Binance Labs, the VC arm of Binance — one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges — recently announced an investment in BIO Protocol (BIO), a pioneering entity within the decentralized science (DeSci) space. While Binance Labs has a history of investing in innovative projects in blockchain and Web3, currently backing over 250 projects, most investments involved the decentralized finance (DeFi) and AI sectors. Binance Labs’ investment in BIO Protocol will be its first foray into decentralizing scientific research — and the news has reverberated throughout the DeSci community. Loudly.
Binance Labs’ interest signals a recognition of blockchain’s potential to address the inefficiencies of the healthcare industry and the scientific world. Currently, BIO is comprised of seven decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that focus on integrating blockchain technology into several scientific areas, including women’s health and therapeutic psychedelics.
Similar to other DeSci DAOs, BIO aims to create a platform for decentralizing scientific research by fostering collaboration between scientists, patients, and investors. It also provides an alternative funding mechanism through Web3 tokenization. A pillar of DeSci functionality, this tokenization is designed to address the serious gaps found in traditional scientific funding.
“BIO Protocol represents a significant step forward in DeSci by merging biotechnology and DeFi. At Binance Labs, we are dedicated to unlocking groundbreaking advancements that drive long-term, real-world impact by supporting projects building meaningful technology — an approach that closely aligns with our investment in BIO,” said Andy Chang, Investment Director, Binance Labs.
How Big of a Deal Is the Investment for DeSci?
It can’t be understated. Binance Labs’ investment in BIO Protocol is an incredibly important step for DeSci writ large. In recent years, decentralized science has emerged as a growing, though still little-known movement aimed at reshaping how scientific research is conducted, funded, and shared. While the potential of DeSci’s applied principles and functions are exciting to those familiar, the movement still flies a bit under the Web3 radar, especially when compared to DeFi or AI.
However, Binance Labs’ announcement placed DeSci on the radar for many. With its global reach and influence, Binance Labs’ recent investment into DeSci represents a significant step toward the promise of DeSci, which is an ecosystem rooted in blockchain technology, that aims to decentralize and democratize the world of research. Binance Labs’ involvement will not only accelerate the growth of DeSci in the Web3 space but also help introduce the ecosystem to the scientific community. To that end and to further our goal (introducing DeSci to those outside of Web3) let’s quickly cover the basics.
What Is DeSci?
Decentralized science, or DeSci, is a new model of conducting and funding scientific research that leverages blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, and decentralized networks to address longstanding issues in traditional scientific ecosystems. Some of these issues include:
- Lack of transparency: Traditional research is often siloed and proprietary, limiting access to important data and results.
- Slow, bureaucratic processes: Academic research is sometimes held back by slow publication timelines and funding cycles.
- Funding limitations: Research often depends on a handful of wealthy institutions, government agencies, or corporations, which can stifle innovation and create conflicts of interest.
DeSci aims to decentralize the control over research, giving more power to individual researchers and independent teams. The movement also allows the public to become involved in research funding through tokenization. By leveraging blockchain technology, DeSci can make research more transparent, streamline the peer-review process, and facilitate research funding that’s not grant-dependent. To learn more about the movement, check out our aptly named article, What Is DeSci?
Why Binance Labs’ Involvement Accelerates the DeSci Ecosystem
Along with bringing more awareness to DeSci and its core principles, Binance Labs’ investment can also help DeSci to realize (and apply) its principles for decentralizing scientific research. In short, the investment can help transform DeSci’s “aspiration” goals into real-world applications — not only for BIO Protocol but for other deserving DOAs in the ecosystem.
Every DeSci DAO is unique, with its own unique mission statement. For instance, ResearchHub focuses on streamlining the peer-review process, while AxonDAO is currently focused on personal biodata ownership. However, almost every DeSci entity incorporates the same fundamental principles through various methods and approaches. Binance Labs’ involvement — hopefully setting a precedent for others to join the DeSci space — can accelerate the functionality of these five decentralized science principles.
The Five Goals of DeSci Applications
1. Facilitating Access to Funding
One of the key challenges in traditional research is securing funding. Universities, government agencies, and large corporations tend to control most of the financial resources allocated to research, which limits opportunities for independent researchers or smaller teams.
