Author: Zuo Ye

The black box of large models drives people crazy, and blockchain hopes to make transparent white boxes happen in scientific research.

In 1943, Schrödinger, the master of quantum states, gave a difficult speech in Dublin, demonstrating the relationship between atoms, life and cells from the perspective of statistical physics. At that time, Watson, a teenager on the other side of the ocean, was only 15 years old and was already a freshman at the University of Chicago.

After reading Schrödinger's speech, which led to his book What is Life, Watson decided that genetics would be his lifelong ambition.

Ten years later, when Watson, who had already obtained his doctorate, proposed the double helix structure of DNA, the 25-year-old had already secured the Nobel Prize.

From grafting and cloning to gene editing

There are two trees in front of my house, one is a jujube tree and the other is also a jujube tree.

Anyone who has attended junior high school knows that genes are information fragments in DNA, like the "function body" in code, which is the most basic functional implementation. DNA is like an instance module, and RNA is like routing and communication functions, transmitting genetic information to specific objects.

Watson discovered the structure of DNA, but humans don’t know how to use it. It’s like we know the quantum state of a cat, but cats are easy to find, while quantum communication still needs many years.

At least Watson is luckier than Schrödinger. In 2012, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna discovered that CRISPR sequences and Cas proteins can be combined to artificially cut off specific sequences and insert the information fragments they want. Finally, they use the human body's repair mechanism to complete the transplantation unknowingly.

It really is like garden pruning, where you can see branches connecting to each other with the naked eye. Even without understanding the biological mechanisms at work, you can still understand the matching relationships between different plants - all you need is constant experimentation.

The experiments can continue, and so can cloning. The cell nucleus and cytoplasm can also be separated and "docked". With continuous experiments, cloning can achieve the wonderful effect of isomers, just as stated in "What is Life".

Gene editing is not mysterious. It is a further step towards cloning and further miniaturization in size. Just like life from an atomic perspective is nothing more than an irreversible process of thermal motion that eventually cools and dies down, just like time, which may be stretched and compressed, but is never reversible.

Humans can graft fruit trees and clone animals, so can humans edit humans?

In 2018, the crazy scientist He Jiankui became Eve or the snake, and performed gene editing on a pair of twin embryos whose parents were suffering from AIDS. Humanity thus opened Pandora's box. Cloned animals can be humanely destroyed, but are gene-edited humans still human?

 Image caption: How CRISPR-Cas9 works, Image source: @zuoyeweb3

However, in-depth research at the genetic level has a fatal temptation for a certain group of people - longevity. They want to find the gene fragment that affects lifespan and, like General Jin's hacker, change its value from 100 to ♾️. Even if they can only add a 0, it is enough.

In 2023, Paradigm co-founder Fred Ehrsam decided to leave the crypto industry and founded the biological research company Nudge. Coincidentally, Fred was also the co-founder of Coinbase and turned to crypto VC after the company went public in 2017.

Also in 2017, Paul Kohlhaas joined Consensys as BD Director, but left a year later to start his own business. Why not do something more interesting with blockchain?

For example, in scientific research, Molecule was founded in 2018. It was one of the earliest companies to explore the combination of blockchain and scientific research, especially biological research. At the same time, Alpha Go's parent company DeepMind's life science research model AlphaFold was released in 2016 and demonstrated its power in the field of protein structure observation.

In 2020, AlphaFold2 successfully solved the protein folding problem, and the 25-year-old Watson booked a Nobel Prize. This time, the 4-year-old Alphaflod2 also booked a 50% chance of winning the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Fred 2023 is not even the year for a career change. As early as 2020, Armstrong, another founder of Coinbase, had initiated the establishment of ResearchHub to decompose the institutionalized research process of university-paper-fund, introduce incentive mechanisms, and allow universities to dominate academic titles, paper publishers to profit, and fund applications to be handled without the three major challenges of scholars.

In particular, scholars bear the cost of submitting papers to publishers themselves, but the reviewers selected by the publishers often work for free, and only the publishers make a profit from the difference.

All the elements are gathered together, AI, scientific research and papers are converging on life sciences, the 21st century is indeed the century of biology.

The cryptocurrency world offers immortality, but first seek the elixir of life

Decentralized scientific research (DeSci) is medical research and development disguised as life science research.

DeSci is a cryptocurrency-adapted version of the AI4Sci movement, but it is highly focused on AI, life sciences, and new drug research and development. Perhaps it has taken a "detour" of meme-ification in the middle. Remember Paul Kohlhaas's Molecule? It even received investment from Balaji in 2022. No one can resist the temptation of longevity.

Going further, in 2022, Paul Kohlhaas founded Bio Protocol and began to develop products that can help the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle live longer. It is divided into multiple sub-DAOs, covering the scientific mysteries of all aspects of life from the beginning to the end.

In 2024, the "reborn" CZ and Vitalik appeared together at DeSci Day in Bangkok. At that time, the young Vitalik, now the God of Vita, also recommended the supplement VD001 from Vita DAO under Bio Protocol to the older CZ.

Then, Bio successfully obtained investment from YZi under CZ, and the token was successfully listed on Binance. In addition, Paul Kohlhaas is quite good at making things happen. He also kept up with the times and created Pump Science, which imitated PumpFun. Is there any future for combining memes with scientific research?

However, after Bio's surge, there was dissatisfaction with the delivered results. In the traditional scientific research field, the research and development of a new drug can easily cost over $1 billion and take years or even decades, while Bio's secondary market can't wait five minutes. Taking the money and not pushing up the price, and really doing scientific research is a sin.

The story is not over yet, because the Agent wave is coming, and AI Agent is really expected to change the efficiency of scientific research. What's even more interesting is that ResearchHub received a $2 million investment from Boost in February 2025, and DeSci's Agent papers have also been reviewed.

In August 2025, Bio Protocol released the V2 plan, creating a new Launchpad, BioXP points plan, and BioAgents, all built on ElizaOS, once again keeping up with the times.

In just 7 days, more than 100 million BIO tokens have been staked. However, 80 million BIO tokens were staked on August 7th, so there are still some problems with the data. In addition, the economics of the V2 plan design are more reasonable.

Small market capitalization avoids selling pressure and encourages continued sponsorship of the project.

 Image caption: $BIO staking data, Image source: @cl2pp

However, DeSci represented by Bio Protocol is progressing slower than AI4Sci. AlphaFold has open-sourced its database in 2021, and has only published 200 million protein structures so far, basically covering all known species.

Feeling that it is lagging behind in progress, Bio Protocol has always hoped that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will publish or integrate the data accumulated by large pharmaceutical companies to accelerate open source scientific research.

In addition, Bio V2 is expected to promote the launch of multiple new drugs in the UAE, greatly shortening the traditional R&D process. The relaxed restrictions on human experiments in the Middle East will also speed up life science research. However, it is not known whether it will be He Jiankui or Watson.

Conclusion

The results of GPT-5 are disappointing, but in niche areas such as medicine and scientific research, we can still wait for the Scaling Law to blossom. The data potential of these high-value fields has not yet been fully tapped. Once there is progress, it will bring about a huge improvement in human cognition.

Also in the field of life science, Silicon Valley's Colossal project to resurrect ancient fossils has been progressing, also using CRISPR-Cas9 technology. For example, it has created "woolly mice" by combining mammoths and mice, and a pure white giant dire wolf bred from ancient giant wolves.

Maybe one day, humans will evolve, and one day, humans will become extinct.