“Come on! Tell me how blockchain can change Science!”
It was just a regular weekend day, a meeting with friends, some things to cook and eat, some beers, juice or wine to drink. We have this group from college that meet every month or so, and each one does what he is best at. I usually open the bottles, as cooking for people with high level of exigence is not for me. One of my friends, Bernardo, actually was a chef for some time. Before that, he was a Biologist and now a Lawyer, quite a multi-skilled guy.
All of a sudden, I bumped into a conversation between Bernardo and Mauro, also a biologist and an entrepreneur. They were talking about blockchain, and contracts, and a bunch of our current science dilemmas; sharing knowledge, getting funded, making a revolution on everything starting from the kitchen bench while preparing food (our favourite topic). There, serving glasses with an open bottle of wine, I heard the question from Mauro: “Come on, Fábio! Tell me how blockchain can change Science! Or, at least, how can it make a change in what we are doing in our lab?”.
Simple question, not an easy answer. Moreover, I was still trying to cope with my second “Future Shock” in life. The first one was more than 25 years ago when I first accessed some files via Gopher (a pre-WWW tool for navigating through menus on the Internet, and yes, I am that old!). So, at that moment I just tried to prompt some ideas out of my little knowledge of that, and we shared some common thoughts. For that moment there was no clear straight answer that we could give. We talked about some aspects of the technology, a little bit more about what are the bottlenecks of science production, and other issues, like the need of science hubs in Brazil to provide infrastructure to solve complex issues (like the Zika pandemic). At the end we left, all of us, with some “Lego Blocks” to make sense. Maybe we could build a “Lego Truck” with that to start with (something Mauro teachs me now and then). It is crude, maybe is not the perfect truck, but it is what we need at the beginning, because the real truck, perfect, would take a lot to be done and would not be as adaptable as the Lego one.
After a while, this conversation started to make sense to each one of us. That moment was the seed for something that was growing. Now we can see that one of the most known applications of blockchain, the creation of cryptocurrencies, could make the difference for science and scientist, and that is where the idea of Genecoin came aboard. With a currency created to the science ecosystem, we can really do something that would solve more than technical problems on everyday lab bench. We would be able to use the trust in science to thrust science to another level of funding and knowledge sharing. We could pave a road to give financial support to activities that today are not supported. And we can give to supporters of science a way to direct their investments in those that are working hard to make a difference in what they need or believe.
I know that this may sound more like a teaser, as there are lots of things to understand about blockchain, cryptocurrencies, tokens, and its relations with the scientific community. But, let's think that we are starting here with the first of several building blocks. One that can tell were we came from, and point to where we plan to go.
For now, just think what would represent to everyone working in the science field if they could have a currency. One with the virtuosity to cycle among their community, making every investment a two, a ten, a hundredfold investment in the perceived results. Imagine that every directed trust in science could result in thrusting science further, and further, day by day.
Imagine that it will grow in a Fibonacci Spiral. Welcome to Genecoin! Visit http://genecoin.science [to be continued...]