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EDITOR: Fei-Yue Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
COLUMN: AI EXPERT
The DAO to DeSci: AI for Free, Fair, and
Responsibility Sensitive Sciences
Fei-Yue Wang , Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100190, China
Wenwen Ding, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macao, 999078, China
Xiao Wang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 266109, China
Jon Garibaldi, University of Nottingham, NG7 2RD, Nottingham, U.K.
Siyu Teng, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, 999077, Hong Kong
Rudas Imre, University Research and Innovation Center (EKIK)
Obuda University, 1034 Budapest, Hungary
Cristina Olaverri-Monreal, Johannes Kepler University, 4040, Linz, Austria
This article discusses the impact and significance of the autonomous science
movement and the role and potential uses of intelligent technology in DAO-based
decentralized science (DeSci) organizations and operations. What is DeSci? How
does it relate the science of team science? What are its potential contributions to
multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and/or transdisciplinary studies? Does it have
any correspondence to the social movement organizations in traditional social
sciences or the cyber movement organizations in the new digital age? Particularly,
issues on DeSci to current professional communities, such as IEEE and its societies,
conferences, and publications, are addressed, and the effort for the framework and
process of DAO-based DeSci for free, fair, and responsibility sensitive sciences is
reviewed.
The autonomous science, particularly decentral-
ized autonomous organizations (DAO)-based
decentralized science (DeSci), is emerging as an
important movement in research and development in
recent years.
1–3
To investigate its potential significance,
on March 21 and 30, 2022, our AI Expert of the IEEE Inte-
lligent Systems hasheldtwodecentralizedhybridwork-
shops (DHWs) to address various issues of DeSci and
its impact on the existing ecology and future evolution
of scientific activities and operations. Specifically, what
is DeSci? What is its relationship to the science of team
science (SciTS), social movement organizations, cyber
movement organizations, and multi/inter/transdisciplin-
ary studies? Impact and significance by examples?
Immediate and potential impacts to organizations and
operations of traditional professional communities, such
as IEEE? What is the role of AI in DeSci? And finally, what
should we do next? This article summarizes briefly our
discussion in the DHWs and the correspondence among
some of the participants of the Free, Fair, and Responsi-
bility Sensitive Sciences (F2rS2) project. A decentralized
hybrid symposium on DeSci will be scheduled late this
year and an in-depth report will be published accordingly.
DAO-BASED DESCI: WHAT IS AND
WHAT IN IT?
It is hard to specify precisely a rapidly evolving field and
its corresponding movement, but DeSci’s two defining
features are self-evident: 1) crowdsourcing and cyber-
based decentralized organizations for its activities, and
2) blockchain and web3 (or Web 3.0) supported opera-
tions for its management.
1–4
Its obvious motivation
and objective are the creation of new mechanisms
and processes for raising and distributing funds for
1541-1672 ß2022 IEEE
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MIS.2022.3167070
Date of current version 20 May 2022.
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scientific endeavors and generating and disseminating
knowledge for common goods, particularly, shifting
“ownership and value away from industrial intermediar-
ies”and removing “research pain points, silos, and bot-
tlenecks.”
2,3
However, this movement is fundamentally
a natural consequence of the need for multi/inter/
transdisciplinary studies, the emergence of past social
movement organizations and recent cyber movement
organizations, the call for the SciTS, and the conver-
gence of open science and AI-oriented open-source
movements.
1,5
Its recent fast development and deploy-
ment are mainly driven by the success and publicity of
web3, crypto technology, and blockchain intelligence,
especially smart contracts, and decentralized autono-
mous organizations and operations.
4
Figure 1 illustrates the essential characteristics
and indicators of DeSci. To a large extent, the current
DeSci is just a set of mechanisms and supporting
infrastructures for bottom-up individual sensemaking
through the use of blockchain and web3 technologies.
Its main driving force is generated by web3 collectives
and blockchain-based DAOs. Specifically, DeSci can
be considered as the use of smart contracts and
tokens (fungible and nonfungible) to open up markets
through the deployment of open-source finance tools,
especially decentralized finances (DeFi).
DeSci is part of a bigger movement using recent digi-
tal tools for funding, organizing, training, planning, coordi-
nating, dispatching, collecting, distributing of supply-
demand activities, and resources in cyberspace-based
communities.
6–10
From a narrow perspective, DeSci is
the capacity of individual agents or specialized commu-
nities to make sense of the world autonomously, by
defining their own problems, tasks, languages, imagina-
tions, philosophies, and methodologies. From a broader
perspective, DeSci is the emergence of collective desires
FIGURE 1. Basic characteristics and indicators of DeSci.
