Episode 55: FlowScience, Dr. Jelani Clark, Clinamenic | Miniseries DeScientralized #1: What is DeSci?
Newsletter Copy?
Status
Timestamps
0:00 - 8:12 - Introductions to Podcast, Jelani, and Clinemanic
8:12 - 12:30 - DeSci Access. DAOs who are beginning to revolutionize science
12:30 -16:55 - Discussion on Decentralized peer review
16:55 - 20:44 - How do the guests see the DeSci Community as a whole.
20:44 - 26:03 - DeSci as a social structure, Credentialing, Reputation
26:03 - 27:29 - Soul Bound Tokens used in DeSci
27:29 - 33:47 - Setting Standards in a Decentralized, Permissionless Environment
33:47 - 38:36 - Ethics in Decentralized Science
38:36 - 43:19 - Solutions for the Ethics questions, Proof of Existence, Gatekeepers.
43:19 - 43:43 - Conclusion
Transcriptions
DeScientralized
Humpty: Welcome to Crypto Sapiens, a show that hosts lively discussions with innovative Web3 builders to help you learn about decentralized money systems, including Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Defi. The podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only, and it is not financial advice. Crypto Sapiens is presented in partnership with BanklessDAO, a movement for pioneers seeking freedom from the limitations of the traditional financial system.
BanklessDAO will help the world go bankless by creating user-friendly on-ramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture
Elijah (Flowscience): Welcome to Decentralized, where we explore the social layer of decentralized science. What does it mean to decentralize science? My name is Elijah, and in this series, we'll consider the fundamental aspects of science as a social activity and an institution through the lens of various contributors in the DeSci space.
The first four episodes are published as a miniseries and lay the groundwork for future conversations. Our goal is to facilitate an exchange of ideas between people working on the solutions to these fundamental problems. Let's start the show.
My name's Elijah go by Flowscience in Web3 My background is as a molecular biologist, and so that's my scientific background. I trained and got a Doctorate in laboratory research and then moved into the world of entrepreneurship. Built a genetic testing and research lab for cannabis. And so that's been my day job for the past five years and been involved mostly with Crypto Web3. For throughout that time there's been a lot of applications that people have thrown around both in the genetic space and other applications in the cannabis industry for supply chain checking and things like that. I've always had a longstanding interest in it. The application of crypto and blockchain tech to two different things in the areas that I've been working on but it wasn't until really the rise of DAOs last year that I started going headlong into this field and dove deep. And then got involved with a lot of different DAOs, including Bankless DAO, which is the sponsor of this podcast. Crypto Sapiens is produced in partnership with Bankless DAO and that's where we've grown our roots out. We do have our community discord server for Crypto Sapiens and if you feel at any point during this conversation you want to get more engaged with the contributors in the show, and the community at large feel free to drop a comment either on the space itself or just hop into Discord and get involved in the conversation there, that that link can be found in the Crypto Sapiens Twitter page. Definitely Check that out if you wanna dive a little deeper into the community. That's my background and how I ended up here talking with you today. I'm just gonna introduce our two guests. We've got Clinemanic, who I met actually out through the Ether of the Web3 DAO space. We've had a couple of overlapping interests and started talking over around projects like Sapien Network and some other projects related to DeSci Lobby3. There's a Crypto Web3 lobbying group that is moving towards advancing the political issues around Web3 and access to this technology in Washington, in the U.S. And that the group, Lobby3 has a strong large number of scientific members in DeSci contributors to different projects. We banded together and Clinemanic I think did a lot of that, that cat wrangling there too, to get us organized and into a sort of a coalition for lobby3 for DeSci and so that's that climatic a lot of I know you have a lot of involvement in a lot of different projects, so I'll let you do more of an introduction for yourself there. And then Jelani Clark Jack from DeSci World is a contributor there at DeSci World. And that group is connecting other DeSci communities. They have a few different projects that I'm sure you'll wanna talk more about, that enables us like a dashboard that can, that define communities can apply and be listed on their Discord server as well as a great place to connect with other people. DeSci World is a world of DeSci and that's how I ended up meeting Jelani and inviting him here today. I'll let you two do more of a thorough introduction for yourselves. But yeah, that's sort of the premise for today's conversation we'll just be doing an overview about what we think are the main topics in DeSci the biggest things that come up to us in terms of what our journeys have been in the space, and contributing to the projects that we're working on now. Thank you both Clinemani and Jelani for joining us and please feel free to do your own introductions.
