When it comes to the hottest track in the past two weeks, it has to be DeSci.

Since November 8, after Binance labs announced its investment in BIO Protocol, with the joint endorsement of CZ and Buterin, this once dormant concept has risen again. Hot money is pouring in, RIF and URO are pouring out thousands of times of wealth, and a new potential MEME track has also emerged.

DeSci, also known as decentralized science, quotes Messari's concept and refers to the establishment of public infrastructure through Web3 technology to achieve open and fair funding, storage and dissemination of scientific knowledge. , DeSci encourages scientists to share their research openly and receive credit, while allowing anyone to easily access and contribute to their research. Simply put, DeSci is committed to relying on blockchain technology to solve scientific research problems, covering fund raising, knowledge sharing, review, intellectual property rights, etc.

In terms of track performance, DeSci focuses on financing. Most project models rely on tokenization to finance projects to support scientific research and development. At the same time, scientific research results More efforts should be made to promote on-chain services to improve transparency and protect intellectual property rights. At present, the core role of DeSci is to open up new financing channels for scientific research that requires long-term investment. Because it links the two unrelated fields of encryption and scientific research, it gives tokenization more opportunities. It has practical significance, so it is strongly promoted by the market as one of the practical cases of MEME.

When it comes to the root cause of DeSci’s popularity this time, celebrity effect is the key. On November 8, according to official disclosures, Binance completed strategic financing for BIO Protocol, bringing this “scientific version of Y Combinator on the chain” to the surface. Later, CZ attended Binance's DeSci Day event in Bangkok, and Vitalik was also present. The two discussed DeSci together, which pushed DeSci to the forefront.

The encryption circle that is good at finding hot spots quickly surged into the DeSci craze. Pump.Science became an instant hit. The RIF and URO projects made thousands of times profits, making this industry The track is completely out of the loop. Andrew Kang, a partner at Mechanism Capital, even wrote that "the DeSci field now feels like the DeFi era in early 2019. Everything is still very primitive and experimental, but a basic conclusion can be drawn from it, that is, it has huge potential." Affected by this, even inNow that the market is experiencing a sharp correction, according to SoSoValue data, the DeSci sector still bucked the trend and rose 3.35%.

Although Desci's vision is promising, and the opening of funding channels for scientific research is undoubtedly valuable, judging from the current situation, the hype clearly outweighs the actual utility. In essence, the long-term nature of scientific research is significantly different from the short-term profit-seeking nature of the MEME field. It is quite fanciful to hope that the purely speculative MEME track will neutralize the zero-speculation scientific research field.

On the one hand, there is great uncertainty in scientific research. Drug development often takes more than ten years. If the direction is wrong, it will be completely wrong. It requires high investment, Characteristics such as high risk require sustainable long-term investment, which is why scientific research funding usually adopts a model led by leading companies, with capital and social capital combined to hedge risks and maintain competitiveness. But in the encryption market, attention is the core, and hot spots are difficult to sustain. Currently, the hot money surrounding DeSci is mainly concentrated on Pump.Science, a meme currency issuance platform for scientific research projects, which shows that the market is concerned about the money-making effect.

In fact, from a conceptual point of view, DeSci is quite a bit like old wine in new bottles. If we look back on history, VitaDAO, launched by Buterin in July 2021, is the earliest and most representative DeSci project. However, the development of this project is not as spectacular as its concept.

VitaDAO is a community-owned project dedicated to funding early-stage longevity research. The goal is to promote scientific innovation through the collective power of the community, research and support aimed at extending longevity. Projects on human longevity and prevention of age-related diseases. In other words, VitaDAO is a DAO community that studies longevity.

Previously, due to the traditional pharmaceutical company Pfizer's strategic participation in the project, VitaDAO briefly aroused heated discussion, but subsequently the talks quickly declined. Return to silence. At present, VitaDAO is also making extensive arrangements, not only deploying US$4.2 million in funds to fund 24 projects, but also conducting research cooperation with well-known universities such as Newcastle University. But compared with its actions, the actual results are quite limited. Starting in 2021, it was not until Devcon not long ago this year that Buterin finally demonstrated VitaDAO’s first product VD001.

On the other hand, although the listing of scientific research results will strengthen transparency and intellectual property protection, and is also conducive to the spread of science, in the relatively closed scientific research fieldDomain, this point is almost a structural subversion. In today's scientific research system, most research teams maintain a high degree of confidentiality in their research results and experimental data during the scientific research process to prevent the research results from being stolen, used or leaked by unauthorized persons, especially when deep-seated interests are involved. It is even more important. With the strong entry of decentralization, the security of data is naturally difficult to guarantee.

