Bitcoin as the First Decentralized Digital Currency System

Bitcoin established the first decentralized digital currency system, enabling permissionless value exchange. Ethereum extended this vision by introducing smart contracts, allowing anyone to deploy their own programs and enabling permissionless code execution.

Many individuals invest in cryptocurrency to preserve their autonomy and protect freedoms that are slowly and quietly being eroded. A similar movement is emerging in the fields of science and medicine, as the freedom to innovate, self-experiment, and disseminate scientific knowledge is being undermined by a fragmented biomedical R&D system.

The Current System Hinders Disease Cures

In 2018, Goldman Sachs published a report titled “The Genome Revolution”, posing a provocative question: “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The report highlighted Gilead Sciences as an example. Gilead developed an effective treatment for hepatitis C, which generated $12.5 billion in revenue in 2015. However, as more patients were cured, sales declined sharply to $4 billion in subsequent years.

Using Opioids for Chronic Disease Management: A Double-Edged Sword

Treating chronic diseases, such as pain management with opioids, ensures recurring revenue streams but often leads to patient dependency rather than addressing the root causes. The addictive nature of opioids has resulted in widespread abuse and dependency. Opioid-related deaths, particularly those stemming from prescription opioids, have become a significant public health crisis in the United States.

Scientists Spending Time on Fundraising, Not Research

Imagine a scenario where software developers spend most of their time raising funds instead of writing code. This is the reality for many scientists today.

Underutilized Scientific Talent

A lack of fundamental infrastructure to scale science and technology has hindered the realization of Solarpunk—a vision of a sustainable society in harmony with nature, abundant in resources, and brimming with innovation.

These systemic challenges create significant barriers to scientific advancement, steering us further from the idealized world of “scientific fiction” we aspire to. But what if we could build a decentralized, self-organizing scientific ecosystem? One driven by open data, liquid markets, and a core mission to cure diseases.

Molecule DAO and BIO Protocol

Molecule is a protocol that brings scientific intellectual property (IP) on-chain. BIO Protocol serves as an engine to launch and accelerate on-chain scientific communities (BioDAOs), bringing together scientists, patients, and investors. A BioDAO focuses on a specific scientific domain or disease, fostering research, drug development, products, and on-chain IP.

For example, VitaDAO has funded multiple projects in longevity science and research, including the VITA-FAST project, which was developed by Newcastle University’s Vikorolchuk Lab.

BIO Protocol’s team has created the first set of BioDAOs across various scientific disciplines. According to Dune Analytics, when Paul Kohlhaas spoke last week, the total market cap of BioDAOs was under $100 million. As of November 18, it surpassed $230 million.

BIO Protocol’s Mission

BIO aims to assist scientists, patients, and biotech founders in building on-chain scientific communities. It provides support in tokenomics design, community development, funding, and liquidity. BIO token holders can vote to onboard DAOs into the network, functioning like a community-owned accelerator. This ensures the best teams stand out and launch their communities on-chain.

Upcoming Projects on BIO Launchpad

1. Curetopia Focused on the $1 trillion rare disease market, Curetopia’s team includes Y Combinator alumni, Harvard PhDs, and rare disease entrepreneur Eric Perlstein. Remarkably, with just $5 million, Perlstein advanced a drug to Phase III clinical trials—a process that typically costs over $100 million.
2. Long COVID Labs Spearheading solutions for over 100 million long COVID patients globally, this initiative is led by former Stanford neuroscientist Rohan Dixit.
3. Quantum Biology DAO Building quantum microscopes to observe quantum biological phenomena, this project is led by MIT PhD Clarice D. Aiello, a world-leading scientist in quantum biology.

Recently, BIO hosted its Genesis event, inviting users to deposit supported DeSci tokens in exchange for BIO tokens. Genesis raised $33 million for the BIO treasury, which has since grown to over $53 million due to the appreciation of DeSci token prices. Additionally, BIO has secured investment from Binance Labs.

The Role of IP-NFTs

The BIO Protocol plays a central role within the BioDAO network, where each BioDAO focuses on developing drugs and therapies for specific diseases or treatments. These research outcomes are tokenized as scientific intellectual property (IP). Traditionally, every stage of drug development has been kept confidential from the public. In contrast, BioDAO aims to leverage blockchain technology to make this process more open and transparent.

IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens) underpin this new paradigm. They enable anyone to bring IP on-chain, making it programmable, tradeable, liquid, and data-rich. Essentially, IP-NFTs act as containers for intellectual property. Once the IP is sufficiently validated, it can be fractionalized into IPT (IP Tokens), which serve as governance tokens, allowing individuals to actively participate as stakeholders in the scientific process.

For instance:
The Vita-RNA project, supported by VitaDAO, focuses on developing novel mRNA gene therapies and is led by biotech experts Michael Torres and Anthony Schwartz. With an initial funding of $300,000, the project’s VITARNA tokens have since achieved a market cap exceeding $27 million. When one of Vita-RNA’s lead drug candidates demonstrated in vitro (lab-based) activity, its value began to rise on Uniswap.

BIO’s Vision for the Future

The BIO Protocol draws inspiration from the bio/acc movement, which seeks to accelerate the field of biology and disrupt many conventional paradigms in healthcare. Biotechnology represents a new foundational layer for life itself. To realize this potential, outdated scientific institutions and processes must be fundamentally reshaped. The goal is to expedite all forms of biology-related research and create a global, inclusive scientific network.

Disclaimer

1. This article is a translation from [panews] and is credited to the original author [Zen]. For concerns regarding this repost, please contact the Gate Learn team, who will address them promptly in accordance with relevant procedures.
2. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute investment advice.
3. The Gate Learn team translated the article into other languages. Copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited unless mentioned.