Clinematic: Thank you for the introduction and thanks for inviting me to this inaugural episode of Decentralized, I can give a little bit more background on how Lobby3 is looking to work with DeSci as a sector or as a, as ecosystems, and it would primarily around establishing scientists all involved in the DeSci ecosystem can get behind and that they think reflects the application of Web3 to science. And I think the central kind of hurdle there in terms of establishing policy positions and fostering education, both of like mainstream people and of policymakers is breaking this impression that blockchain and crypto are just primarily for financial speculation. I think once that kind of stigma or that kind of first impression is broken or dismantled, then we may be able to open up into you know, all these other dimensions of how this technology can be applied. And I think DeSci is, in my opinion, probably the most exciting application for this. Thinking about how what stands to be revolutionized with this technology.
Dr. Jelani Clark: Hey everyone, again I like to intone my gratitude for inviting me onto this inaugural Twitter space for Crypto Sapiens. Much like FlowScinece, I also have a Scientific group background. I'm a Neuroimmunologist by training post leaving academia, I jumped into after actually, after being disillusioned. The idea of going into academia. I decided to go into pharma in the more pharmaceutical industry where I worked at a biotech know pad. That kind of facilitates the transition of early academic research into more commercial commercializable IP and products like drugs and so on. And similarly quickly got disillusioned there by the lack of aligned incentives. I personally view science as a public good. I think science is beautiful in and of itself, the sake of doing science for science is something that I champion and I think is really underrated in the infrastructure that we currently live in. And so from there, I had the serendipitous opportunity to learn about decentralized science. I'm a web3 enthusiast and crypto enthusiast for a few years back. But stumbled upon this whole notion of DeSci and fell in love with the idea of democratizing science, giving it back to the people and providing a space where, not necessarily citizen scientists but, bring science back to its roots for doing the discovery and just finding these things that have been overlooked because of the limitations and the bottlenecks and the red tapes and the infrastructure that exist. And in speaking with Joshua, who is the co who is the founder of the site world our incentives aligned, or our interests aligned in that. Personally, i am interested in similar to the lobbying aspect in getting people into the space. I think, and we'll talk about this, I'm sure as we go into the topics of the DeSci world, DeSci in general, but I think the most powerful thing in Web3 is community. And a lot of people are currently focused on building infrastructure and platforms that people can use. But first and foremost, we need people in the space. And that's one of the main focuses of DeSci world and exactly as plural, FlowScience brought up one of the, one of the products that we're building is free to use dashboard where any project can come and list. We have an app, We have a quote-unquote application form. It's not an application form, it's just a listing form where you provide your information and you'll then be listed on it. And we are trying to provide an easy one-stop shop where people who are interested in DeSci can then find projects that align with their interests and then be able to contribute or keep an eye on, or, just familiarize themselves with the space and give them a kind of a lexicon that they can turn to.
Elijah (Flowscience): Yeah That's awesome. And again thank you both for joining today. I think those are both really good points. And to summarize, I think Clinemanic was mostly this application of crypto technology beyond financialization. And I really wanna dive more into that. And Jelani it's more of a lot about this access to information and connecting people which is a really cool topic too. And I think for me it's a little bit of both. It's this, it's this democratization of so many different aspects of it of, what is science, if so, if we're gonna talk about DeSci, then what is science, what is science at all? And I think to me it's a, it's a system of validating, right? Testing hypothesis. Sure. But it's also this very social activity, right? Ultimately the real way to get a consensus in science is to do exactly that, to have a repeatable experiment that somebody else can go and do. Really at the core of science is the ability for somebody else to repeat your experiment. It's ultimately this, it's an inherently social activity. And that is how I approach it from when I'm thinking about decentralized science. It's okay, then if science is inherently social, there's inherent, some sort of decentralized intrinsic nature to it, right? Because it can't just be one person. I mean you can do that, Sure. You can come to a lot of conclusions and have a lot of progress working alone in science. And I think a lot of science really is done alone, right? One person led a charge on a particular study or experiment or in the lab as often was my case in grad school late at night. And yeah, that was but ultimately it does come down to the social aspect. And I think there is I definitely wanna explore that topic of science as a public good and sort of access to knowledge and access to other people and funding, and this is an interesting topic that's been being discussed by one of the other projects in BanklessDAO a peer mentorship program sort of this access to knowledge. And I think a lot of that comes out in these decentralized contexts, right? These DAO communities are where you can show up in a Discord server and just hop in the community call. And that has sort of changed software development to the point where open source is like completely revolutionary, right? You can just hop in the discord, talk to the developer and tell them what you want. That's happening with science where people can just go and hop in a discord server and talk to the scientist or talk to the founder and be like, talk to the community and be like, Hey, I've got this proposal. What do you think? You know And it takes away a lot of those barriers. To me, that is like one of the core aspects of this, how that social nature of science is being decentralized through this tech by these applications of crypto beyond just pure financialization.
