Original author: Miki , Web3Caff interview team
In the wave of rapid development of blockchain technology, decentralized open science (DeSci) is gradually emerging as an innovative force. As a representative DeSci organization in the Chinese community, DeSci Sino is leading the deep integration of scientific research and Web3 technology with its unique mission and diverse team.
In this interview, Dr. Qi Baowen, a member of the board of directors of DeSci Sino, shared with us the development history, technological breakthroughs and future vision of DeSci Sino. From scientific research funding and data sharing to community governance and international cooperation, how does DeSci Sino deal with the pain points of the traditional scientific system? And how to inject the innovative vitality of decentralized science into the Chinese community? Let us walk into this wonderful dialogue together to understand the challenges and opportunities of DeSci, as well as the unique role of the Chinese community in the global DeSci ecosystem.
1. First of all, thank you very much Desci Sino for participating in this special interview column of Web3Caff . Please briefly introduce yourself. Web3Caff is a deep vertical media platform dedicated to research in the field of Web3. Welcome everyone to explore the development trend of Web3 industry and new economic dynamics with us from a global perspective. First of all, please briefly introduce yourself, Desci Sino and your team?
Hello, my name is Qi Baowen. I am currently a member of the second board of directors of DeSci Sino, mainly responsible for DeSci Sinos BD and external relations. I previously obtained a doctorate in pharmacy from the University of Montreal, Canada, and then worked as a researcher at the National Institute for Materials Research in Japan and Harvard Medical School in the United States. I am currently also an industry mentor at Sichuan University, a visiting professor at Shenzhen University, and the president of the Canadian chapter of the Chinese American Biomedical Technology Association (CBA-Canada).
DeSci Sino is a Web3.0 community dedicated to promoting decentralized open science (DeSci) in the Chinese-speaking community. DeSci Sino combines scientific principles with emerging Web 3.0 concepts and technologies to address challenges that are difficult to solve with traditional methods through collaboration and innovation, such as accelerating drug discovery and approval processes and narrowing the gap between the scientific community and the public. Since its establishment in 2024, the DeSci Sino community has grown rapidly, attracting members from different backgrounds, including scientists, Web3.0 developers, legal experts, investors, and educators. Through a series of online events and offline gatherings, DeSci Sino has played an important role in increasing public understanding of science and DeSci and promoting the global DeSci movement.
DeSci Sino’s team mainly includes:
1) The Board of Directors: Currently composed of ten members, it is responsible for overall coordination, handling complex issues, and formulating long-term strategies.
2) Project Team: Groups are set up according to professional fields or tasks, such as scientific research, technology development, community promotion, etc., and decisions are made collaboratively by group members.
3) Members: Nearly a thousand members are involved in community building. All members can submit proposals and enter the voting stage after preliminary screening to ensure broad participation of the community.
2. We know that DeSci Sino combines scientific research with Web3 concepts to address some pain points in traditional scientific methods. Specifically, in which scientific fields do you think decentralized technology has brought the most significant changes?
DeSci Sino is a Web 3.0 community focused on the science field. We adhere to the basic principles of science: boldly put forward ideas and hypotheses, and carefully use experiments and data to confirm or falsify them. Keep an open mind and maintain critical thinking. Our focus is on the application and development of decentralized technology in the field of science, including the following aspects:
1. Scientific research funding and innovation. The decentralized funding mechanism has changed the traditional way of allocating scientific research funds. Through the blockchains smart contracts, funds can be directly allocated to specific research projects, reducing the intervention of intermediaries. Researchers can tokenize project results and receive corresponding returns, thereby attracting more people to participate in scientific research and promoting technological innovation.
2. Open data and sharing. Decentralized technology promotes the open sharing of scientific data through the immutability and transparency of blockchain. Decentralized technology enables researchers to share sensitive information such as clinical trial data and genomic data, while ensuring privacy and data security through encryption technology. In other fields such as AI, it can make global data collaboration more transparent and efficient.
3. The application of blockchain technology in academic publishing and peer review has brought profound changes to scientific communication. It reduces publisher monopoly, and research results can be published immediately and recorded on the blockchain to ensure originality and transparency. The review process is transparent, academic misconduct is prevented, and a more credible and open scientific research ecosystem is established.
