity, encryption, liveness detection, and zero-knowledge proofs. Once content creators or buyers log in to the Humanode, the 1 to n search and matching operation happens in an encrypted space, and because it is zero-knowledge based, the only piece of information that is searched for and is given out is if that user is a registered user or not.

It is worth noting that many digital items are already placed in metaverses and in online collections of virtual worlds, which has lots of art galleries where users can buy crypto art and other collectibles in the form of NFTs. As the virtual reality space becomes more popular, displaying digital content in it becomes more common and exciting to the community. Due to Humanode technology, to enter metaverses, and to buy and sell NFTs there, artists and collectors will only need to scan their face, or other biometric modalities required in the future (after the network’s mainnet). The same can be said for video games, decentralized music and video streaming platforms, and other NFT-related services. All this greatly simplifies interaction with the NFT ecosystem for both content creators and collectors.