Clinematic: And also what interests me in addition to your point there about people being able to just access expertise in that kind of forum-like basis is what, is how applicable DAOs would be, say a given research DAO around a topic like longevity research or any other topic based kind of research DeSciDAO, is how feasible would it be for a group of scientists or researchers like that in the form of a DAO to publish and maintain some academic journal. I mean I'm pretty sure TalentDAO either already does this or is planning on doing this with the Journal of Decentralized work, I think they call it. And I'm wondering if any other examples that are able to maintain journals or any kind of regular, scientific discourse.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I believe SCRF is one of those protocols that are doing, looking for, doing something similar, I think in collaboration with TalentDAO
Clinematic: Oh, that's that Smart Contract Research Forum.
Dr. Jelani Clark: Exactly right. It's funny enough contrary to that name, they're not studying contract research sorry, smart contract themselves, but they're looking for the implementation of all these things. Eugene is a great person to follow and speak with. I've never had the opportunity but I've listened to a lot of this conversation and he seems very knowledgeable on the direction where they're going. And I think that they're trying to develop a similar kinda aspect, a journal that is for decentralized science in a way that we can maintain a repository of this information.
Clinematic: That would be awesome if that's what they're working towards. Cos I know Nick Link, but I'm not sure if that's a real name or just a pseudo name. Said that they're researching decentralized peer review process incorporates smart contracts, and that would seem like that would apply directly to maintaining some kind of academic journal. I, I'm very interested in watching that.
Elijah (Flowscience): Yeah it's funny, I did the same thing when I first heard about Smart Contract Research Forum I was like, Wait a second, I know this seems way more scientific than the name implies, but yeah, they have been doing some great work over there for sure. I've been wanting to get more involved with the community and see what they're I didn't realize they were also working on a publication platform. But yeah that's a big thing.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I could be, I could be wrong. I just wanted to make that statement out there. I could be slightly mistaken. But I know I remember reading about certain things that they're interested in developing these kinds of platforms. If they're not doing it themselves, then I'm sure they're collaborating with other individuals in this space.
Elijah (Flowscience): Yeah that makes sense. That's super cool.
Clinematic: And also it seems like any kind of decentralized peer review process that they're working on would, would apply pretty directly to some kind of journal. Whether or not they end up having one, I'm sure other research DAOs can kind of maybe even copy-paste that peer review process and apply it to some journal, of an entirely different topic I'd imagine that this group would be making These kinds of open, open standard, open source, and decentralized peer review processes. But I'm not, I'm not an insider there, I don't quite know what the developments are.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I think that's a really good point, right? Building off of, this is something that we see in science in general, right? This iteration builds on top of previous findings that I fail to see in a lot of other spaces right? In DeFi you do get these things where people, particular projects, usually for scams, but sometimes, there are gems that pop in. But I think one of the beauties of DeSci is that because of this, the community is incentivized in terms of improving the total infrastructure of science. We have the opportunity for these kinda things. We have the opportunity for multiple projects to iterate or to come up with slightly different variations of a particular, theme, whether it be peer reviewing I think Molecule is the only one developing their IP and NFT Railway. But just anything and there's, there are so many new ideas coming out that we have this iteration, we have this hopefully collaboration aspect that comes together where we can slightly help each other and tweak these and smooth out the processes and optimize ways and such that we can make this much more mainstream, much more acceptable, much more streamlined. Because I think personally, one of the things, and I've had the opportunity, I've had the pleasure and opportunity to speak to a lot of builders in this space is ultimately it's the streamlining that is gonna be the issue, to me, right? everyone's building right now and so it's very rough on the edges but just like in traditional in DeFi versus TradFi, I imagine it would be difficult for a non-crypto native individuals to be like, What? I have to get a wallet. What does this wallet, what does this hot wallet think? Why do I need to use this to interact in this scientific, in the scientific, this new scientific sphere? That I think is going to be one blockade that is gonna come up but I think as we iterate with these things and as we collaborate and as we bring back the essence of science which I agree with FlowScience should be collaboration and it is a contact sport. Science in my mind is a contact sport. We'll be able to smooth and facilitate this onboarding process.