3. Currently, DeSci Sino has attracted members from different backgrounds to participate. How do you design the community governance mechanism to ensure the efficiency and fairness of multi-party collaboration? Do you use DAO or similar tools?
The DeSci Sino community is an open and equal Web 3.0 community. It is a community where members build, govern and share together, that is, all members who join are the owners of the community. Everyone can freely initiate discussion topics, activities and projects as well as community construction plans, and freely mobilize and use the resources of the DeSci Sino community. At the same time, all members jointly build community rules, jointly govern the community, and jointly control the quality of the community. Our goal is to build DeSci Sino into a big family, where there are no parents but only family members, and everyone can do whatever they want freely and responsibly in this family. The family of the DeSci Sino community gets along with each other in a friendly manner, respects each other, and can have different opinions, but it does not prevent us from discussing DeSci together.
In the future, we do plan to use tools such as DAO to handle issues such as proposal creation, voting processes, and fund allocation to ensure that the rules are automatically enforced and that the voices of members from different backgrounds are equally represented. We will also regularly publicize the use of community funds to ensure fair resource allocation. At the same time, we also hope that DeSci Sino can become an incubator for Web3 projects and incubate some of our own projects.
4. In decentralized open science, data sharing and protection are often contradictory. DeSci Sino believes that while promoting the sharing of scientific data, how can we ensure the protection of sensitive data or intellectual property rights?
DeSci Sino is incubating projects to solve related problems. For example, we can use the technology of Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) to protect data privacy and intellectual property rights. The paper Cryptographic Open Science: Enabling Secure And incentivized Biomedical Data Sharing With Web 3.0 Technologies To Overcome The Open Science Dilemma published by the team of Dr. Wang Yu, the founder of DeSci Sino, in ResearchHub describes in detail how to use blockchain, FHE data encryption and Crypto Token to accelerate data sharing and solve the problem of Open Science that no one is open. If you are interested, you can pay attention to it.
Specifically, FHE provides a technical means to break through the bottleneck of privacy and intellectual property protection, making data sharing more popular in scientific research. FHE allows calculations to be performed directly on encrypted data without decrypting the data, thereby ensuring that data privacy is always protected during the processing process. This feature makes FHE have important potential in data sharing and sensitive information protection in decentralized open science (DeSci). The key feature of FHE allows data to participate in calculations after encryption, and the output results are also encrypted. The data owner uses the private key to decrypt the calculation results and obtain the plaintext results. During the entire calculation process, the original data and intermediate results are completely invisible to the processor.
Application scenarios of FHE include analyzing patient medical data to study diseases without leaking patient privacy. Medical data is encrypted before uploading, and the research team completes calculations (such as statistics, machine learning model training) without touching the plaintext data at all. Data decryption is completed by the patient or the authorized party to ensure privacy protection. Different research institutions need to cooperate to share data, but there are trust issues between each other. FHE can encrypt data and share it, and partners can run the required calculations directly on the encrypted data. Only institutions with private keys can decrypt the results without trusting other participants. It also provides computing power for decentralized computing platforms while protecting the privacy of data contributors. The data owner uploads the encrypted data to the decentralized platform, and the platform only needs to perform computing tasks without touching the plaintext data. Build a high-trust collaborative ecosystem.
Using FHE can promote cross-institutional and cross-border research collaboration, allowing different entities to share data in a secure environment. Combining FHE with blockchain, decentralized identity, smart contracts and other technologies can build a complete decentralized scientific computing and data management platform.
5. You mentioned that DeSci Sino is committed to bridging the gap between the scientific community and the public. So in terms of practical implementation, what do you think is the biggest challenge for DeSci?
DeSci (decentralized open science) is a new paradigm that promotes the democratization, transparency and collaboration of science. Although it is full of potential, it faces multiple challenges in its actual promotion, including:
1. Unstable funding sources. Open science may weaken the economic incentives of the traditional scientific research funding system, such as patent income and commercialization channels. Scientists and the public may lack the motivation to participate in an ecosystem that does not directly generate economic returns.