With the blessing of the above two, it can be expected that in addition to superficial applications such as scientific research content, review fairness and data tokenization, only the realization of Projects that are extremely difficult, time-consuming, and highly collaborative will cater to the encryption mode. Judging from this wave of craze, most DeSci projects are targeting a core issue of common concern to all mankind - longevity, which has also led the market to jokingly call DeSci the elixir of life on the chain.

Immortality is just a beautiful vision after all, and the market’s focus on DeSci is only the liquidity it brings behind it. Although the BIO Genesis community fundraising campaign launched by BIOProtocol raised US$33 million, the DeSci sector has soared in the past two weeks. However, the primary market action is limited, and large institutions have not yet participated. From the perspective of leading projects, the secondary market attention is even mediocre. The market values ​​of VITA and RIF both fall between 120 million and 200 million US dollars, which is different from other sector leaders. A market value of US$1 billion is a far cry from that.

DeSci sector development, source: sosovalue

But if you exclude the long-term perspective, DeSci is a relatively good sector in the MEME industry. Compared with other MEME, DeSci has a stronger narrative. Although the celebrity effect is difficult to last, because it is supported by actual scientific research projects, there is a fundamental effect. Any scientific research innovation and product development will strengthen the narrative. The biomedical sector is open to fundraising, and the emerging nature of this field makes it more likely to integrate with the encryption field. In addition, DeSci has a potential circle-breaking effect. The celebrity effect of the current section is still concentrated within cryptography, led by Vitalik and CZ. Celebrities in the traditional medical and scientific research fields have not yet entered, and large institutions have not yet emerged. This also provides a good opportunity for the follow-up. Narrative provides direction.

Returning to the macro market, whether it is a zoo or an artist, AI-driven or scientific research verification, it can be seen that MEME has become the main carrier of market funds. But the successors to this round of wealth were altcoins. Looking only at the counterfeit market, Bitcoin hasUS$10,000 rose to the edge of US$100,000. The follow-up effect of Ethereum was significantly reduced, and the performance of altcoins mostly fell. Among the top ten crypto assets, only SOL and now.

From a core perspective, changes in capital flow are the key. In the traditional bull market transmission, the general path is to gradually sink and spill over from high-stability assets to low-stability assets, and activate high-yield preferences from low-yield sources, that is, mainstream currencies - altcoins - MEME currencies - other sectors , but this year the path is not as good as before. But at present, with the entry of institutions and the saturation of the number of projects, large amounts of new external liquidity will only flow into the Bitcoin ecosystem. There are no strong applications emerging in the public chain ecosystem. Altcoins are deeply involved in the crisis of supply and demand institutions. Bitcoin Becoming a siphon of ecological funds, funds from other sectors have also been siphoned in. Only MEME, which is fast in and out, with a concentrated wealth effect, stands out, and the copycat season has therefore become the MEME season.

A typical evidence is that Pump.fun has become the biggest winner in the bull market. According to Dune data, as of November 24, pump.fun has accumulated revenue of nearly 230 million U.S. dollars ($228,908,720), and the total number of deployed tokens is approximately 3.74 million.

Of course, the two are not replacement effects, and the rise of MEME does not mean the collapse of copycats. With regulatory relaxation and plate rotation, copycats may still have headwinds. Comeback. However, the improvement of MEME’s market position undoubtedly reflects the structural changes of the market. In fact, whether it is Pumpfun live broadcast, TikTok order calling, AI autonomous driving, etc., with the entry of the Z era and the rapid evolution of new technologies, the encryption market They are all experiencing profound changes in narrative logic, communication models, and operating methods.

Migrating in a direction that is fair, more autonomous, and closer to the core of the token, attention is becoming increasingly scarce. From this point of view, the combination of MEME and the project seems to be more competitive than a single project. The copycat is the boss, while MEME is relatively fair. MEME lacks long-term, and the project has given fundamentals. The two are highly consistent. This may be the reason for the current AIMEME. One of the reasons for the rise of concepts such as , Desci and so on.

But in any case, the formation of consensus is highly random, and MEME gold mines are rare. Citing Panews data, as of November 21, Pump.fun had issued a total of 3 tokens.590,000, this order of magnitude has far exceeded the total number of tokens issued in the crypto world in the past 10 years. Among them, the number of tokens that have graduated (reached the Raydium curve) is 50,389, accounting for approximately 1.4%. The number of tokens with a market value of over US$100 million is only 32, and less than one in 100,000 MEME has a market value of more than US$10 million.

In the long run, finding a consensus balance between attention and long-term will become an important issue in the development of MEME, but for individuals, living and not returning to zero is the key to success. It is the premise of everything.