Through decentralized platforms, Binance Labs’ involvement could help provide alternative funding models using tokenization and crowd-investing. By allowing research projects to seek funding directly from the public or through decentralized venture capital, DeSci platforms can make funding more accessible and inclusive.
2. Improving Data Transparency and Trust
Blockchain’s core characteristic of immutability — the ability to create tamper-proof records — is a natural fit for improving the transparency of scientific data. Researchers can use blockchain to record their findings, methodology, and results, ensuring that their work is public and verifiable. The investment could help build or fund platforms that leverage the benefits of blockchain. This addresses concerns about reproducibility and data manipulation found in traditional science.
Decentralized platforms also introduce new ways to incorporate community-driven peer review, creating an open, transparent process for validating and sharing scientific results. This could break the monopoly of traditional academic journals and enable new forms of open-access publishing of research results.
3. Enabling Collaboration Across Borders
Science is a global endeavor. However, researchers are often constrained by geographic, institutional, and financial limitations, which can silo and fragment scientific progress. DeSci removes these barriers by creating decentralized networks where researchers from around the world can collaborate seamlessly. Binance Labs’ support could lead to the development of platforms that facilitate cross-border collaborations. This allows researchers to connect, share resources, and collectively advance scientific discovery.
Blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized protocols can help foster new ways for scientists and innovators to interact. By sharing data, tools, and even intellectual property in a secure and decentralized manner, researchers can remove needless hurdles.
4. Disrupting Traditional Publishing Models
Scientific knowledge has long been shared through academic journals. Unfortunately, publishing has increasingly become a more for-profit opportunity than “for-science” endeavor. Researchers often face long delays, expensive publication fees, and restricted access to the latest research. DeSci models can enable new ways to share scientific papers.
Outside investment can support the ongoing development of DeSci platforms that disrupt the status quo of academic publishing, offering faster, cheaper, and more accessible alternatives. These platforms could reward researchers for publishing their work directly to the public, bypassing the expensive and slow peer-review process typically managed by traditional publishers.
5. Empowering Citizen Science
Overall, investments in DeSci help open the door to citizen science, offering the potential to involve everyday people in scientific discovery. This open-door approach allows everyone to contribute to research, fund projects, and access findings in real-time. In this ecosystem, research is not just conducted by academics but also invites the broader public to participate.
Blockchain technology can help track contributions, reward participants with tokens, and ensure that credit for discoveries is appropriately distributed. This could fundamentally change how people view and engage with science, fostering greater public trust in scientific institutions.
The Long-Term Impact of Decentralizing Scientific Research
Binance Labs’ support — again, setting a precedent for outside involvement — could lead to transformative changes in the scientific community. These transformative changes align with the “end-game” goals of the DeSci movement, including:
- Faster breakthroughs: By providing researchers with more funding options and access to resources, it could help speed up the pace of scientific discovery. In particular, areas like biotechnology, environmental science, and artificial intelligence could benefit greatly from the accelerated pace of innovation.
- Greater inclusivity: DeSci’s nature offers the potential for diverse voices in decentralized scientific research, both in terms of funding and participation.
- Enhanced credibility: With blockchain’s transparency and accountability features, DeSci could help restore public trust in science, particularly when it comes to issues like climate change, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals.
“Science drives human progress, but we’ve trapped our brightest minds in an endless funding maze – they spend 80% of their time writing grants instead of solving humanity’s greatest challenges,” said Paul Kohlhaas, Founder, BIO Protocol. “Binance Labs’ support will help shatter this broken system. As the undisputed leader in global liquidity, Binance Labs will help us unlock scientific breakthroughs from Boston to Singapore to Bangalore, catalyzing patient-driven research at a scale that was impossible until now. This isn’t just innovation – it’s a revolution in scientific funding.”
By supporting DeSci initiatives, Binance Labs may lay the groundwork for a more equitable, transparent, and efficient scientific ecosystem. The implications extend far beyond the blockchain space. Outside support and adoption could transform how research is conducted in the medical field, how we approach environmental sciences, how we address public health, and more. Decentralizing scientific research allows scientists to communicate more effectively, outside of institutional silos, and Binance Labs may’ve just given DeSci a bullhorn for communicating how we achieve this goal.
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