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LabDAO

The world needs more inventors
Inventions are made where research tools, talent and funding come together.
By bringing these three components together, LabDAO is building a generator of tokenised inventions.

Let's Build a Home for Inventors Online

Inventors need access to scientific tools, dynamic teams, and funding to do their work. At LabDAO we provide these through three building blocks:

Lab-Exchange: a peer-to-peer protocol exchange on which computational and wet lab services can be traded. Fees generated on the exchange flow into the lab-fund
Lab-Teams: an open toolbox for scientists to onboard into the decentralized science space and launch their own "web-lab" within the community
Lab-Fund: a set of funding mechanisms that will support scientists, open-source developers and inventors within the ecosystem

Problem

The following bottlenecks hold back development in biomedicine today:

Scientists collaborate mostly within the boundaries of their institutes and national funding agencies, mostly using research services available within their institutes
Scientists outside of traditional organizations are faced by high costs and a lack of transparancy around existing contract research services
Scientists have few incentives to contribute to open source communities and standardise biomedical tools
Scientists face a lack of liquidity around intellectual property. Inventors should be able to keep inventing

Open source code has accelerated progress in information technology over the last 20 years. This success is enabled by the ability to share instructions (code) at low cost and to reproduce results with high reliability. Open source has allowed people to tinker together in their downtime and to build new companies fast with publicly available code.

In contrast, open source tools in biomedicine have been less transformative. The high cost of laboratory services and the low reliability of experiments have been a barrier for open source developers and scientists. To this day, no large online community is actively maintaining standardized protocols for laboratory services and sharing pre-competitive information.

A strong open source culture in biomedicine would not only include open source instructions, but open tools - a set of services that are offered by a network of participating laboratories with open price discovery. Such open source instructions for laboratory services could lay the groundwork for remotely executable research.

Solution

At LabDAO we believe every biotech scientist, grad student, post-doc, professor and enthusiast should be able to become an independent inventor in the bioeconomy.

In order to accelerate scientific progress, lessons can be drawn from effective research environments that exist today or have existed in the past.

Effective research environments are characterised by:

Access to scientific tooling
Dynamic and free teams assembled for a particular project
Access to initial funding and follow-on capital to drive project maturation

To enable such an environment online, we are developing three building blocks:

Lab-Exchange: Running Laboratory Services remotely

To accelerate research progress, scientists can use the lab-exchange to share and consume laboratory services. Instead of going through a lengthy search for collaborators or contract research organizations (CROs), scientists can transact services on a global open source marketplace. Payment can be both in stable tokens and in the form of shared IP (co-ownership is the new co-authorship). The majority of fees generated on the exchange flow into the DAO's fund to support growth of the ecosystem and fund inventors.

The lab-exchange protocol and its community, LabDAO, address the above stated problems in biomedicine:

By creating an open market for execution of biomedical experiments between experimental designers and executors.
By defining standards around biomedical tools to increase reproducibility and transparency.
By incentivizing contributors to develop applications and provide instrumentation.

Cloud computing lowered the required activation energy to start a new tech company; similarly, we are convinced that abstracted laboratory services can facilitate the emergence of new biotech companies. However, existing centralized cloud labs for biotechnology have not seen widespread adoption yet. We believe this is because of the high capital expenditure required to provide many laboratory services inhouse, the specialized level of equipment control, and the lack of an efficient pricing mechanism for these services.

Decentralized cloud labs address these limitations by offering a diversity of laboratory services on a permissionless protocol. Market dynamics offer fast feedback and incentivize the right level of abstraction for service controls. DAO and token mechanisms enable this marketplace to be owned by the community using it.

The long term goals around the lab-exchange can be broken down into three stages:

The introduction of the lab-exchange will reduce the hurdles around using laboratory services for everyone.
Increased transaction volume and arbitration costs on the exchange will drive standardization of services.
The on-chain record of transactions, including metadata and data assets, will function as a dynamically evolving knowledge graph and data marketplace.

We currently bootstrap the marketplace by:

Working with existing DAOs, such as VitaDAO, to provide laboratory services for projects that have received funding
Providing accessible tools and formats, such as challenges, for scientists to develop projects independently and with sponsoring by LabDAO.