Elijah (Flowscience): I love that science is a contact sport, Iām definitely gonna use that. Super cool, Great idea.
Clinematic: Alright I was going to agree with those points as well. I totally agree. And the onboard thing I think gets that, like the point earlier about that this technology is primarily at least initially built around financial speculation and like alternative financial systems. But what we're talking about here is stuff that doesn't fit so squarely into that category. And I think opening, Opening people's minds to that could be difficult. Especially because even just explaining like the basics of this technology. Even that can be inaccessible yet alone. Like even just getting, like explaining the first impression of this technology is kind of difficult let alone breaking open that for it first impression too, to convey all the stuff that we're talking about here. But I, I do think. As we build out applications for this, the applications will just speak for themselves. So I do think that these aren't insurmountable and that we will get over them.
Elijah (Flowscience): These are general questions that apply to most areas of crypto. And I think that the abstraction of a lot of these concepts is away from the user interface, even if like It's learning statistics or something like that. You learn what the underlying theories are, but when you get to do it and like writing, like using statistical software, you just kinda Oh, I'm gonna use this technique here. You don't, you don't have to know the full detail to do it. You just log in. The user interface is there and you do your thing.
Clinematic: And I think that's, that approach could apply to a lot of what we're talking about if we're talking about, know, building a decentralized peer review process here and then what molecule's doing with like kind of crowdfunded research funding. Like we build out all these tools, then we can just like, so long as we make sure they have exposure to, to scientists who aren't already involved in Web3, then we're building out this. The suite of ideally open source tools, that, as you said, you could just learn to use them as you see fit and then see how they can be used in conjunction. Then hopefully that can amount to like a new scientific kind of practice, at least in certain ways.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I think those, are a really good point. But let me ask you this, and this is open to everybody here. How do you see the DeSci community as a whole, do you think that largely it is geared towards actual scientists, or is it more of an open community? And I'll answer this first. In my opinion, the DeSci space will always be led and likely to be led by hopefully, be led by an actual scientist. But I see it as being exactly what we talked about science is a public good. Anybody, anywhere, whether you be a scientist or a science tangentially related, like a patient population or even just a regular run-of-the-mill person who sees something like, Hey, I like CRISPR tech. Oh, I don't know what CRISPR technology is, but I like the idea of genetic editing, whatever your particular alignment is I, I envision a place for these individuals here. And I wonder if, as scientists, we tend to be very analytical and very technical, and someone already brought this up to me, as in we're very dry with how we deal with this kind of thing. And you can almost see it in certain discord, right? If you go to the VitaDAO discord, and this is no shade to anybody. This is just kind of how it is. If you go to the VitaDAO Discord, it's very technical, the kind of conversations that you have, right? And contrast this with any DeFi or most DeFi Discords, that's like a bunch of that, it comes off as like a bunch of children just shouting as we are moving and that it's like more of a communal space. And it's trying to understand how we, and personally, my, how I see my work or what I'm trying to do here at DeSci World trying to understand with scientific rigor, and methodology. How do we bridge these two, how do we make the DeSci space acceptable and comfortable for scientists so that they can lead and they can be as efficient as possible, but also welcoming to non-scientists to be like, No, I don't, I'm not, to not feel intimidated to come into the space, You know how, like I, I'm curious to see how you guys see this yourself.
Clinematic: I I totally agree that I think the leaders should be the actual experts who have dedicated large portions of their time and energy to accumulating expertise in a given area and that there could still be room and roles for like citizen scientists and kind of like dilettante figures like myself, who are very interested in a lot of these areas, but haven't had dedicated the large chunk of my life to getting a grand understanding given area, especially if it's not really important area that has like material impact on society in one way or the other. And I think there could be ways, maybe like through some kind of distributed computing that certain expert-led DeSci initiatives can actually incorporate like a sort of outer Cortex or outer group of more casual kind of citizen scientist dilettante types in a way that can let us get the best of both worlds. Like we can be inclusive, but not at the cost of lower quality research and maybe there are certain applications for existing DAOs to do stuff like that.
