Decentralized Science (DeSci): A Blockchain-Powered Revolution in Research

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Berlin, Germany – 24th March 2025 

Decentralized Science (DeSci): A Blockchain-Powered Revolution in Research

The landscape of scientific research has long been plagued by systemic challenges, including funding bottlenecks, restricted access to data, and inefficiencies in peer review and publication. Traditional academic frameworks often hinder innovation by centralizing decision-making power within a handful of institutions, making it difficult for independent researchers to access necessary resources.

Decentralized Science (DeSci) is an emerging movement that leverages blockchain technology and decentralized networks to reshape the way research is funded, conducted, and shared. By promoting openness, transparency, and community-driven collaboration, DeSci aims to create a more equitable and efficient research ecosystem.

Challenges in Traditional Scientific Research

Traditional ways of scientific research suffer from many challenges, some are similar across fields, some are more prominent in specific fields

For instance, one of the most pressing issues in the current biomedical research paradigm is the “Valley of Death,” a well-documented gap between early-stage scientific discovery and the successful development and commercialization of therapeutic products. In the context of medical and drug discovery, this term refers to the high-risk, underfunded space between basic research—often carried out in academic institutions—and the clinical development phases that precede market approval.

An estimated 80–90% of drug research projects fail before ever reaching clinical trials, and only 0.1% of drug candidates that enter clinical development eventually gain regulatory approval and reach the market (Binance Research, 2023). These numbers are consistent with broader scientific literature: the Journal of Clinical Investigation (2023) notes that “nine out of ten drug candidates that make it to human testing still fail due to lack of efficacy or unforeseen toxicity” (Eder et al., 2023). These high attrition rates are not necessarily due to flawed science; rather, they often stem from systemic issues in translational research and capital allocation.

From a commercialization perspective, the challenges are manifold. Drug development is not just scientifically risky—it’s also economically prohibitive. The estimated average cost of bringing a new drug to market exceeds $2.6 billion, when accounting for both direct expenses and the cost of failures (DiMasi et al., 2016, Journal of Health Economics). As a result, many early-stage biotech firms lack the capital and institutional partnerships needed to carry their innovations across the entire development lifecycle. Even promising compounds that show efficacy in preclinical models or early-phase clinical trials may be abandoned due to lack of strategic alignment with investors or a failure to meet the rigid risk-return profiles expected by pharmaceutical partners.

Furthermore, misaligned incentives among key stakeholders—such as academic researchers, venture capitalists, and large pharmaceutical companies—create inefficiencies in the innovation pipeline. While academic institutions are often focused on publication and tenure metrics, venture capital is driven by financial returns within relatively short timeframes. This mismatch can leave truly groundbreaking but long-horizon research underfunded and unsupported. A 2023 report from Stanford Law School underscores this gap, stating that “the current funding infrastructure favors incremental advances that are perceived as safer bets over transformative innovations that carry higher risk but also higher societal value” (Stanford Law, 2023).

In parallel, the centralization of scientific publishing exacerbates these challenges. A small number of major publishers control access to the majority of high-impact scientific journals, imposing significant paywalls and processing fees. As the Gates Foundation has noted, “many scientific journals, particularly the so-called ‘high-impact’ journals, will publish outside of their paywall only if you pay a hefty fee,” making open access prohibitively expensive for many researchers (Gates Foundation, 2022). This limits the visibility of new discoveries, particularly for scientists from underfunded institutions or regions with restricted access to top-tier journals.

Moreover, the peer review process remains opaque and susceptible to bias, further slowing down the dissemination of promising research. Without transparent, reproducible mechanisms for evaluating scientific work, it becomes difficult for the broader community to build on existing findings or detect flaws early in the innovation pipeline.

Scientific publishing remains highly centralized, with a few major publishers controlling access to research findings. Paywalls restrict knowledge dissemination, and the peer review process is often opaque, leading to biases and inefficiencies (Coinbase, 2025).

