Kamen Shoylev: Decentralised Science (DeSci) and the Example of 'IP-NFTs' and 'IP Tokens' | ETHSofia

[Music] first of all have to give you being a lawyer I will have to not just give you um a slight bit about myself which introduction has already happened but also just say that what um you're hearing is not a particularly authorized version uh or at all an authorized version I will be discussing briefly um projects that are in various stages of existence and development one of them uh is current is ongoing this is the IP nft and IP token model by molecule which is a Swiss company and they're Associated entities uh and this is something that is um already placed documents and and smart contracts uh are made available um and you can access them in GitHub and on molecules website so that's live there's also a project I will briefly mention in the end which is close uh to my heart which is uh in the area of longevity as well but none of this is something that I'm authorized by these organizations to talk about these are just my personal um thoughts so firstly I wanted to tell you a little bit about decentralized science and um to even raise the question do we need um as much as you would be convinced that we need decentralized Finance do we need also uh decentralized science and in fact what is it what are the benefits of decentralized science we um already have traditional science and traditional science comes with some of its problems these are first and foremost problems of funding scientists would always tell you when you speak to them that they don't get enough funding so um that may be a question of the kind of funding they get is it funding available for basic Sciences um basic scientific research versus applied research um what is the direction in which the scientists are being asked to work um are they working within public institutions within private institutions within perhaps non-governmental institutions and um one important aspect of this is is there too much comfort in public science or even in private science and therefore the problems that are being addressed are not the most impactful once but are the problems that um perhaps uh bodies that award funding and members of the scientific professions uh are themselves Keen to tackle which will lead to more incremental as opposed to revolutionary steps in science so that's one of the alleged problems with trasky there's also problems around how do you um deal with the data uh science must be based on data as much as artificial intelligence must be based on data and so how do we uh accumulate uh that data make it available avoid silos there's also been a replicability crisis I won't say more about that um but you can look it up so the ways in which decentralized science might be able to help are the contrary to what I've just mentioned um so it could potentially provide more funding from novel sources so um there are uh countless individuals and organizations out there holding perhaps um token um or other digital assets that could fund um such projects and they could do so in a way that is U public that is on a public blockchain that is observable that allows the involvement the decentralized involvement of multiple individuals bringing multiple experiences and um ideas that also of course connects to the usual voting mechanisms however a more interesting way is that by providing particularly in a smart contract context a setting where um intellectual property rights or other scientific related assets could be both seen but also effectively trade it against um that might enable even more funding and also the data will potentially be provided in a more structured standardized way which then again should accelerate science so speeding things up I think is one credible benefit potential benefit of decentralized science it will become clear that as a share of total science this kind of this kind of science decentralized science currently is very very small it's much smaller compared to let's say defi versus trafi but potentially promising some of the benefits that are suggested may be however benefits that need to be looked at with more attention and more care and they might not be as easily achievable as it might seem so as a lawyer um I do need to be a little bit skeptical and hopefully all of you are wearing your critical thinking hats whenever you look at um defi or D projects so looking first at um the molecule projects that I mentioned and once again to clarify I'm not a member of that organization I'm not particularly authorized at all authorized by them to um to speak on this I'm just commenting on on what's publicly available unfortunately this is probably too small for you to read um but um the uh molecule um has published uh two models one is their model for um an IP nft and I will um explain what they mean by that and the other one is what they call an IP token so um the nft first um this um nft um is one that will be issued or has been now issued in two projects in connection with two um contracts and one smart contract um the smart contract bit you can uh you can inform yourselves about directly the um contract bits or or what I wanted to look at more specifically one is a sponsored research agreement now what is this this is the agreements between the sponsor in this case potentially an organization that is set up in order to fund a particular scientific project when I say scientific by the way please read not just basic science but potentially applied science which can be done as part of a company so think about a hardware startup um or a biotech startup something that potentially has a lot of intellectual property um as its asset and it is therefore uh in need potentially of a lot of funding science can be done and must be done as part of such deep tech companies so if somebody wanted at a very