CrunchDAO: Where Decentralized Science and Decentralized Finance Converge

The application of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLT) has accelerated rapidly in recent years in many well-respected fields such as business, finance, and media. These technologies have certainly revolutionized finance, encouraging transparency and resistance toward censorship from higher entities. As decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) become more prominent within the industry, so do the new possibilities within social innovation.

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Currently, discourse surrounding the benefits of decentralized finance (DeFi) is rife as it continues to challenge the traditional centralized banking system by eliminating or minimizing transaction fees and promoting the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) systems. In line with this ideology, decentralized science (DeSci) has emerged to the foreground, challenging archaic academia frameworks and putting forward contemporary solutions to ongoing industry issues.

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What is DeSci?

DeSci is one of Web3’s latest value propositions and a decentralized framework that aims to build an infrastructure for funding, storing, and disseminating scientific knowledge without restrictions using the Web3 stack. This framework creates transparency surrounding scientific research, makes it resistant to control from centralized third parties, and helps to advance scientific research by solving social issues such as lack of funding, research, and publication.

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DeSci also solves the problem of replicability of published research. Scientific funding is heavily reliant on the existence of published research. However, scientists often refrain from sharing this research, their intellectual property, as it is viewed as a future patent. DeSci provides a solution to this by giving a transparent view of how the research is used, including the code and all relative information, so that the research and findings can be reproduced. Now, any scientist can learn, recreate and build upon previous research in an incremental fashion for the benefit of the entire community.

What is CrunchDAO?

CrunchDAO leverages the power of Web3 collective intelligence to create a next-generation financial insights power. Our decentralized computing network of 2,000 data scientists and 400+ PhDs solves market predictions. Each week, the data scientists or ‘crunchers’ compete in a tournament where they can make blind predictions on the market to earn a prize which is given in $CRUNCH, the native token that grants access to the research or ‘signal’ — a ranking of stocks from best performer to worst, similar to traditional investment bank research — produced by the DAO.

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The DAO’s Signal is then input into a portfolio optimizer which determines which asset to buy or sell short to create a market-neutral strategy. In 2021, CrunchDAO distributed a total of $300,000 to the community. You can buy $CRUNCH tokens on the market, or earn them as a cruncher in CrunchDAO’s weekly tournaments. If you are a holder of the DAO’s token, you can participate in the governance votes.

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By incorporating DeSci as an element within operations, natural communal interests become aligned and thus, the convergence between DeFi and DeSci begins. Through the addition of DeSci, we can upgrade our metamodel performance by opening up scientific questions to the community, unlike other DAOs. Tokens in the DeSci community are valuable assets in financing projects and open up possibilities for many investors, as anyone can partake. This, in turn, reduces the need for institutional funding.

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Members of the DAO can vote on how many tokens should be burned versus distributed as tournament rewards. The DAO believes the token should be reflective of the value of the research. If token-based mechanisms offer rewards to DAO members, this will serve as an incentive for the DAO’s collective efforts.

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What does the future look like for CrunchDAO?

At CrunchDAO, we believe the same framework we operate from can be applied to crypto investment and other fields, which include medical and space research. Growing numbers of data scientists are joining CrunchDAO’s weekly tournaments to support modern science.

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Regarding finance, asset managers will now be able to gain access to the predictions of over 2,000 quantitative traders and data scientists on the platform. Scientific research will no longer depend on the capital of investors and acquired grants as the DAO will singlehandedly eliminate the centralized organizations that wish to profit. As an alternative, researchers can resort to crowdfunding. The goal of DeSci is to enhance scientific funding and scientific knowledge. CrunchDAO wishes to be a part of social innovation, to unite the wisdom of the crowds, and to progress beyond the limitations traditional hedge funds and decentralized finance still face.

Arnaud Castillo, CEO of CrunchDAO

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