Lab-Teams: Enabling Everybody to Launch their Web-Lab

Research institutes are Schelling points for scientists and trainees to innovate together. On a fundamental level, a research institute emerges when teams of scientists gather around laboratory infrastructure. If we make infrastructure available using the lab-exchange, can we build research institutes online?

Lab-Teams enable everyone to form a lab within the community, to raise funding into it, and to innovate. Labs mature over time into independent DAOs, non-profits and companies - each with their own interests, skills and IP portfolios.

Lab-Fund: Funding the Commons and the Inventors Building on it

The Lab-Fund manages capital generated from fees on the exchange and external partners. The LabDAO community will decide on the full fundraising budget and structure pending simulations. The overarching goal is to support scientists maintaining open-source tools and to enable inventors to develop new, commercializable technology.

Technology

The basic user story for the lab-exchange starts with scientists at an academic or for-profit biotech institution. Rather than implementing a laboratory workflow themselves, such as the blind docking of a small molecule, they decide to use an open source command line tool openlab-cli.

The tool allows them to expose their encrypted data to IPFS, choose a service on the lab-exchange, and submit a job that is paid for with DAI. After the data is processed by a service provider in the DAO, the encrypted results are sent to the scientists' wallets and are then ready for download. Users can rate their experience online and sign their vote with their wallet.

After running an experiment in-silico, the lab-exchange is allowing the scientist to move ahead seamlessly by running a paid in-vitro experiment in which a partnering laboratory is synthesizing the compound and testing its activity.

The lab-exchange is the product that leads to further onboarding of scientists into the community. Within LabDAO, they can form their web-lab using lab-teams and apply for non-profit and for-profit grants through the lab-fund.

To facilitate onboarding of users to the exchange, clients will be developed that will allow users to directly purchase the required tokens using fiat currency. We expect additional third parties to build applications on top of this protocol, such as graphical user interfaces and laboratory notebook integrations.

The Lab-Exchange is based on a series of recent technological primitives:

Token-gated data generation services - a central element of the Lab-Exchange is the ability to interact with a universe of services that are available by paying the service provider. While a central piece, the smart contracts enabling the API are also the largest source of technological risk for the project. The downside risk is controlled by starting with low-cost computational biology services and budgeting for professional contract audits.
Decentralized storage, threshold encryption and NFTs - data generated by APIs is exposed via IPFS on services like estuary as a static storage solution. To protect trade secrets, users will be able to encrypt their data, thereby limiting access to a file to the owner of an NFT.
Arbitration services - in case of conflict between consumers and providers, a neutral third party has to provide arbitration services and allocate funds between the two conflicting parties. While an in-house arbitration by the DAO is feasible in the beginning, a handover to a dedicated project, such as arbDAO.eth and Kleros is desireable. Reasons to hand over control for exchanges to a third party include ensuring compliance with international FATF VASP regulations.

The Lab-Exchange is still in development. LabDAO is open source.

Team

Community

The LabDAO community will consist of LAB token holders with various roles of increasing responsibility and financial support by the DAO.

Launch Team (Chronological Order)

Niklas Rindtorff - Physician, Computational Biologist, VitaDAO, ex Broad Institute & HMS
Rik Smith Unna - Bioinformatician, Hacker, ex Mozilla Science & University of Cambridge
Aakaash Meduri - Web3 developer, data scientist, chess master, ex Abbvie
Lily Hansen-Gillis - Community and Grants, UX Researcher, Surge Women
Eleanor Davies - Operations and Grants, ex OnDeck ODX & biotech investment advisory

Additional LabDAO Contributors (Alphabetical Order)

0xkydo - Tokenomics at Llama, ex traderjoexyz
Stanley Bishop - Head of data science at Drift Bio, DeepChem contributor
Theodor Beutel - Governance working group at VitaDAO, Political Scientist
Boris Dyakov - Graduate Student at University of Toronto
Jesse Evers - Software engineer, college dropout, in love with APIs and motorcycles
Arye Lipman - LabDAO genesis co-conspirator, MarsBio VC
Jocelynn Pearl - LabDAO genesis co-conspirator, Biotechnologist, founder of UltraRareBio
Jessica Sacher - Founder of PhageDirectory, Microbiologist
Tohrnii - Web3 developer, ex Merkle Labs
Todd White - Operations working group at VitaDAO
Hossam Zaki - Student at Brown University, ex Dept. of Biomedical Informatics at HMS
Jan Zheng - Co-Founder of PhageDirectory, Software engineer

Governance and Funding

Governance Framework

The LabDAO governance framework builds on the VitaDAO governance mechanism. Soft governance on tools like Discord are followed by posts on the forum. Final proposal drafts, in the form of a binary yes/no question, are then posted to snapshot for an on-chain vote.

