Metascience and Decentralized Science

This resource maps the Metascience and Decentralized Science ecosystem: the organizations, individuals, ideas, and infrastructure shaping how science is funded, organized, and practiced. It covers 200+ organizations and individuals, a growing primer library, and a newsletter. For contact, send me an email or dm me.

This resource builds on: UltraRareBio's DeSci mapping, Vincent Weisser's DeSci and Metascience resources, Overedge Catalog by Samuel Arbesman, and ResearchHub's DeSci Ecosystem Overview.

Metascience here follows Nielsen and Qiu's definition: exploration of new social processes for science. DeSci refers to the use of web3 technologies to build next-generation scientific infrastructure.

Recently Added

    News

    → News from 2024 and earlier

    Media

    Podcasts

    • Idea Machines — Ben Reinhardt's long-form interviews on how breakthroughs happen and how to create the conditions for more of them.
    • Macroscience — Caleb Watney and Tim Hwang on science policy, the mechanics of innovation, and the institutions that govern research.
    • Proof of DeSci — interviews across the decentralized science ecosystem: funding models, DAOs, and emerging infrastructure.
    • The DeSci Podcast — conversations with builders, researchers, and funders at the intersection of science and web3.
    • Foresight Institute talks — seminars on nanotechnology, longevity, computation, and the long-run future of science and technology.

    Newsletters

    • Metascience and Decentralized Science — this newsletter: new entries, primers, and developments across the ecosystem.
    • DeSci Weekly — weekly roundup of news, funding, and commentary from the decentralized science space.
    • FreakTakes — Eric Gilliam on the history and future of innovative research, with focus on biotech and institutional design.
    • Works in Progress — long-form essays on how things get better and what holds progress back, across science, technology, and policy.

    → Talks, conferences, and more

    Organizations

    ARIA

    UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency; programme-manager-driven, DARPA-inspired

    Center for Open Science

    Infrastructure, tools, and incentives for open and reproducible research

    FutureHouse

    Building AI agents to accelerate scientific discovery, including Robin (end-to-end research agent)

    Astera Institute

    Philanthropic research organization developing infrastructure for open science and breakthrough research

    Arc Institute

    Independent research institute combining basic science with long-horizon technology development

    Convergent Research

    Venture studio originating Focused Research Organizations; builds the Gap Map of R&D bottlenecks

    Institute for Progress

    Science and technology policy think tank; works on immigration, FDA reform, and new funding models

    VitaDAO

    Decentralized longevity research organization; funds early-stage research through IP-NFT model

    → Full organizations directory

    Tools & Ideas

    • Roadmapping and Gap Mapping — systematic methods for identifying where scientific infrastructure is missing and where a targeted intervention could unlock progress across a field.
    • Alternative Funding Mechanisms — lotteries, prizes, advance market commitments, regranting, and people-not-projects models that shift what kinds of science get funded. See the funding mechanisms primer.
    • The ARPA Model — programme-manager-driven, mission-oriented research funding pioneered by DARPA; being replicated through ARIA, ARPA-H, ARPA-E, and SPRIND.
    • Preregistration and Registered Reports — tools for separating hypothesis generation from analysis, reducing publication bias, and making research more credible before results are known.
    • Open Access and Open Infrastructure — from preprint servers and open datasets to FAIR data principles and open-source lab tools that make science more cumulative.

    → Full tools and ideas directory