In the 80s and 90s, researchers began proposing modern prediction markets for the sake of political & economic forecasting. The University of Iowa even launched a prediction market in 1988 for academic purposes.
In the early 2000s, the idea of using prediction markets to forecast scientific outcomes began to gain traction. Researchers proposed that these markets could aggregate expert opinions and data to predict the results of scientific experiments and discoveries, particularly in terms of things like reproducibility. It’s well known today that science suffers a huge reproducibility problem, and prediction markets have long been proposed as a potential solution to that problem.
Prediction markets serve as a global schelling point where the wisdom of the crowd is aggregated to generate truth.
Still, prediction markets have never really been widely adopted in science. Professor Robin Hanson argues that academia always cared more about prestige than procedural optimization, which is why grants were adopted instead of retroactive prize based funding- to give the funders more prestige by way of association with particular researchers.
Then, came DeSci
It’s no secret that funding mechanisms and IP governance in science and academia are unfortunately fundamentally broken.
Organizations like VitaDAO, Molecule, Bio.xyz, ResearchHub & many others stand to change this by building those mechanisms & structures onchain to accelerate exponential breakthroughs in the age of information.
In order to fund innovative research, BioDAOs like VitaDAO pool capital and then allocate it according to a community voting process. This means that cutting edge science gets the monetary boost it needs to be kickstarted, but that’s not all. The IP produced by that research is actually tokenized, and then governed by its community of token holders (aka research funders) who steward it down an optimal path to real impact.
We’ve added the VitaDAO $VITA token to limitless.exchange to reignite a new era of prediction markets in science.
"Using BioDAO tokens in onchain prediction markets means that new mediums of financial & social gravity can be used to forecast scientific outcomes by extracting sentiment from leading minds in the industry."
How to get involved
You can visit limitless.exchange today and start trading in markets such as;
“Will VitaDAO fund $2m of science in 2024?”
“Will aggregate DeSci market cap achieve $1b in 2024?”
“Will Artan Bio VitaRNA commence clinical trials of their engineered suppressor system to counter aging mutations on human subjects in 2025?”
Beyond that, you can become a creator by proposing your own science related prediction markets to gain insights & generate extra revenue, or if you’re a BioDAO representative- reach out to CJ directly to get your token added to the platform!