Elijah (Flowscience): Yeah, that's interesting. And I think there are definitely some ways that DAOs as social structures can help can do that. right? And a lot of it involves the right acknowledgment and but of just like skills, right? And qualifications and credentials and that, that comes down to some of these other things we were talking about Earlier okay, if somebody comes in and doesn't have so a Ph.D. or whatever and honestly, how do you even verify that in a channel anyway, But, if somebody comes in, they don't have a Ph.D or they want to do science pseudonymously for whatever reason, myself as a personal example, works in the cannabis space. There's plenty of, I, I happen to luckily live in California where I can do this sort of work and be open about it, but there's a lot of people who want to contribute scientifically to this field who live in places where that is not possible. And so that yeah things like that as one example are ways that I think having these sort of credentials will dissolve those barriers, those artificial barriers between somebody who maybe has a formal Ph.D. versus somebody who has come in and demonstrated legit reputation credential orability to deliver good high-quality scientific work regardless of what their actual paper credentials maybe. So I think building those sorts of systems, those skill trees, those skill evaluations those social communities where There can be room for people of different backgrounds to come in and contribute. It's possible, right? We just have to, Yeah So things like groups like TalentDAO that are working on scale classification are, I think, are really really powerful and have a body to break down some of these barriers.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I think one of the, one of the most defining Aspects of science? No, maybe not the fine aspects of science, but one of the most intriguing aspects of science, I mean essentially everybody is a scientist, right? To some minor or degree. Everybody applies critical thinking in terms of problem-solving and to a more or less degree, scientific methodology and going about their lives. And I've said this before and I keep saying this that some of the most interesting interactions that I've had from an intellectual growth standpoint are with people who are not experts in a particular field and just give their 2 cents about what they might think or how they may envision or something. And a lot of the time, I'll admit it's like wrong. It's completely left, but it opens up the conversation of possibility because, as an expert, I can, as a, Okay, so Ph.D does not equate to expert, but as somebody who's been institutionally taught something, you are bound by certain frameworks that you believe to be true. And so I think one of the beauties of DeSci and just the web3 in general, is it gives a space for these people. It gives accessibility for laymen and non-laymen to interact with each other and come up with these new levels, these new, versions of creativity, or these new innovations that previously either might not have happened because of lack of Space to collide. Again going back to the Science of the contact sport. Areas to collide or just intimidation factor, right? I don't imagine somebody who is a non-scientist just walks up into a scientific conference and listens to a, whether it be a cannabis genome symposium or a neuro immunological symposium, and be like, you know what, What about this and what about that? This is one of the things that I love about DeSci because we have this or hoping, and I'm hoping to foster this more
Elijah (Flowscience): Yeah, explain it like I'm five, right? But That goes a long way with science. We have to it can be very heavy technical, but that bottom line has to be simple, has to be understandable by a non-expert of the child even, or your grandma. If you can't explain it to your grandma then you're not doing it right. Or someone's grandma. Right? But that is, I think, holds for a lot of the ability for yeah, decentralized science to to really flourish and have the impact that it can.
Clinematic: Yeah, I was just gonna say your point about like non-institutionally trained people that are interested in sciences like citizen science, I guess would be the established term. But it also made me think of like outsider artists, Like artists that don't have like gallery representations or don't have formal training And kind of come, Come at art from a perspective that doesn't have the baggage of certain orthodox frameworks. it becomes orthodox throughout hundreds, thousands of years then there must be some good reason for it. But that it also can add this kind of invisible bias and maybe prevent you from even acknowledging that they, you're making certain assumptions. And so I think it could be interesting to find ways to try to benefit from like outsider's perspective To science, and I think that could be the kind of outer cortex that I mentioned earlier where there is credentialed kind of experts that are leading these efforts because they're the ones with, that have dedicated more time and energy Building up this expertise, then there could be outsiders and citizen scientists and people that just wanna maybe even maybe people that just wanna support these efforts by doing some of the kind of busy work, whether that's distributed computing or some other way that we can find for, community members to complete bounties that somehow help facilitate like DeSci work. And I mean the other point I wanted to mention was that it could be interesting to explore the kind of permissionless credentialing and education structures within DeSci. If there are ways that people that are interested in a given topic can watch these videos and complete these quizzes in a way that's kind of verifiable and tough to the game, then they can be given some kind of a nontransferrable credential or something that, that indicates that they've been through this kind of training and you can, they can be I don't know, you can take that credential as a proxy for such and such little bit of expertise. I'm wondering if there are any examples of that in DeSci so far.
