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DeSci - The Future of Science or Pure Window Dressing?
Nicolai Søndergaard
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Key Takeaways
12 min read
  • Traditional research faces funding bottlenecks, biased peer review, and restricted access to knowledge, limiting scientific progress.
  • Tokens Pumped and Crashed – Many DeSci tokens saw massive gains late 2024 before dropping at least 74% in 2025.
  • DeSci remains an experimental sector that has yet to achieve a breakthrough moment but could potentially reshape scientific funding and publishing, or at the very least carve out its niche.

Introduction

Crypto has historically been a mix of rug-pulls (fast and slow), memecoins, and speculative frenzies, but it’s also home to projects that genuinely push new models of innovation from cheaper compute power and even attempts to rebuild the internet.

DeSci (Decentralized Science) isn’t exactly new, but it caught fire late last year with the launch of projects like pump.science, where individuals could invest in tokens tied to drug research first testing longevity treatments on flies, then moving to mice, with hopes of eventually reaching human trials. What started as a promising niche...