How DeSci Addresses These Challenges

DeSci introduces a paradigm shift in scientific research by implementing blockchain-based solutions to decentralize funding, enhance data transparency, and create new collaboration models. The core innovations of DeSci include:

1. Decentralized Research Funding

Traditional research grants are highly competitive and controlled by centralized organizations, which can result in biases against non-traditional research areas. DeSci addresses this by utilizing Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), where researchers, investors, and even the public can collectively fund scientific projects. This model enables a broader range of scientific inquiries to receive financial backing (Stanford Law School, 2023).

For example, patient-led DAOs can fund research on rare diseases, ensuring that studies relevant to underrepresented communities receive adequate resources (Stanford Law School, 2023).

2. Open-Access Publishing and Data Transparency

Blockchain technology provides an immutable and transparent ledger, enabling researchers to publish their findings in a decentralized manner. Unlike traditional journals, which impose high publication fees and restrict access, blockchain-based publishing ensures that research is freely accessible to the global scientific community (Ulam Labs, 2025).

Additionally, smart contracts can be used to facilitate automated peer reviews, rewarding reviewers with tokens for their timely and high-quality contributions (Coinbase, 2025). This incentivized system not only increases participation but also promotes more rigorous and consistent scientific validation by aligning individual incentives with collective quality standards. More importantly, it enhances transparency in what is often a highly opaque peer review process—a system traditionally criticized for its lack of accountability, hidden biases, and inconsistent standards. By making review timelines, reviewer identities (if desired), and feedback histories traceable on-chain, blockchain introduces a new layer of openness that could strengthen trust in scientific publishing and reduce opportunities for manipulation or gatekeeping.

3. Collaboration Through Tokenized Incentives

DeSci platforms enable a new model of scientific collaboration by utilizing tokenized reward structures. Scientists can be compensated for contributing to research projects, validating data, or reviewing papers. This structure not only enhances motivation but also ensures that research contributions are fairly acknowledged (Sei Labs, 2024).

4. Immutable and Verifiable Research Records

In the age of artificial intelligence, where algorithms can rapidly generate, manipulate, and even fabricate scientific content, the issue of scientific misconduct has become increasingly pressing. Long-standing concerns such as data manipulation, selective reporting, and irreproducibility are now further exacerbated by the scale and speed at which AI tools can operate. This raises critical questions about trust, transparency, and verifiability in academic publishing and research communication.

In this context, blockchain technology offers a compelling solution to safeguarding data integrity. As noted by Ulam Labs (2025), blockchain enables researchers to immutably record and timestamp their data, ensuring that once results are submitted to the ledger, they cannot be altered retroactively. This not only strengthens the authenticity of the research but also provides a verifiable trail of evidence supporting originality and intellectual ownership. By decentralizing the trust model, blockchain reduces the reliance on centralized institutions or peer reviewers as sole gatekeepers of scientific truth. Especially in fields where AI-generated findings can obscure or complicate provenance, blockchain could become an essential infrastructure for maintaining transparency, accountability, and reproducibility in modern science.

Real-World Applications of DeSci

Several DeSci initiatives are already demonstrating how blockchain technology can revolutionize scientific research:

• Decentralized Publishing Platforms: Platforms like Ulam Labs offer blockchain-based publishing, ensuring open-access dissemination of research findings (Ulam Labs, 2025).

• Crowdfunded Scientific Research: Patient advocacy groups and independent researchers are forming DAOs to directly fund studies on niche medical conditions that are often overlooked by traditional grant systems (Stanford Law School, 2023).

• Cross-Border Data Sharing in Healthcare: DeSci enables secure and verifiable cross-border health data exchange, which is particularly beneficial in global pandemic responses and collaborative medical research (Sei Labs, 2024).

The Future of DeSci

The next phase of DeSci, often referred to as DeSci V2, aims to integrate blockchain technology further into scientific institutions. This includes developing enterprise-level solutions for research organizations, enabling seamless global collaboration, and streamlining intellectual property (IP) rights through decentralized patent systems (Sei Labs, 2024).