Dr. Jelani Clark: Not that I've come across those. I know I hear a lot of people talking about you know Soulbound tokens as exactly what you point out, non-transferrable NFTs that get that market individuals And give them a credential status. And I like the idea and we're exploring similar kinds of things in the world, and I know other places are also talking about it. But the, the issue, one of the pitfalls that I see with this is the standardization, right? If anybody and everybody is going to be issuing these Soulbound or credentials, who is vetting the actual process that allows for those to be valuable right? So you end up, I think one of the, one of the issues that we are gonna come upon is layering, right? What is going to be our layer zero that confirms that, okay, this is the standard of practice that we're doing? What's our EIP-4626 that is standardized across the entire industry and something that is decentralized, How do we standard, standardize something decentralized? I, these are all really important points of conversation that will inevitably come up, Have not come up yet. And I think this goes back to because everybody's building the space is so new, right? Yes. I think the official standpoint is that it's been a year or September 2021, but really the space is so new. Every person who every protocol is just trying to build and get their infrastructure off the road. But I think these are really important conversations to have and it's better to have these sooner rather than later because then they can be woven into the framework of everything that is being built currently.
Clinematic: I think the point you bring up is essential to this how can we have standards in a permissionless environment like this without any kind of gatekeeping Because I feel like that's at least my impression that's the thing we're trying to move away from if we're talking about decentralized peer review. And I guess my only, My only suggestion so far, my only thought is maybe DeSci there of some player in the DeSci world in the DeSci landscape can go about kind of auditing certain educational credentials that are offered by this or that DeSciDAO. And then maybe there could be some kind of an I don't know, I don't know what the term for this would be, like some kind of gallery or expose of credentials that have been vetted by this auditing group. And there doesn't need to necessarily be any requirement for a given credential to get this audit. But people in this space can sort of take that as some indication of this credential is substantial. There's this process has been audited. May, maybe that's one way to start standardizing Bankless.
Dr. Jelani Clark: I agree, I think a really brand way of doing it. And this is just an idea of, having, not a coalition, but a, like making sure that you reach out to other protocols and a multitude of other protocols when you're instituting this kind of credentials things. So I have like, let's say for example a beat it out, let's say they do have their credential purpose while they are going to Collaborate or form an alliance or have these ethics, this board of individuals from different protocols, ideally not necessarily working in longevity. And just have that so we do consensus or credentials through consensus. And I think that speaks a lot to the ethos of Web3. I don't know how feasible that would necessarily be and how functional or how practical and workable that is, but that's how I see it in keeping In line with our ethos. And I think, we all have a shared ethos of this decentralization. And actually, that's another I let that be spoken about, but I have another point.
Clinematic: I mean, I agree with that, and I like the idea of a coalition being built out. Maybe the Lobby3 one can meet this role. Not that Lobby3 needs to be the arbiter of these kinds of credentials, but it could be, this could be some kind, this four, these kinds of things can be discussed even if Lobby3 doesn't need to be like a central Figure to it, but it could maybe fill that role
Dr. Jelani Clark: For sure. That interconnected Web3 right? That's the whole premise, right? Where you have ReFI, DeSci, and DeFi all working together. Something like this where you have, you're looking at credentials and you have a LexDAO with the legal aspect, a LobbyDAO that can understand the framework of how do you collect or organize individuals towards a particular cause, and then the DeSci aspect for experts and specialists in the field that can then vet and make sure that this is something of a standard, something of substance that can then be used for the space. I think ultimately, We will have to be governed by the people right? And that's a very nice theory and it's been applied to a lot of things. And we've, we currently live in the world where we live in because of how that didn't end up working. But the, I hope here is to have that work in some form of fashion in this space. And luckily, smart contracts with their automated fashions kind of help deal with any middlemen trying to take a slightly bigger chunk of what they should actually be doing.
Clinematic: I think your point about interconnectedness that's very central to how I see this as well. And, in a PubDAO we're figuring out our onboarding processes, for anyone who hasn't heard of it, PubDAO is an early-stage written content as a service DAO. It's a service DAO. That sort of brings on Web3 riders and connects them with clients that want promotional content written about them, and we're figuring out onboarding processes. And I'm thinking about ways I get still too early in the credential landscape to really start implementing this, but ideally, we would have, Like different onboarding processes for different kinds of contributors. If there's someone who wants to contribute in marketing, maybe they can get some credentials from YapDAO. If someone wants to contribute in terms of community management, maybe they can get some credentials from WGMI DAO. Someone wants to contribute to some kind of legal engineering, then maybe they can get a credential from LexDAO and I think that like we could kinda leverage each other's credentials in a certain respect. And but again, it would all just depend on the point you made earlier about what kind of standards exist in the space, and then that should be approached very carefully and delicately so that we're not just implementing the same kind of gatekeeping that we're trying to evolve from.
