Long Live VitaDAO
Blockchains enable a new generation of applications and financial primitives. Examples such as DeFi, NFTs, and GameFi are among the list of compelling innovations attracting interest in the young web3 ecosystem. However, beyond services and applications, blockchains also give creative individuals and groups the ability to redesign, build, and operate a new type of organization: Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). And DAOs are slowly gaining mindshare among the American public – a great example is ConstitutionDAO, the Internet’s collective effort to buy the US Constitution in November.
When juxtaposing DAOs with corporations, one of the prominent differences is a lack of centralized, authoritative decision-making power. In fact, a DAO is usually run by a core team reporting directly to a community, who hold governance rights facilitated through blockchain tokens. In fact, it is the goal of these DAOs to decentralize power across its community in a manner designed to encourage engagement, participation, and financial alignment with the DAOs long-term success.
DAOs get created for all sorts of purposes. Some of them, like ConstitutionDAO, form when people want to buy something; others get started and operate like a business. But some recent DAOs have the same kind of goal as VitaDAO, an organization formed around a mission to fund advancements in longevity research. To understand what makes VitaDAO unique, let’s understand the environment around a prickly subject: Pharmaceutical research.
Research Hurdles and Obstacles
Today’s path for longevity research is often a convoluted, long, and arduous process. Research organizations, academics, or independent scientists generally need to have the right connections or political alignment to capture grants to fund novel research. This creates a few barriers:
- Economic misalignment: Corporations in the pharmaceutical industry pursue profit-maximizing products at the expense of other promising efforts that may lead to more innovative discoveries
- Intellectual property enforcement: Research funded by corporations or private entities are often gated behind the veil of corporate property, thus limiting the full opportunity for collaborative discoveries
