The co-founders of decentralized science startup Ideosphere told Cointelegraph that they aim to channel the speculative energy of crypto prediction markets into funding early-stage scientific research.
Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Blockchain for Good Awards event in Copenhagen, Denmark, Ideosphere co-founder and head of technology Ray Jaram said that some research is considered too risky to invest in through traditional routes.
She said seeing so much money flowing into crypto gambling platforms led the project’s founders to wonder if they could “siphon some of that speculation away from gambling and into early-stage research.”
Jaram believed that prediction markets were the best choice because “gamblers have a high risk appetite, and early-stage research and development is quite risky.”
Jaram said that while there is an abundance of talent and innovation, funding remains scarce as he believes such projects are too risky to go through traditional routes. “The money is there,” she said. “But if you can’t get the money, it’s probably because of an incentive problem.” Ideosphere wants to solve that.
“If we can create prediction markets around early-stage research, we can turn those markets into markets for ideas that actually bring in money. […] Researchers can formulate a hypothesis, traders can speculate on it, and the spread goes to the researchers. ”
This project is still in the early stages of development and only front-end mockups are available at this time. Still, we received 10,000 USDt (USDT) funding from Blockchain for Good Alliance during the event.
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It’s not that simple.
Like most decentralized science (DeSci) projects, Ideosphere is more complex than it first appears. Without further precautions, a setup like the one described above becomes vulnerable to corruption and errors, which could result in the market being accidentally closed.
Researchers can make mistakes and reach incorrect conclusions, and prediction markets are resolved based on those results, creating an incentive to close the market in unexpected ways and engage in insider trading. The co-founders have several measures in mind to alleviate this problem.
Rei explained that the platform will have a dispute system (presumably the UMA protocol) where users can initiate a dispute and receive a monetary reward if their claim turns out to be true, otherwise they lose money. The hope is that this will lead to something like crowdfunded peer review, a scientific process in which research is evaluated by experts in the same field.
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Decentralized examination
To access the funding, researchers must also secure a deposit and undergo a vetting process that includes user voting. It should also provide commercial feasibility and time-to-market estimates for the actual application.
In addition to prediction markets, Ideosphere plans to introduce what it calls “discovery markets.” Ray explained that their aim is to sort through potential research projects and “identify the highest impact, most viable projects that can be funded.” […] with minimal funds. ”
He also said that research projects will have access to crowdfunding on the platform, as well as funding from prediction market trading spreads. Rei added, “We need a lot of money to generate a lot of money, but that may not be enough, so we want to provide additional financing avenues.”
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