While challenges remain, including regulatory concerns and technological adoption barriers, the potential of DeSci to democratize scientific research and accelerate innovation is undeniable. By shifting power away from centralized gatekeepers and into the hands of researchers and communities, DeSci has the potential to transform the way science is conducted and shared.

Conclusion

Decentralized Science (DeSci) represents a revolutionary shift in how research is conducted, funded, and shared. By addressing long-standing inefficiencies in traditional scientific models, DeSci has the potential to democratize research, increase transparency, and accelerate innovation across disciplines. One of its most powerful drivers is the network effect—as more researchers, institutions, and funders participate in decentralized platforms, the value and credibility of the ecosystem increase exponentially. For example, peer valuation among scientific researchers—where experts openly evaluate, endorse, or critique each other’s work on-chain—can create a dynamic, transparent, and reputation-driven validation layer. Unlike traditional closed peer review, this approach leverages community consensus and persistent reputation scores to signal quality, reduce bias, and improve scientific rigor. Over time, the accumulation of peer interactions, endorsements, and reproducibility signals forms a decentralized metric of scientific merit, reinforcing both trust and discoverability. However, for these mechanisms to scale effectively, DeSci must still address core challenges such as regulatory uncertainty, technical scalability, and institutional resistance to shifting away from entrenched legacy systems.

For DeSci to achieve its full potential, a collaborative effort is required from researchers, policymakers, and technologists. Regulatory frameworks need to evolve to support decentralized funding models, while institutions must adapt to new technological solutions. If successfully implemented, DeSci could fundamentally reshape the global scientific landscape, making research more inclusive, efficient, and impactful. As blockchain technology continues to mature and more stakeholders embrace decentralized models, the DeSci movement could play a pivotal role in solving some of humanity’s most pressing scientific challenges.

References

Binance Research. (2023). From challenges to opportunities: How DeSci reimagines science. Binance. https://www.binance.com/en/research/analysis/from-challenges-to-opportunities-how-desci-reimagines-science

Coinbase. (2025). What is decentralized science (DeSci) and how does it plan to fix academic research? Coinbase Learn. https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-glossary/what-is-decentralized-science-desci-and-how-does-it-plan-to-fix-academic-research

DiMasi, J. A., Grabowski, H. G., & Hansen, R. W. (2016). Innovation in the pharmaceutical industry: New estimates of R&D costs. Journal of Health Economics, 47, 20–33. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhealeco.2016.01.012

Eder, J., Sedrani, R., & Wiesmann, C. (2023). The discovery of first-in-class drugs: Origins and evolution. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 133(2). https://www.jci.org/articles/view/177383

Gates Foundation. (2022). The invisible wall: When paywalls keep the public from publicly funded research. https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/articles/research-paywall-open-access

Sei Labs. (2024). What is DeSci V2 and why does it matter? Sei Blog. https://blog.sei.io/what-is-desci-v2-and-why-does-it-matter/

Stanford Law School. (2023). Unlocking scientific innovation through decentralized science – Part I. https://law.stanford.edu/2023/07/27/unlocking-scientific-innovation-through-decentralized-science-part-i/

Translational Medicine Communications. (2019). Challenges in drug discovery and development. BMC. https://transmedcomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41231-019-0050-7

Ulam Labs. (2025). How decentralized science is revolutionizing research. Ulam.io. https://www.ulam.io/blog/how-decentralized-science-is-revolutionizing-research

For inquiries, please contact:

Contact: 

Dr. Florian Smeritschnig

info@opendesci

Co-Author Dr. Florian Smeritschnig

Dr. Florian Smeritschnig is the founder of StrategyCase.com and holds a PhD from the University of Vienna and a Master’s from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Previously, he worked at McKinsey and Bitpanda, specializing in strategy, growth, and operations.

Co-Author David Wang

David Wang is a strategist, entrepreneur, and early Web3 investor, now building Open Desci Foundation. With experience at Deloitte Strategy, Roland Berger, and AT Kearney, he has advised top firms like Charité, Eurofins, and ZEISS across multiple industries.