early stage of such a company to fund it they might enter into a sponsored research agreements where they agree to funds and in exchange they agree to acquire um certain intellectual property rights so this may be uh rights in relation to confidential information and knowhow they may be if there are already patents in existence they may cover patn these are things these are the assets on which such companies are built right so um those are uh uh un by agreements it is agreed that they will be uh in exchange for the funding they will be held or rights to them will be held by the sponsor and then the second agreement uh is a um an agreement to assign that to whoever is the holder of the ipft and whoever is the holder of the IP nft of course that's the business of the smart contract so you therefore connect three things you connect the assets mainly in the form of intellectual property and related contractual rights including for example rights to data to a sponsor and you then uh give that uh sponsor uh uh you give that sponsor or you rather give the uh rights uh to the nft that's been issued that's been minted um to a holder uh in due course effectively creating almost like a tradable instrument so there is if you can see it a ex extract and a link to the website where this information can be examined in more detail there's also what they call an IP token and that first part that I've already described the uh IP nft I think works very well and it provides potentially for that aspect which we discussed which is the ability to um draw more funding and also combining patent rights with rights to data in one instrument which I think is very interesting and very valuable where I'm less sure that that there is a genuine product um quote unquote product is on this second um IP token this um gives fewer rights to its holders than the uh IP nft at least on the analysis that one is able to conduct of it and we will have to see how these things operate as I say there are so far two projects that have been as far as I'm aware that been funded um using this each of them has issued tokens including the IP token that is tradable these tokens have positive values um so on coin gecko you will see that they're not they haven't crashed there is some interest in them um and so the market will tell us um what's how valuable they are but it seems to me that the softer rights and I go in this slide on in some detail as to why I think they're softer are probably um valuable more in a softer sense now I also o wanted to to tell you uh about um another project which is as yet not has not reached that level of sophistication but is related and this is um closer in a way to my heart I'm involved also with the foundation called the vitalism foundation which is uh currently planning and and conceiving of this uh of this project but I'm again not speaking um not telling you anything that that that is particularly um an authorized statement these are just my personal thoughts on this token um by way of background on this um this is all about longevity and you might think of longevity in different ways you would have heard um I'm sure you're all following Brian Johnson and um what he does online and uh I'm sure you would have heard of this buw in the last several years um but it's all about the science um of the diseases that uh appear because of the accumulated biological damage with time and so this extract from the vitalism presentation um tells us that it's aging it's killing us in the sense that 80% of diseases are to do with aging and that's also so in the US it's responsible for 39% of the expenses in the US federal budget um indirectly because these are the costs of Health Care the costs of Pensions and these costs arise because of the fact that we develop diseases as a result of these processes of Aging the diseases that you're familiar with or the majority of them are such diseases on the the other hand science is available in the last 100 years or so scientists have been working on these topics in the last 30 years there's been significant progress for example you will see on the left in this slide um the uh uh sea Elegance worm a very favorite creature of um biologists and since the Kenyan a US scientist 30 years 31 years ago was able to demonstrate that she could triple the lifespan of this worm just by changing one of its genes this was just a proof of that concept we're not yet there for humans but it shows that a lot is possible and so thinking of what happened with covid vaccines um there was of course huge funding and there was of course a very quick development to vaccines that funding came both from private sources and from public sources and what happened was that governments often pre-purchased um on block they bought the future almost like a crowdfunding aspect of of government work both the European Union uh and other major governments United States Canada Etc they all buil up the future Poss POS supply of vaccines so the idea here um is to develop a token which allows for um uh for the uh future longevity treatments to be accessed if you uh if you recall in the in the case of um sorry to go back in the case of vaccines it was governments agreeing with makers of vaccines that if they developed vaccines if those vaccines were approved for public use then those governments would have access rights to them and so a similar concept for those Innovative drugs may be something accessible in a tokenized decentralized system as well and uh these are my contact details I'm reachable on telegram um I'm also uh reachable on uh on X and of course by email which is c. shf at new borans law office um new balans LA office of course is our Bulgarian law firm of which I'm a managing partner and there are approximately 15 of us uh in Sophia uh and several of us in London ready to help you [Music] la