March/April 2022 IEEE Intelligent Systems 17
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to improve the research and development establish-
ments, which are expected to be transformed by intelli-
gent technologies into more effective and efficient
organizations with increased ability for sciences to fulfill
their mandates and align with human values.
1–5
In traditional centralized science (CeSci), centralized
agents, such as government institutions, philanthropic
foundations, private businesses, or universities, have been
organized and operated for pragmatic rather than purely
epistemic purposes, where techno-scientific institutions
have a core mandate of helping outside institutions in
their pragmatic endeavors with an overarching goal of
accumulating epistemic value along this direction. Figure 2
presents the framework for a DeSci model derived from
the initial idea in Wang’swork.
1
Clearly, DeSci differs from
CeSci in terms of its tools, structure, governance, incen-
tives, organization, operations, and norms, or more gener-
ally, in terms of its research and development ecology for
knowledge discovery and utilization.
MOLECULE AND ITs IPNFT: A CASE
OF BIOTECH DAOS FOR DESCI
Molecule is a decentralized underlying infrastructure
and marketplace for the biomedical field. Early stage
FIGURE 2. Reference model for DeSci.
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biopharmaceutical research is the lifeblood of advanc-
ing medicine. However, many areas of biopharmaceuti-
cals typically face three problems: chronic underfunding
or challenges of commercialization, legal complexity, illi-
quidity of intellectual property assets, and lack of con-
nection to relevant investors.
To solve the abovementioned problems, Molecule
builds an open market and underlying infrastructure
by applying web3-related technologies, making new
research and IP discoverable, generally available, and
assigning ownership to participants. As shown in
Figure 3, the Molecule protocol consists of three parts
in the following.
6
IP-NFT: A new type of asset class, namely virtual
asset IP. It virtualizes and modularizes IP by combining
legal and technical frameworks with NFT technology.
Due to the complexity of IP in the medical field, IP-
NFTs need to satisfy these characteristics: privacy, per-
manence, accessibility, and verifiability. The implemen-
tation of the abovementioned features of IP-NFT is
based on Ethereum to ensure the ownership of assets,
the metadata storage layer is based on Arweave to
ensure that data are permanently available, and the
data storage layer is based on the Nevermined plat-
form to ensure the accessibility and verifiability of
data. In addition, to achieve the tradability of IP-NFT
and accelerate its liquidity, unique digital asset identi-
fiers—NFT, new automatic exchange infrastructure—
automatic market maker, and governance structure—
DAOs to reshape intellectual property ownership,
financing, and entity creation.
Molecule discovery: It is a platform for intellectual
property and data interaction. Researchers can make
their biopharmaceutical assets (data and preapplied
patents) visible to everyone, receive feedback, and
interact with potential funders. When potential invest-
ors decide to invest in the IP, the IP will be transferred
in the form of NFT. The mission of molecule discovery
is to accelerate the discovery of promising early-stage
treatments and bridge the “valley of death”in
academia.
Molecule finance: IP-NFTs need a high liquidity pool
to function. Molecule finance enables modular drug
development by creating a virtual funding and collabo-
rative environment. NFTs can be transferred to auto-
mated market makers to raise capital or inserted into
DAOs managed as portfolios for specific therapeutic
verticals. This model reflects a virtual biopharmaceuti-
cal startup with global stakeholders, funders, and
researchers, but assigns governance rights entirely to
the community.
Molecule enables biopharmaceutical research and
related intellectual property to be funded as NFT for
the first time. It provides a new reference model for
development in the field of biotechnology. Currently,
the Molecule platform has funded several projects.
For example, VitaDAO focuses on longevity research,
PsyDAO on psychedelic drug research, and the bio-
tech community LabDAO.
In addition to Molecule, the application scenarios of
DeSci are also expanding in two specific directions.
General-purpose issues, such as decentralized fund-
ing,
7
peer review,
8
access, and scientific development,
9
and research and development in specificfields, such
as environmental studies.
10
Clearly, the DeSci move-
ment is moving from theoretical ideas and small-scale
technical experiments to more established players for
funding university research and launching multiple
DAOs.
IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE:
SOCIETIES, CONFERENCES, AND
PUBLICATIONS
The case of Molecule as a Biotech DAO in OpenSea has
demonstrated the initial vitality and success of the
DeSci movement.
