Decentralizing Knowledge: How Blockchain Empowers the Public Through Democratizing Science

Dr. Michael Fischer, Ph.D., the founder of DBDAO and Desy NYC., both an undergraduate and PhD alumnus of Stanford University, had an enlightening dialogue with BitpushNews at the BBS Summit in New York.

As the Founder of DBDAO.xyz, Fischer brings a unique perspective drawing on his insights cultivated from extensive research and practical experience. The following discussion centers on the potential steps needed to illuminate the path forward for blockchain technology and its potential to transform our world for the better.

Bitpush: Can you share some specific examples where blockchain technology has been used to create a significant positive impact for the public good? How has your organization contributed to this effort?"

Dr. Fischer: I recently finished a PhD, and I saw that the way science and academic research are done, and it's quite ossified, so it hasn't changed that much over the past couple hundred years. And I saw an opportunity to use this meritocratic technology, the blockchain, to try and improve science. So the idea is like right now you have to go get, if you want money, you have to go through a funding agency like the government. But there's a way to use blockchain to democratize funding.

If you want to store your data, you can normally just store it in a closed thing. It takes a lot of work to publish it. But I saw blockchain as a way to democratize scientific data. And then I also saw blockchain as a way to democratize publishing. So, we've been looking into all sorts of ways to decentralize science and to make it more meritocratic and to make it more accessible to people that are outside of the ivory towers. In the same way, people have looked at Defi as a way of taking finance and decentralizing it. We also think that science should be decentralized as well. 

As for a concrete example, we've been working with HairDAO. HairDAO looks to democratize hair loss research. So usually, hair loss research is done through clinical trials and drug companies. But what's really cool is there's a Reddit community of hundreds of thousands of people that are looking into solving hair loss and are trying out different things. So, what happens is each of these people uploads their data to the blockchain, they own the data, it's encrypted, and then researchers are able to do research on this data set. And if the research is successful, the people that contributed to the data set can earn money. And I think this is an exciting technology, a way of how to use blockchain to improve science.

Bitpush: How can we address the challenges of digital literacy and accessibility to ensure the benefits of blockchain technology are widespread and not just confined to a tech-savvy minority?

Dr. Fischer: So to include more people in, blockchain and the incentives that follow from it, we need to focus on the rewards on the other side. So, I think a lot of times it's a complicated thing to do, but if you offer people a big enough reward, people will be willing to learn how to do it. So that would be my first thing is to focus on making the reward bigger on the other side to democratize it. I mean, look at companies like Uber, like they've helped to democratize, or they've helped to improve a lot of people's lives. And I think the same way here, if we focus on the incentives, then we will actually democratize blockchain. 

So I think blockchain can improve, and we can make sure that blockchain is democratized. We have to compare it to what Blockchain’s normal status is already. So, if you look at something like Harvard or Stanford, like, these things are not easily accessible to a lot of people, even from the get-go. And I think when we compare, you know, setting up a wallet and setting up and getting money into your wallet, these types of things are much more accessible than the existing status quo of applying and getting accepted to a research university to do science. I think that would be the first thing is just taking a step back and saying like, how difficult is this in comparison to the existing infrastructure that exists?

And then the second thing is focusing on the incentives. So, thinking about like, is it hard, or is it hard in comparison to the incentives that exist? So right now, what's the incentive for setting up a wallet? You know, there's no incentive. But if the incentive for, you know, taking an hour to set up a wallet, and then the incentive is earning, you know, twenty, fifty, or a hundred dollars a day, then all of a sudden this doesn't seem like as big of a thing and someone who maybe is underemployed, has some extra time to research into doing it. I mean it is, it is hard, but it is not impossible. So, I think those two things would be the thing to ensure that this technology acts as a force for democratizing outcomes as opposed to concentrating it on the people that already know how it exists.

Bitpush: Blockchain has the potential to disrupt traditional power structures by decentralizing control. What are the implications of this for societal structures and how can we ensure that this shift benefits the public?

Dr. Fischer: So I think blockchain has a lot of potential to democratize science. Right now, science is very hierarchical. You have to get accepted into a university. You have to get funding, you have to work with a PI, you have to get accepted into a journal. And these things are all pushing power into a hierarchy. But blockchain technology has the power to democratize it and also to make it more specific. So, what I mean by that is, like right now, everyone is trying to get into the top five journals, but these five journals aren't a good indicator of optimizations, which everyone should be going towards.

So just because a paper doesn't fit into one of these five research journals doesn't mean it's not a good paper, perhaps. Maybe the problem is that we've concentrated too much power on two few things.

And if instead of there were five journals, there were 5,000 journals, each one was very specific to a certain field and allowed for more narrow types of research, and this would allow for more people to benefit. And there's nothing preventing, like, this isn't like a zero sum something because we're opening it up. If anything, it just allows people to find a more targeted thing to what they're trying to research into what and who their community is.

And I think this is cool from a public goods point of view because it's non-zero-sum. People are winning and, other people and helping other people to win as well. So I think this is an example of how, and this is all sort of enabled by changing the cost structure.

So right now, publishing is very inexpensive because they're employing all these people that have dedicated jobs. But with blockchain, you can sort of embed the process of sorting papers of funding projects into the smart contract and allow people to have more of a gig-style thing where all the work is done using gas fees instead of people's salaries. So, we're fundamentally changing the cost structure and changing how the social fabric of how these scientific and social processes are done to create a more democratic outcome for science.

Bitpush: What are some current projects you are working on? 

Dr. Fischer: Some of the most interesting projects that I think we're working on today are on new tropics. So new tropics are an area in science that has not been super well studied in traditional research but has a huge following online. There are many forums where people are researching different stacks and medicines to improve their lifestyle. So that's one. HairDAO is another one. People are looking into hair loss research, and the one that this is another type of thing that has been outside the realm of science for a while. Not outside the realm of science, but you know, under-looked at by science and has a very strong internet following.

Another one is CBD research for epilepsy. People are looking into how CBD can reduce epilepsy in children and other people. It's found to be helpful and has not been studied by the government for obvious reasons.

Another one is skincare. People are very interested in protecting their skin, and keeping it healthy, and this is something that has a very strong internet following but maybe hasn't been matched in academia. So all these things are science that we are working with people to develop. And the key part about these is they all have this sort of mismatch between what is done in academic research and the demand for it on the internet.

And these types of projects aren't trying to compete with traditional research. I think they're trying to find new areas of scientific research that are a bit outside the traditional realm of science and have a strong internet following.

Oh, and the last one involves looking for extraterrestrial life. So you don't have research or a professor does look into extraterrestrial life so much, but it's not like the craziest thing to think of, like, how do we do this? Is there life outside of the earth, and how do we find it?

And really crowdsourcing ideas and ways to explore them. And this is another one that's gaining traction as well, has had a strong internet following for many, many years and is now nucleating in the DeFi space.

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