Elijah (Flowscience): This is really, I think very like tying together a lot of different things, right? Jelani just ran through a few different DeSci, DeFi, It's all these different things. And I think that it even comes back to what you were saying earlier minute about moving beyond this, these financial applications of crypto, right? Like using data and or these credentials as sort of this pluralistic, these other sorts of primitives to really create this system of DeSci right? Or it's almost like DeSci is almost DeSoc right? It's this pluralistic combination of these credentials or these contributions in the form of publications or data. And these other things like writing IP NFTs which are either read publication or data or both or something. It's these different sorts of primitives that are non-financial In nature, but ultimately do have a value that will be I guess pluralistically determined right? In some sort of way. And then whatever that looks like, whether that's a marketplace or some sort of different way to have that those different primitives be interacted with. But yeah Super cool. I think we're tying together a lot of different broad-reaching concepts here.
Clinematic: And I, as much as I admire that DeSoc paper I do admit I kind of wish they go with the term Soulbound. I kind of wish maybe just nontransferable would be a bit better. I think there's something ominous about soulbound and there are some of the skeptics of blockchain and especially from this kind of anti-totalitarian kind of line of arguments where they think, Oh, a CBDC will institute some kind of panopticon and your whole financial history will be tethered to your political history and all this stuff. I think using the term soulbound token is like we're just, we're giving them a layup right there. I don't know. I wish we had chosen a different term for that.
Dr. Jelani Clark: Let me ask you this, right? I think one important topic, I don't know if you have time to talk about this here, but I think one important topic is ethics, especially as it relates to, to DeSci right? If you're opening up a world where citizens and citizen scientists and anybody can either pitch a proposal to have their work funded, or also just do their work, what are the ethical bounds of that? How do we institute these ethical bounds, right? If I go to VitaDAO, that as Example, if I go to somewhere else DAO and I'm like, I want to, do some eugenics work, or I wanna do anti like the opposite of longevity. I just wanna murder everybody through this part. And I think, and there are populations of people who like that, who have those kinds of ideas and now you're giving them a platform where they can vote for that and they can fund that. Who's to stop somebody from studying a DAO when they only have 10 people, but that's what, 10 people who have all the tokens? And so ethics I think is an interesting point, and I would argue at least from the optics of the ethical standpoint, having some oath that is tied to a Soul-bound token and even if it's not marketed that way, where we can, another example of a standard, right? Where we have these protocols and projects that commit to this particular value framework that we develop for the DeSci space. And then they take that pledge and its soulbound to them. It's Soulbound either in their multisig or at the individual level or something. I think that's an interesting way to twist that nomenclature into something a little bit more positive for the space. You know I'm gonna say it, a lot of people who are scientists are nerds, and I like the idea of a soul-bound token.
Clinematic: Oh yeah, I love that it was inspired by World of Warcraft too. I think that's it's playful. I'm just, I'm hoping it doesn't, it, I'm just hoping it doesn't become like a really, I'm hoping it doesn't become a trigger word for like anti blockchain, anti Web3 arguments. But I agree with with with your point there about how do you, like, how do you stop malignant efforts of crowd crowdsourcing stuff towards research that we think is like unethical or that we think is damaging or is somehow like against the welfare of, of people. And I, I think the danger here where, the obvious cure is just to have some kind of gatekeeper, but then that, that just brings us back to some of the like different kinds of evils. And I think really the only solution I can see here at how vague the sounds is just to, it's just to give people the tools to express opposition to this or that thing and just try to find ways to let people oppose this stuff in an organic way that doesn't require some kind of central, like censorship or anything like that. But, I don't have any concrete answers there.
Dr. Jelani Clark: No, I agree with you. I actually agree with you. I think this is something that is an ongoing conversation to keep in mind. The way I see it and the way I like to explain it In my own words how to deal with these kinds of things is it's similar to the nodes of the blockchain, right? In the scientific realm, the nodes of the blockchain of the scientists and the population. And so why I think it's so important to onboard as many people and as like in essence increase the liquidity of the DeSci space is that it makes us more resistant to these volatile swings of low ethic, malignant, unethically aligned work because then you have a population, and I'm assuming I'm making this on the assumption that the vast majority of individuals are well intentioned and altruistic to an extent and don't have just nefarious interests. But having, the more people we have, the more resistant we become right? Those people become a minority, and in this space, the minority, from an individual standpoint is really swept out of the equation because the majority is what rules this space.