6
The original goal and function of its
IPNFT are to use IP legal languages and procedures for
helping NFT creators and collectors protect their rights
more effectively and efficiently, but vice versa are also
true, i.e., NFT and other tokens can be use created to
help IP developers and owners better secure and mon-
etize their rights. This would enable a new kind of own-
ership, particularly make communities be the new
shareholders of scientific knowledge, and eventually
build self-sustaining scientific ecosystems where val-
ues generated by knowledge assets can be used to
fund the creation and utilization of new knowledge.
3
The impact of experimenting new cyber tools and AI
technologies to improve scientific knowledge generation
FIGURE 3. Operational process of Molecule.
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and distribution, and ultimately move toward knowledge
automation, such as the effort by DeSci, will be signifi-
cant but uncertain in its scale and sustainability at this
early stage. A major issue here is that the DeSci move-
ment is happening with none or little input from estab-
lished scientific communities so far. We have to ask
ourselves: Is DeSci a disruptive technology for knowl-
edge industries? Is DeSci movement a revolution for sci-
entific establishments? Specifically, what is its impact on
IEEE? Still the world’s largest technical professional orga-
nization for advancing technology for humanity in a pos-
sible age of coming to DeSci?
Figure 4 outlines the IEEE organizational structure
and activities. With a long history starting from the
American Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1884 and
over 400,000 members in 160 countries and regions,
IEEE is well known for its professional societies/coun-
cils, technical conferences, academic publications,
and industrial standards. According to IEEE 2020
Annual Report, it has over five million documents with
total usage of 192,262,982, including 222,035 new
articles from 1611 IEEE sponsored conferences with
over 465,000 attendees in 96 countries, 86,052 new
journal and magazine papers, and 138 standards
approved for publication, and stands as a financial
giant among professional communities worldwide
with a total asset over $917 million, revenue over $467
million, and expense over $397 million in 2020.
In the past decade, in addition to other profes-
sional organizations, IEEE is facing serious competi-
tion from commercial publishers and open-source
movements for social influences, asset accumula-
tions, and financial benefits. The strength and founda-
tion for IEEE growth lie significantly in its services and
contributions from member volunteers; however, this
might also turn to be IEEE’s Achillies’facing the auton-
omous science movement, since DeSci offers an
attractive alternative and a potential paradigm shift
for volunteer services and contributions.
Therefore, IEEE must investigate, test, and evalu-
ate the potential of DeSci for its organizational and
operational procedures and activities as soon as
possible. For example, DeSci will help IEEE in its collec-
tion, distribution, and even monetization of articles for
both conferences and publications, its event organiza-
tion and coordination, and its financial inspection and
accountability, as well as its creation of a new and ver-
ifiable reputation and honor systems for its members.
A list of topics will be addressed and discussed in the
coming IEEE DHS-DeSci.
F2RS2: A PROJECT FOR FREE, FAIR,
AND RESPONSIBILITY SENSITIVE
SCIENCES
Figure 5 illustrates the primitive structure of a pro-
posed project for “Free, Fair, And Responsibility Sensi-
tive Sciences (F2rS2)”with a new kind of ownership
that would be neither public owed nor private owed,
called Responsibility Sensitive Ownership (RSO) using
blockchain intelligence and technology.
1
The F2rS2
was initially launched in 2016 by the Qingdao Academy
of Intelligent Industries with the support of the UNDP
FIGURE 4. IEEE structure and activities.
FIGURE 5. F2rS2 elements and structure: Open societies and
RSO.
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in Thailand and the help of the Chinese Association of
Automation (CAA), International Federation of Auto-
matic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee on Social
and Economic Systems, as well as the Beijing Chap-
ters of International Council on Systems Engineering,
Association for Computing Machinery, and Associa-
tion for Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. The
motivation was to establish a new research and devel-
opment ecosystem with new digital and smart tools in
cyber-physical-social spaces (CPSS), an end-to-end
whole chain, and seamless organizational and opera-
tional support for professional communities from
open societies, academic associations, research insti-
tutes, startups, capital funds, to new ownership, RSO.
