Science DAO Framework FAQ

Links

Research papers

Gitlab repo

Wiki

SDF: "We're building an open, merit-based democracy for the science community."

Q: How?

A: We're building a decentralized platform for science publishing. It's a place to collaborate, learn, share knowledge, review papers, debate, and earn credit for your contributions. It's an improvement on traditional journals and academic research organizations.

Q: Why are you building it?

A:  ?? list problems with science publishing and research incentives. The internet has led to the erosion of traditional, smaller local groups. Diverse journals for specific subjects in science have been centralized behind the control of a few, big, for-profit publishers.

Research is suffering from poor incentives mismatched to human values. We see this in the replication crisis and ... . Problems are fine. But we should also end positive: we can build something new that doesn't just halt the erosion of traditional institutions, but actually improves them.

Q: How do you solve that?

A: We're using the same technology that has been undermining the global institution of science to help fix it.

Q: What technology? How can you improve the global institution of science??

A: There are new tools available to humanity. Public key cryptography and peer-to-peer tech including blockchain, distributed hash tables, and smart contracts allow decentralized accounting and collaboration on a previously unimagined global scale.

These tools allow us to build networks that empower the communities they serve, because their members are in charge. So these networks can be driven primarily by the desire to promote scientific knowledge and discovery, with profit as a much lower secondary concern compared with contemporary dominant scientific publishing platforms.

Q: How, specifically? What are the details of this plan?

A: We are using new techniques for building DAO architectures for decentralized governance.¹ This allows an open, reputation-based², global network to collaborate toward our common goals and maintain our values, while protecting the individual rights of our members.

Q: How do I start?

A: You can't. Yet. We're still building the platform. But we're seeking future members. We can use your help in advertising the idea to your colleagues. Discuss the importance of solving these problems. We need developers to improve the UIs and testers during beta release.

More details

• DGF project
• Gitlab Repo
• DGF
• DGF Wiki
• Governance philosophy
• Guiding principles
  • Individual code of conduct
  • Group governance code of conduct
• Contributors guide
• Ethical considerations
• Governance philosophy

References

1. On Chain Governance Calcaterra, Craig, On-Chain Governance of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (May 24, 2018). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3188374 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3188374 ↩
2. Reputation Protocol Calcaterra, Craig and Kaal, Wulf A. and Andrei, Vlad, Blockchain Infrastructure for Measuring Domain Specific Reputation in Autonomous Decentralized and Anonymous Systems (February 18, 2018). U of St. Thomas (Minnesota) Legal Studies Research Paper No. 18-11, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125822 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3125822 ↩