2. Credibility and quality control of scientific data. In an open science environment, the lack of quality review may lead to the spread of pseudoscience, data errors or low-quality research. Differences in data formats, research methods, etc. may affect the efficiency and quality of scientific collaboration. Therefore, it is necessary to use blockchain to record the source of data and results to ensure the traceability and authenticity of research.
3. Technology and infrastructure limitations. The public and some scientists have insufficient understanding of decentralized technologies (such as blockchain, FHE, and smart contracts), which hinders their use and popularization. The computing efficiency and storage capacity of blockchain and decentralized technologies may not be able to support large-scale scientific data processing.
4. Challenges of community governance and trust. The interests of scientists, the public, businesses, and funders may conflict. Trust is insufficient.
5. Challenges of legal and ethical issues. The sharing of sensitive data (such as medical data) may lead to the risk of privacy leakage. How to protect scientists inventions and patents in an open environment and promote a new intellectual property framework are also what we have been working hard to do.
6. How receptive is the Chinese community to decentralized open science? What unique ways has DeSci Sino adopted in terms of publicity and education to expand its influence? In addition, has DeSci Sino ever cooperated with universities, research institutes or enterprises? What are the results?
The acceptance of DeSci by the Chinese community is closely related to the academic background, professional field and knowledge of blockchain technology of community members. People interested in DeSci are mainly academics with scientific research background, technology entrepreneurs and developers familiar with blockchain technology. Young scholars and professionals who are sensitive to new technologies are more receptive and believe that DeSci may change the way scientific research results are shared and resources are allocated. However, some people are skeptical about the complexity of blockchain technology and its application prospects in scientific research.
The inertia of the traditional scientific research system, such as reliance on journal publications and academic reputation, makes the promotion of the decentralized model face certain resistance. The uncertainty of laws and regulations and the complexity of intellectual property protection are also limiting factors. Many people are dissatisfied with the shortcomings of the existing academic publishing and scientific research funding system and believe that decentralized solutions have the potential to improve these problems. Especially in China, as national policies increase support for scientific research innovation and open science, the DeSci concept is likely to gradually enter the mainstream vision.
DeSci Sino disseminates bilingual content in Chinese and English, making it easier for the Chinese-speaking community, which is not native to English, to understand and participate. It organizes online lectures and workshops, inviting industry experts, researchers, and technical developers to share their experiences. It also builds a bridge between researchers and Web3 developers by jointly hosting offline salons, hackathons, and science and innovation forums. In the future, educational materials for beginners will be created, including the principles of decentralized science, application cases, and practical guides on how to participate. It helps researchers understand how tools such as smart contracts and NFTs can be applied to scientific research.
Cooperation with universities, research institutes or enterprises: Thematic forums have been held in some top universities such as Peking University and Hong Kong University, which have facilitated the initial understanding of DeSci by young researchers. Some companies can raise project funds through the DeSci Sino platform, while enhancing their own brand reputation in the field of cutting-edge technology. Through cooperation, the awareness of the DeSci concept has been raised, and a small but active community has been cultivated. However, participants have many questions about how DeSci can be implemented within the existing scientific research system. It is hoped that with the successful demonstration of more cases and the strengthening of policy support, DeSci Sino is expected to show greater influence in the sharing of scientific research results and the protection of intellectual property rights.
7. As a representative DeSci organization of the Chinese community, does DeSci Sino plan to cooperate with international DeSci projects? What are the unique advantages or challenges of the Chinese community in the global perspective?
DeSci Sino actively participates in various international DeSci conferences and forums to share the achievements and experiences of the Chinese community. For example, we have held offline events in Thailand and Singapore. At the same time, we are also actively establishing connections with internationally renowned DeSci project parties, such as Bio Protocol, DeSci Asia and AuraSci, to jointly explore decentralized models in the fields of scientific research funding and drug development. In the future, we plan to continue to promote international DeSci projects to enter the Chinese market, while helping Chinese researchers and institutions to integrate more smoothly into the international DeSci ecosystem. Through multilingual educational content and media publicity, we will enhance the international communitys awareness and recognition of Chinese scientific research results.