Elijah (Flowscience): And I think that that gets down to honestly what a lot of the core is for science and technology in general, right?Developing new technology ultimately and science has been grappling with this for hundreds of years or longer, and technology is agnostic in terms of ethics, right? It's the humans, the social side that determines how that is ethically applied or not, right? Any technology can be used for good, it can be used for evil. And luckily, I think, I'm with you on that Jelani, that I do believe, I am optimistic that the majority of people are well-intentioned and I think that has been proven, through hundreds of years of scientific progress. I think that these conversations are exactly hitting on that. It is what Michael is here to, is to open up that and have these ethical discussions about what are we building and what are we building into them and these decisions that we're making. As we approach the last couple minutes here, I do want to invite anybody in the audience to come up and join if you have any questions. I was just trying to check the chat and everything in discord, but yeah, feel free to hop up if you have some questions and you want to join the conversation.,
Clinematic: Until we get any questions. I had one idea that may be worth bringing up here as some kind of solution for this is if there's and maybe this would rely on some proof of existence. I know Governor DAO has something like this. I know Proof of Humanity has its approach, but some tokenized Sybil Resistant kind of I don't know if you would call it a credential, kinda centralized ID, something just to enable Sybil resistance. Maybe we could have a DAO-like structure that gives some kind of credential to a given DeSci project, and it just puts up to some majority vote. If some vote wants the seal of approval from this kind of auditing DAO, then those members there would just collectively vote on whether or not to give that seal of approval to the applicant, and maybe we can just expand that base as wide as possible. Like maybe it's not a traditional DAO per se, but maybe it's just everyone who has this proof of existence solution, This tokenized proof of existence solution can vote on whether or not to give a certain seal of approval To this applicant and may be part of, maybe that can be like the last step of an auditing process. And before that, there can be a team of specialists that put together some kind of report on the applicant, and maybe that's some kind of way to go about not like censoring, but to go about some kind of standardizing and some kind of quality control and some kind of preventative measure against any malicious actors in a way that's decentralized, and I'm wondering if there are any approaches like that we can take.
Dr. Jelani Clark: Okay feel free to interrupt me if a question from the audience pops up, but I think that's a really beautiful point, but it's almost like a paradoxical point, right? How do you gatekeep in a world where you're not trying to gatekeep? And I think that that's an intrinsic dichotomy that exists in DeFi. Because essentially you need to have gatekeepers. And so we've run into this issue in our discussions of governance, right? Like For example, let's say you wanted to, let's say you wanted to have an emergency stop function whereby something like Let's say, for example, Terra Luna is going to shit, right? Sorry, excuse me, for my language. Terra Luna is going, is on its way down and somebody puts forth a proposal that kind of expedites that process Or maliciously expedites or bean stock is another example. I'm sorry BeanStalk is the perfect example, right? They didn't have a stop. The team could have had a stop executive veto order in their thing, but that's not very decentralized. Not, that's not with an ethos of decentralization, but it would save their protocol right? How do we have to fail saves and gates in a world where we're not trying to have gates right? I think it's a quandary. It's a real quandary. And we've struggled with this on our end at the DeSci World and trying to make things as decentralized as possible. But I, as I start to, as I venture into this like actual builder space, I think people start to realize that it's very difficult to have cold centralization and I don't think, and everybody has their version of decentralization, and I'm always curious to hear what people's version of decentralization is. But that's, I think that's a that's another topic, That's another great topic of conversation to have. Can we truly be decentralized in a scientific space.
Clinematic: I think that the paradox you pointed out there is central to this whole movement for me and I think that arguably the biggest innovation that DAOs enable is like a decentralized gatekeeping mechanism or like any kind of where you can have a DAO majority vote, be the ultimate kind of arbiter or an ultimate executive decision in certain respects, but you can still have centralized decision making up until that point. That, that's what I'm trying to explore in lobby3 as well as we're like doing bylaws and stuff is figuring out a way to have The DAO token holder community kind of functions as an executive in terms of some ultimate decision being made. But until that final ultimate decision is made then we can still have. centralized decision-makers and experts and kind of effective technocrats. Because I think that is just another term for a lot of this stuff is people who are, who exercise authority because of some expertise or some unusual tech like technical literacy, which I do think is needed because this is a complex world we have, but so long as we can implement some kind of oversight over that expertise, then I, and I think that's the central innovation of DAOs.
Elijah (Flowscience): I think it goes on the finding that the right social structure for enabling maximum decentralization. But ultimately that might not be the full total a hundred percent. We'll see what that looks like as we continue exploring the space. Thank you again to Clinemanic and Jelani for joining us today. This has been an awesome first episode. Thank you to everyone for joining the audience, too. And feel free to hop in Discord if you think of anything later on you want to interact or pose some questions before the next one.
So yeah, it's been great. Thank you.