Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy

any time to Bitcoin or other

cryptocurrencies.

A token-based coin such

as Researchcoin could be used for

individuals to collectively indicate

interest and purchase the rights to read a

certain research paper that is otherwise

buried behind a paywall. Medicinal

Genomics envisions a multisig, Bitcoin-

based voting system for the public to

indicate their demand to open source

scientific papers related to pandemic

disease (which the public ironically

funds in the first place with tax dollars,

yet cannot access). 153 For example,

individuals with a mutation in the NPC1

gene have been found to be resistant to

Ebola infection.154 This kind of

information could be easily used by

empowered biocitizens to look up in

their own personalized genomic data to

see if they have higher conferred

resistance to Ebola or other diseases

such as HIV, which also has higher

resistance in individuals with certain

genotypes. 155 Although some are in favor

of individuals having access to their

own data, others feel that they may read

too much into it without appropriate

medical counsel. The Alzheimer’s

disease study mentioned previously,

however, does hint that the benefits seem

to outweigh the costs.

Related to Journalcoin,

ExperimentalResultscoin could be

another idea, implemented in the context

of science journals, to incentivize and

reward science experiment replications

(helping to solve the problem of the 80

percent irreplicability of scientific

experimental results), the publishing of

negative results and raw data (just 45

percent are willing to make this

available), and counter other biases in

scientific publishing, such as priming,

duplicate results, and carelessness. 156

Just as Bitcoin is a digital payment

mechanism for transactions between

humans but could also empower the

machine economy in machine-to-

machine (M2M) and Internet of Things

(IoT) payments,

ExperimentalResultscoin could likewise

serve as a mechanism for incentives,

coordination, and tracking science

executed by both humans and machines.

Increasingly, both robotic lab aides and

algorithmic programs are facilitating and

generating scientific discovery. Some

examples include Lipson’s computing

algorithms that have distilled physical

laws from experimental data,157

Muggleton’s microfluidic robot

scientist,158 and Waltz and Buchanan’s AI

scientific partners. 159

The 3.0 sense of applying blockchain

technology to publishing would be

having the blockchain completely fulfill

the functions of the publisher (like a

“semantic Verisign,” vouching

mechanism for qualitative content). A

DAO/DAC/AI/VM model might be able

to use data-based metrics (like the

number of reads both in general and by

affinity peers or colleagues, the number

of comments, semantic keyword

matching, and concept matching) to

determine targeted content of quality and

interest. The micropayment aspect of the

blockchain could be used to make this a

fee-based service. The idea is semantic

peer-to-peer search, integrating the

social networking layer (to identify

peers) and adding blockchain economic

and privacy functionality. Automatic

nonpeer, nonhuman content-importance

ascription models might also be a

possibility.

Another means of employing the

blockchain in academic publishing could

be using it for plagiarism detection and

avoidance, or better, for autocitation (an

Ethereum smart contract/DAO that does

a literature search and automatically

cites all related work would be a

tremendous time-saver). This could be

accomplished through off-chain indexed

paper storage repositories linking the

asset by key to the blockchain. The

blockchain could become the universal

standard for the publication of papers,

and of the underlying raw data and

metadata files, essentially creating a

universal cataloging system and library

for research papers. Blockchain

economics could make digital asset

purchase of the papers easier by

assigning every paper a Bitcoin address

(QR code) instead of requiring users to

log in to publisher websites.

The Blockchain Is Not for

Every Situation

Despite the many interesting potential

uses of blockchain technology, one of the

most important skills in the developing

industry is to see where it is and is not

appropriate to use cryptocurrency and

blockchain models. Not all processes

need an economy or a payments system,

or peer-to-peer exchange, or

decentralization, or robust public record

keeping. Further, the scale of operations

is a relevant factor, because it might not

make sense to have every tiny

microtransaction recorded on a public

blockchain; for example, blog-post tip-

jar transactions could be batched into

sidechains in which one overall daily

transaction is recorded. Sidechains are

more broadly proposed as an

infrastructural mechanism by which

multiblock chain ecosystems can

exchange and transfer assets. 160

Especially with M2M/IoT device-to-

device communication, there are many

open questions about the most effective

ways to incorporate market principles

(if at all) to coordinate resources,

incentivize certain goal-directed

behavior, and have tracking and

payments remuneration. Even before we