Advantages and challenges of the Chinese-speaking community in the global DeSci vision: The Chinese-speaking community has a large group of scientific researchers and engineers, especially in the fields of life sciences, materials sciences and artificial intelligence, and its research level is at the forefront of the world. National scientific research funding and innovation policies provide support for the rapid development of science and technology. China and other Chinese-speaking regions have a huge number of scientific research data resources and samples, especially in the fields of medicine and biology, which have irreplaceable value for researchers around the world.
The deep cooperation between enterprises and universities provides a good foundation for translational research and industrialization. The Chinese community is one of the largest Web3 user markets in the world, with a high acceptance of blockchain technology, providing a broad space for experimentation and promotion for the DeSci project. The language and cultural ties give it a natural communication advantage in Asia and the global Chinese community. However, strict regulation of blockchain and cryptocurrency in some countries may hinder the further development of DeSci.
Differences in intellectual property protection and data security laws complicate international cooperation. The Chinese-speaking research community still relies heavily on traditional journal publishing and funding systems and lacks trust in emerging decentralized platforms. In research evaluation indicators, the decentralized open science model has not yet been recognized. Although Web3 technology is developing rapidly in the community, education and tool popularization for researchers still need to be strengthened. Some researchers do not have a deep understanding of blockchain technology and the concept of decentralization.
In addition, language and cultural differences may cause Chinese DeSci teams to encounter communication and cooperation efficiency problems when connecting with international projects. The international community has stereotypes about the scientific research results and technical level of Chinese-speaking regions, which may lead to insufficient recognition. In the future, we plan to set up an international working group to focus on connecting global DeSci projects and promoting cross-cultural collaboration.
Set up a Chinese Community Special Session at international conferences to showcase the achievements of decentralized scientific research in Chinese-speaking regions, and work with government agencies to promote the pilot and formulation of DeSci-related policies to provide legal protection for decentralized scientific research. Encourage traditional scientific research funding agencies to try to distribute funds through the DeSci platform to build trust.
8. Desci is currently a very popular narrative. What do you think of this wave of narratives, and what opportunities and challenges does it bring to Desci Sino?
The combination of the rapid development of blockchain technology and the pain points of the scientific research system (such as uneven resource distribution and closed data) makes DeSci an extremely attractive concept. After the success of Web3 applications such as DeFi, NFT and DePin, DeSci has become the next application scenario with great potential. Many researchers are dissatisfied with the high cost, opaque operation and unfair resource allocation of the existing academic publishing and funding system, and are eager for a fairer and more efficient alternative. DeSci has successful pilot projects in some areas (such as drug development and scientific research data sharing), but it is still in its early stages overall. The narrative craze has brought attention and capital inflows, but it may also lead to unrealistic expectations. The heat has brought capital, talent and public opinion support, driving the accelerated development of the DeSci ecosystem. But without the support of successful cases, narratives may become a short-term bubble and lead to a crisis of trust.
The DeSci craze brings opportunities to DeSci Sino: As a representative organization of the Chinese community, DeSci Sino has the opportunity to become an important link between the international DeSci ecosystem and Chinese scientific research institutions. However, the current DeSci field still lacks iconic projects from the Chinese community. DeSci Sino can establish the presence of the Chinese community in this field through active participation on the international stage. The popularity has attracted venture capital, scientific research funds and technology development teams. DeSci Sino can obtain financial and technical support by participating in global cooperation or independently initiating projects. By seizing the narrative window period, it will establish in-depth cooperation with more Chinese scientific research institutions, universities and enterprises. The current craze provides DeSci Sino with an ideal opportunity for pilot and innovation, such as promoting the decentralized publication of scientific research results and the transparent allocation of research funding. With the popularity, DeSci Sino can expand the coverage of popular science and education, so that more researchers, developers and students can understand and participate in DeSci.
The challenge that the DeSci craze poses to DeSci Sino: The high expectations brought about by the narrative of popularity mean that DeSci Sino must quickly launch landmark results, otherwise it may miss the window of opportunity. Skepticism about emerging technologies within the Chinese-speaking community may make education and promotion more difficult. There are already many well-known DeSci organizations in the world that are promoting large-scale projects, and DeSci Sino faces the challenge of how to stand out from them. The popularity has attracted more new players to the market, dispersing resources and attention. The field of scientific research itself is complex and conservative, and the DeSci concept needs to overcome many obstacles in practice, such as technology, regulations, and culture. In addition, if the craze subsides, how to ensure the long-term development of the project and the continued activity of the community? How to build a strong governance and economic model in a decentralized narrative to make the DeSci ecosystem inherently resilient?
