TPan here. I’m en route to my friend’s bachelor party (wish me luck). However, I do have some great content for you from someone else in the space.

Today we have Erin Dahl sharing insights into the world of DeSci! Erin is co-founder of brand strategy and content agency Content Coopérative and the Comms & Awareness Lead for AthenaDAO, a DAO advancing women’s health with web3.

If you’re interested in the themes in this article, check out AthenaDAO and participate in their genesis token launch. You can also find Erin on X here. 

Summer’s drawing to a close and it feels like the right time to get a little bit reflective: If you get down to brass tacks, why are you in web3? For me, it was born of an insatiable desire to rethink systems that are no longer serving us. At the end of the day, I just want life on planet Earth to be better.

We’ve seen the promise of new ways to own and manage our assets; to create, collect, and share art; to socialize digitally. But there’s another corner of web3 that has grabbed my attention over the past few months: Decentralized Science, or DeSci. It’s shaking up a highly centralized sector, using the existing stack to make new primitives like the IP-NFT, and generally accelerating the pace of scientific progress to our mutual benefit.

What’s the deal with DeSci?

Before we turn to the solution, let’s look at the problem. Vincent Weisser of Molecule gave a great talk on the subject at EthCC that I recommend checking out. In short, traditional science has issues:

• Research funding is hard to come by and centralized

• Replication is tough as much is done in silos

• Incentives are off-kilter with only 2% of funding going to researchers under 35

• Data is often inaccessible and lives behind paywalls

DeSci, which has piqued the interest of considerable personalities like Vitalik and Brian Armstrong, is opening things up, making science more collaborative and accessible through a web3 alternative to the current system. How? 

Through community-driven tech that helps scientists do their work better, from raising funding to sharing data.

Vincent Weisser of VitaDAO at EthCC

In true web3 style, DeSci’s vision for the future of scientific research is collaborative, digital, and highly autonomous. Unfortunately, patents today are not, and that throws a colossal wrench into the process early on. 

Enter the IP-NFT. A new blockchain primitive developed by Molecule, IP-NFTs merge traditional legal contracts with Ethereum smart contracts, offering scientists new sources of funding, fresh ways to transact on their discoveries, and community distribution of licensing and governance rights. Not to mention they’re composable with DeFi protocols.

Spotlight On: AthenaDAO & The Most Significant Growth Market

One of the largest DeSci DAOs and graduate of the bio.xyz accelerator, AthenaDAO is a particularly interesting example. They’re focusing on women’s health, a radically under-funded, under-tapped area of science. 

Women make up half of the global population and yet 1% of biotech R&D goes to women-specific issues. For much of history, women were effectively believed to be small men (not kidding) and were left out of clinical trials. We didn’t even begin collecting data on women until the 90s. In tangible terms, that’s translated to a whole lot of missing data and inexplicable infertility, pain, and disease for 50% of humans. 

A shocking truth? Yes. A huge opportunity? Also yes. To the tune of $600 billion for menopause alone, according to Forbes.

Laura Minquini, Founder of AthenaDAO, sharing how reproductive longevity gets less funding than pet longevity

DeSci DAO ecosystems generally revolve around their governance tokens, so let’s dig into how they work and why they’re cool. If we take AthenaDAO as an example, we’re talking $ATH. The capped ERC20 token, launching today, grants holders the opportunity to guide the direction of the DAO, voting on key decisions like allocating funds to research projects and developing governance policies. 

$ATH was designed around the sustainability loop principle: The value of AthenaDAO's intellectual property grows as research projects produce positive results. Successful commercialization of these projects fuels the growth of AthenaDAO's ecosystem, attracting higher-quality IP, increasing funding opportunities, and fostering further growth (think new research, stealth company formation, and other ecosystem-driving initiatives).

For a deeper dive, I’d recommend checking out their whitepaper. And if you’re interested in acquiring $ATH, whitelist yourself for auction access and updates. AthenaDAO will be launching on bio.xyz’s snazzy new launchpad.

Here are the $ATH auction details:

• Begins: Thurs August 31, 12pm CET 

• Closes: Tues Sept 5, 12pm EST

• Tokens Available: 2 million (2% of total supply & a nod to the average number of eggs women are born with)

• Floor Price: $.125 (a nod to the average age women begin their period, 12.5 years old)

Laddering It All Up

Science can often seem unapproachable, something reserved for labs and PhDs. But in reality, it’s for all of us. Everything is nothing without our health. There’s no way around it: If we want to truly do well, we need to be well.

DeSci’s out to support that by improving our lived experiences, whether it be AthenaDAO supporting women, VitaDAO focusing on helping us age better, or ValleyDAO finding ways to protect the future of our planet. And all of them are using web3. 

DeSci really is the perfect storm of real-world use case, wide target audience, and massive market opportunity. And I, for one, can’t wait to see the strides it makes in enhancing life on planet Earth for us all.

Bonus Fun Fact

One final DeSci tidbit I find quite interesting: There’s a real symbiosis with traditional actors! Pfizer backed VitaDAO. AthenaDAO received research submissions from Cambridge, Harvard, and MIT. DeSci isn’t threatening an existing industry; it’s plugging into an ecosystem and filling a massive gap with new tech capes.

Erin really laid some helpful perspective for me, and I hope she did for you as well. It’s great to know that NFTs are being used in ways beyond consumer digital collectibles and financial assets.

If you enjoyed this piece from Erin, check out AthenaDAO’s token auction and consider participating.

See you next week!