The Science DAO — Science, Scientists, and Blockchain!

For decades, the global scientific community has struggled to gain traction as most innovators had to make their way through bureaucracy for their innovations to come to light.

Web2 and its social platform offered a fresh start to these innovators as they had a platform to directly reach an audience larger than ever before. However, there is still a major hurdle to conquer: getting their inventions and innovations funded for further development.

Of course, fundraiser websites such as KickStarter, Patreon, and Crowd.Science for scientists and inventors offer them a means to raise funds. Nevertheless, there is a myriad of downsides plaguing these platforms, starting with poor media exposure and discoverability of innovations, a lack of a loyal community, high commission fees, and proposal success rates at an all-time low dropping from 30.5% in 1997 to 18.3% in 2016 and continuing to plunge.

Some blockchain and crypto enthusiasts are of the opinion that such drawbacks and complications can be solved in the Web3 space.

Ethereum has revolutionized blockchain by decentralizing finance and enabling transactions of billions of dollars to pass from peer to peer on a trustless network. Its concept of smart contract has given birth to a new world of management and governance of companies (a.k.a. projects) — decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

In short, DAOs are like companies but on the blockchain, and all decisions are made by their token holders, who are essentially the “shareholders” of the DAO.

The Science DAO, launched by Yasha, is a decentralized autonomous organization built on the Ethereum blockchain that seeks to leverage the community-building strength of DAOs to create a strong and loyal group of creatives and brilliant minds.

InuYasha has launched three other projects to date — Guzzler, Cliff, and Pochi Inu — all of which have been tremendously successful and have raised millions of dollars. With a track record of 3-on-3, it is reasonable to expect a positive outcome from the launch of The Science DAO.

The Science DAO’s vision stems from the challenge that has long plagued the scientific community — the lack of community support for innovators for their disruptive inventions and emerging technologies. The project’s idea is that these like-minded people would fall under the same roof to support investors and propel scientific innovation by raising funds unanimously.

The workings of The Science DAO are quite intuitive. To obtain funds for any innovation or project, the person would first have to submit their project to the DAO.

The project is then scrutinized by the members of the DAO, following which they vote on the same. Like most other DAOs, each governance token is considered to be 1 vote.

Post-approval of the project, the DAO creates a corresponding NFT that represents the fundraiser. All proceeds from the sales of these NFTs (minting and secondary market sales) go toward the development of the project.

There would certainly be a significant number of rejected projects, but even in such cases, the innovators can still raise funds and be incubated by individuals within the DAO.

One of the key reasons why blockchain enthusiasts are backing this DAO and are hyped about it is its target demographics. While the average Joe can get his hands on the DAOs governance token on the open market, the tokens would be primarily distributed to individuals in institutions, universities, and scientific funds.

Further, the tokenomics in their white paper specifies that no wallet can hold more than 1% of the total token supply, i.e., 1 billion of the total 100 billion tokens. This is a strong indicator as it is an attempt to keep whales at bay.

Emphasized on its website, The Science DAO’s mission is to help fund disruptive and game-changing innovations with the help of Web3 and make cutting-edge technology accessible to the general public faster than ever!

One of the biggest benefits that the scientific community could possibly enjoy, thanks to The Science DAO, is the extreme fast-tracking of the ever-loved but dreadfully slow peer-review process.