The current DeSci narrative is a rare window of opportunity. DeSci Sino can gain a foothold in this wave through precise positioning and strategic actions, and lay the foundation for future sustainable development.
9. Looking ahead to 2025, what are DeSci Sinos clear development goals? Are there any key plans you can reveal in terms of member size, technological breakthroughs, or project implementation?
Looking ahead to 2025, DeSci Sino, as a representative decentralized open science organization in the Chinese-speaking community, will focus on in-depth development and innovation in several key areas. The following are some clear development goals and key plans set by DeSci Sino:
1. Membership size and community building goals: Strive to achieve a 50% increase in DeSci Sino community members (including researchers, developers, corporate representatives, etc.) by the end of 2025. The goal is to attract more interdisciplinary experts and researchers to join, not only in the field of blockchain technology, but also in multiple research fields such as biomedicine, chemistry, and environmental science.
In addition to expanding the membership, we also need to increase the activity of community members. In 2025, the goal is to hold online salons in the community at least once every two weeks to ensure that cooperation and communication between members continue to deepen. Multi-language support: In order to better serve the global Chinese scientific research community, we plan to launch multi-language support (including simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese, etc.) to expand the cross-border participation of the community, especially for overseas Chinese researchers.
2. Education and publicity goals: Cooperate with universities and scientific research training institutions to develop a series of courses and teaching materials on DeSci concepts and the application of blockchain technology in scientific research, and popularize relevant knowledge to more researchers. Create an online platform dedicated to DeSci education, provide free learning resources, video lectures and technical tutorials, and help more researchers understand decentralized technology and its application in scientific research.
3. Brand building: Enhance DeSci Sino’s visibility in the global research community through social media, scientific publications, and DeSci professional forums. In particular, with the cooperation of the core team of Web3 and blockchain technology, promote DeSci Sino to become an important participant in the global decentralized research ecosystem.
4. Sustainable development and funding goals Funding diversification: Explore decentralized fund-raising models through DAO mechanisms, smart contract financing, etc. to ensure that the project can operate autonomously and develop sustainably. Design and launch DeSci Sinos independent decentralized economic model, including scientific research project financing, reward mechanisms, data sharing fees, etc. Ensure the transparency of capital flows and effectively motivate community members to actively participate.
In short, DeSci Sino hopes to take important steps in multiple key areas by 2025, from community building, technological breakthroughs to project implementation, and strive to occupy a place in the global DeSci ecosystem. Through clear strategic goals, continuous education and active international cooperation, DeSci Sino will not only accelerate the application and development of decentralized open science, but also become an important force in promoting innovation and change in the Chinese community in the global scientific research field.
10. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Desci Sino for participating in this interview. Today’s discussion is of great significance. It has enabled us to have a deeper understanding of Desci Sino and provided valuable insights for those who follow Desci’s innovative projects. There must be many unforgettable moments in the development of Desci Sino. I would like to ask you to share some of them, such as some unexpected inspiration breakthroughs during the project, or interesting episodes that occurred during team collaboration. Could you tell us some interesting things about Desci Sino or your team?
DeSci Sino positioned itself as a decentralized DAO organization at its early stage. Although this model breaks the traditional centralized architecture, it also brings some challenges. For example, how to minimize the efficiency problems brought about by democratic decision-making? In this regard, we innovatively tried a no objection means approval decision-making mechanism: each proposal has a 12-hour public notice period. If no one raises any objection during the public notice period, the proposal will be automatically approved. This method effectively improves decision-making efficiency.
In addition, since there is no centralized entity, we cannot apply for an official WeChat public account. Therefore, we explored a decentralized dissemination mechanism: DeSci Sino is responsible for providing high-quality content, and community members use their personal accounts to publish. This model not only allows members to provide traffic for Sino, but also outputs high-quality content for members, achieving a win-win situation.
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