Decisions made by the DAO are executed by the DAO multisig. Activities requiring interactions with real-world entities are executed by a representing legal entity, a Swiss Association (more details below).

Legal and Regulatory Properties

LabDAO is a global entity instantiated on the Ethereum blockchain. It is represented by a Swiss Association as an agent. The association functions as one of possibly many real-world entities serving the community. Within its competencies, the association can engage in legal agreements with other institutions and fund for-profit and non-profit entities.

Tokenomics Draft

We anticipate a total supply of 300M LAB tokens to be created at project launch. The LAB token will represent DAO governance rights and staking utility for the exchange. A planned incremental inflation rate will be subject to DAO vote and will support continued community engagement.

The total supply of LAB tokens will be allocated in different areas:

ca. 20% Tokens reserved for pre-launch fundraising
ca. 20% Tokens reserved for the launch team, early contributors and advisors
ca. 60% Tokens reserved for DAO treasury and agreements with service providers including rewards for market participants (providers and users of services)

LAB Token Rewards

To reward the supply of laboratory services to the lab-exchange, providers and consumers of services will receive LAB token rewards.

In addition to the marketplace rewards, the DAO can vote on additional incentive programs based on its treasury. For example, both providers and consumers may stake their LAB tokens to receive additional rewards based on their marketplace ratings. Above average ratings (both for good results by the provider and well-formatted requests from the consumer) are rewarded with a positive APY, whereas fraudulent or low quality behaviour is penalized with a negative APY.

Token Launch and Vesting Schedule

Launch team members and external funders will receive a fixed token supply based on their contributions pre-launch. LAB tokens will be released linearly over three years with an initial release of 20% of the vested amount post public launch.

LabDAO Inception

The LabDAO initiators, Niklas, Arye and Jocelynn, were gifted a multi-sig wallet with 100000 USDC by the Molecule team. Both projects have agreed to vote on a value-neutral token swap of $LAB tokens after public token launch of both projects.

Interviews and Presentations

Presentation on LabDAO at Funding the Commons NYC

Presentation on LabDAO at desci.berlin

Presentation on LabDAO at ETHAmsterdam

Presentation on LabDAO at ETHDenver

Podcast episode with VitaDAO

Panel at the Foresight Institute Vision Weekend

FAQ

What laboratory services are you focused on?

We focus on the interaction of wet-lab and dry-lab services. The most interesting areas are 1) small molecule and 2) protein binder engineering. We onboard CRO services for these use-cases and incentivize the maintanance of computational tools.

What Can I Expect from Supporting LabDAO Before Token Launch?

LabDAO is building tools to improve the way scientists collaborate and use laboratory services. A core tool is an open, two-sided marketplace protocol: the lab-exchange. The DAO will govern the marketplace, support the onboarding of services, and continuously develop it.

Pre-launch funders will become members of the community. The weight of token allocation corresponds with the fundraise, and therefore, the respective governance rights of the DAO. With the pre-launch funding, the launch team will continue development of the lab-exchange and facilitate the onboarding of scientists onto the exchange.

Post-launch, the DAO will be governed using the liquid LAB token. A fee will be taken from transactions conducted on the Lab-Exchange protocol. The fee-based revenue will flow into the DAO treasury, the Lab-Fund. The DAO treasury will be used to:

Maintain open-source applications and the lab-exchange protocol itself.
Fund for-profit research and sub-DAOs that branch off from the mother-organization.
Support potential insurance protocols linked to $LAB staking.

We plan to eventually deploy reputation based voting power modifiers in concert with a Zodiac Exit module (ragequit) to the governance mechanism.

What is your Relationship to Molecule GmbH?

Niklas and the Molecule founders met within VitaDAO where they are core members. Molecule was the first investor and contributor at LabDAO, having written the first cheque to enable the launch of LabDAO. Once both projects are launched, an at-value token-swap between MoleculeDAO and LabDAO is desired.

