Biomedical and scientific companies are turning to blockchain technology and crypto-treasury strategies to fund research, overhauling traditional capital formation and research funding structures that can delay life-saving treatments by decades.
Portage Biotech, a biomedical technology company, turned into a Toncoin (TON) treasury company in September, earning operating revenue from efforts to secure its network and investing in Telegram ecosystem projects including games and mini-apps.
The company will use a portion of TON’s operating income and capital growth to fund cancer research, AlphaTON CEO Brittany Kaiser told Cointelegraph.
Differences between traditional scientific research funding models and decentralized science structures. Source: Muntelegraaf
She said the company is exploring real-world asset tokenization (RWA) as an alternative financing mechanism to decentralize scientific development and remove financial and access barriers to research funding inherent in the traditional system. She said:
“We research the best case studies and what worked and what didn’t, from tokenizing the intellectual property, to tokenizing the equity of the company that owns the research, to tokenizing future profits from the research.”
Kaiser and AlphaTON strategic advisor Anthony Scaramucci said biomedical research as an operational vertical sets the company apart from other digital asset funds, which often lack operational activities.
“Most cryptocurrency treasury companies take over the shell and eliminate the primary aspects of the original business, but this is a new case because there are very valuable assets inside the shell,” Scaramucci told Cointelegraph.
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Ideosphere wants to finance scientific research through prediction markets
Ideosphere, a decentralized science startup, is exploring funding early-stage scientific research through prediction markets. Prediction market platforms act as crowdsourced intelligence and voting mechanisms.
A mock-up example of what the Ideosphere prediction market would look like. Source: Ideosphere/Muntelegraaf
“If you can create prediction markets around early-stage research, you can turn those markets into a marketplace of ideas that actually bring in the money,” Rei Jarram, co-founder and chief technology officer of Ideospehre, told Cointelegraph.
“Researchers can put forward hypotheses that they are working on, and traders can speculate on them, and the spread goes to the researcher,” she added.
Bio Protocol obtains financing from Animoca Brands
In September, Bio Protocol, a decentralized science platform that combines artificial intelligence, blockchain and community participation to explore drug discovery, secured $6.9 million in funding from Web3 company Animoca Brands and the Maelstrom Fund.
Maelstrom founder Arthur Hayes said the platform has the potential to become a full-fledged ‘AI-native research marketplace’ that could change the way scientific research is conducted.
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