As a pilot project, the Association of Intelligent Sci-
ence and Technology and the Association for Advance-
ment of Intelligent Industries were registered at Denver,
CO, USA, in 2016 under the leadership of Fei-Yue Wang
and Nils Nilsson, which were merged into a single entity,
the Association for Global Intelligent Science and Tech-
nology (AGIST) after the death of Nilsson. A workshop
called Blockchain and Knowledge Automation has been
launched in 2017 at Denver University and became a con-
ference in 2018 under the support and sponsorship of
IEEE, IFAC, and CAA. In 2019, Chinese Journal of Intelli-
gent Science and Technology was launched, after the
failure of establishing it as an IEEE/CAA joint publication,
andin2021,CAArestartedInternational Journal for Intel-
ligent Control and Systems (established in 1996) and
AGIST launched International Conference of Cyber-phys-
ical and Social Intelligence with IEEE. Those associations,
publications, and conferences have been designed and
would be deployed for DAO-based “mosaic organiza-
tions”with “mosaic operations”for “mosaic events”in
building the F2rS2 project.
The goal of F2rS2 is to establish an open-source plat-
form to support professional communities with a new
kind of ownership for responsibility sensitive scientific
activities of association, publication, and conference
using new digital tools and smart methods in AI and
intelligent technology, in an attempt to facilitate the
development of self-sustaining scientificecosystems.
Since 2016, it has been supported entirely by individual
volunteers and NGOs and has attracted the funds from
capitals for AI as well as projects from traditional indus-
tries, such as mining, manufacturing, semiconductors,
power and energy, and robotics and automation.
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION AND
DISCUSSION: DHS ON DESCI
IEEE IS AI Expert will organize a Decentralized Hybrid
Symposium on DeSci (DHS-DeSci) starting from June
to August this year. DHS-DeSci will focus on the
following:
1) The State and Trend of DeSci.
2) Open Science, SciTS, CMO, DAO, Metaverse,
Web 3.0, CPSS.
3) DeSci and DAO for Professional Communities
and Associations.
4) DeSci and DAO for Academic Journals and
Publications.
5) DeSci and DAO for Conferences and Academic
Activities.
6) New IT and Open Infrastructure for F2rS2 Proj-
ect, etc.
A series of decentralized hybrid workshops on differ-
ent topics will be held during DHS-DeSci in Asia, Europe,
and North America, respectively. Our discussions will be
summarized and reported at AI Expert. A position paper
on DeSci is expected in the end of DHS-DeSci.
Looking forward to having you in DHS-DeSci.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported in part by the Science and
Technology Development Fund, Macau SAR under
Grant 0050/2020/A1.
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March/April 2022 IEEE Intelligent Systems 21
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finance
FEI-YUE WANG is chief scientist and the founding director of
the SKL-MCCS, CAS, Beijing, 100045, China, since 2011, and
also with the Macau University of Science and Technology,
Macao, China. His research interests include parallel intelli-
gence, social computing, knowledge automation, blockchain
and DAO, complex systems and complexity, and robotics and
automation. Contact him at feiyue.wang@ia.ac.cn.
WENWEN DING is a research assistant and Ph.D. candidate with
the Faculty of Innovation Engineering, Macau University of Sci-
ence and Technology, Macau, 999078, China. Her research inter-
estsinclude parallel intelligence, parallel governance, blockchain,
and DAO. Contact her at savanna.wen@gmail.com.
XIAO WANG is a research scientist and the president of QAII,
also an associate professor at the Institute of Automation,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100045, China and
also Qingdao Academy of Intelligent Industries, Qingdao,
China. Her research interests include social computing,
knowledge automation, parallel intelligence, autonomous
driving and ITS, SciTS, and DAO-based computational social
systems. She is a member of BoG of IEEE ITSS. Contact her
at x.wang@ia.ac.cn.
JON GARIBALDI is head of the School of Computer Science,
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, U.K. His
research interests include data analysis, fuzzy sets and sys-
tems, decision support systems, and medical applications.
Contact him at Jon.Garibaldi@nottingham.ac.uk.
SIYU TENG is a Ph.D. student at Hong Kong Baptist University,
Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. His research interests include paral-
lel planning, end-to-end autonomous driving, and interpretable
deep learning. Contacthim at tengsyslash@gmail.com.
RUDAS IMRE has been the president of the Central European Liv-
ing Lab for Intelligent Robotics, since 2014. His research interests
are computational cybernetics, robotics, and cloud robotics,
Internet of anything, soft computing, fuzzy control, and fuzzy sets.
Contact him at rudas@uni-obuda.hu.
CRISTINA OLAVERRI-MONREAL is holding the BMK endowed
professorship and chair for sustainable transport logistics 4.0 at
Johannes Kepler University, Linz, 4040, Austria. Her research
interests include automated driving, advanced driving assis-
tance systems, human-factors and human–machine interaction,
sustainable transport, and simulation tools. Contact her at
cristina.olaverri-monreal@jku.at.
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