While Molecule aims to onboard existing intellectual property onto an IP-marketplace, LabDAO is focused on the online generation of intellectual property. We strive to be the home for future technical founders in biomedicine. It is our vision to facilitate scientists to launch their own projects, be they non-profit web-labs or for-profit companies. As scientists generate intellectual property, part of our mission is to offer the resulting IP-NFT on NFT marketplaces, such as Molecule.

What are IP-NFTs?

IP-NFTs are generally token-referenced data assets that bear value beyond their nature as collectibles. While the nature of these tokens is still rapidly developing, two different forms of IP-NFTs can be distinguished:

Tokenized exclusive, transferrable real-world licenses
1. Forward looking IP - the IP has not been generated yet
2. Existing IP - the IP has already been generated
Tokenized encrypted data assets, akin to trade secrets

The tokenization of exclusive licenses is especially relevant for the integration of existing scientific and engineering IP into the on-chain ecosystem. Groups such as Molecule GmbH are developing processes to facilitate the legal on-chain onboarding of such assets from traditional institutions. If encryption of such a license-based IP-NFT was broken, the information would still be protected according to the national law chosen in the signed licensing agreement generated when the token was created.

In contrast, the use of IP-NFTs for encrypted trade secrets is a permissionless, web3-native process that can exist outside of legal definitions. LabDAO embraces this definition of IP-NFTs. The ability to perform proveable laboratory services on chain and to demonstrate indicators of success while hiding the exact structure of a therapeutic candidate will create sufficient leverage for entrepreneurs and scientists to raise funding to further develop their assets on-chain or offboard them into the traditional biotech ecosystem by filing patents and launching regular for-profit entities. If encryption of a secret-based IP-NFT were broken, the information would be leaked and, given the now existing prior art, there would also be no way to defend this IP in most jurisdictions.

We believe that scientists and drug hunters, just like artists, will be able to participate in the growing volume of traded digital assets. Open tools accelerate the generation of such assets. The lab-exchange will make these accessible.

How Does the Lab-Exchange Help Scientists and Labs Communicate Details of the Experiment that Make the Back and Forth Efficient?

Clear standards accelerate the interaction between users and providers. A central public good the DAO develops for the marketplace is a set of continously maintained standards for laboratory services. These standards will contain a set of instructions (in the form of code, robotic instructions and plain text) and an API template (basically a JSON) for users to interact with providers.

What Aspects of the Exchange are encrypted?

While open data sharing is encouraged -especially for academics- both the input data, and output data handled in a transaction will be encryptable by market participants using threshold encryption methods. Access to the data is controled using NFTs. Metadata (the information passed to service provider through the API) is not encrypted. As a consequence, a record of on-chain transactions serves as dynamic knowledge graph and enables other scientists to discover and purchase data from previous laboratory services.

What Chain is the lab-exchange deployed on?

The lab-exchange is currently on Polygon testnet. We will roll out deployments to Gnosis Chain soon.

Will Journals and the scientific Community honor the results of the Services performed using the lab-exchange?

We expect this to be the case, especially if all input and output data is open and the user and provider wallet addresses are known.

How do we verify the Laboratories are qualified and following proper Procedures?

Next to maintaining standards for individual services, the DAO will also maintain a curated list of service provider wallets and their API gateways ("nodes") that have been validated by the community. While this might be less relevant for low-cost services, it is very important that wet lab processes are conducted in accordance to internal standards.

Next to setting standards, the DAO and its partnering arbitration services, also settle conflicts among exchange participants. Payments are held in escrow until the transaction is completed and service providers stake LAB tokens that can be slashed in case transactions are found to be fraudulent.

Will we have integrations with Molecule for IP-NFT framework?

Molecule's IP-NFT framwork is relying on the existing legal system, while LabDAO's IP-NFT framework exists independent of it. Molecule's IP-NFT framework is built upon taking registered intellectual property and minting an on-chain representation that can be freely traded. LabDAO's IP-NFT framework is built around taking valuable data that is generated through on-chain transactions and protecting it with threshold encryption, that only gives read-access to the owner of the token. Most encryption-powered IP-NFTs can be used to register intellectual property and generate IP-NFTs that follow the framework by Molecule.