Introduction
Over the last week, the news of “LK-99” and the potential for room temperature superconductors to be manufactured from relatively easy-to-find materials and equipment has caused the internet to lose its collective cool. Two Korean scientists working in obscurity for 20 years defied modern understanding of material science, and changed the mood in science overnight.
The unassuming Korean team demonstrated something equally as revolutionary as the superconductors: that eureka moments can spawn from anywhere.
This is the essence of Decentralised Science.
Current State of Affairs
Teams and individuals around the world are racing to replicate the work detailed in Kwon’s rogue publication. Private equity, government labs and Twitter egirls alike have taken up the task to release something empirically sound.
It is clear, then, that the imagination of scientists around the world has been piqued by this wonderful tale of rule-breaking, humble grinding and unlikely origins.
Amidst the excitement, individuals and their local lab equipment join the fray alongside behemoth organisations, in a rarely seen moment in modern science. The accessiblity and universality of the requisite materials and equiptment present an opportunity to scientists worldwide to join the race.
However, issues with coordination and a lack of funding is holding these independents back.
Enter DeSci and DeSciWorld.
The Superconductor Collective
To facilitate and assist the efforts of the decentralised researchers, DeSciWorld is launching the “Superconductor Collective” - a coordination layer for anyone that wants to further the research surrounding room temperature/pressure semiconductors.
The Superconductor Collective (SC) is a global, internet-first community that will further the following efforts:
- Aggregate the state-of-the-art knowledge on room temperature superconductors
- Replicate the results of “LK-99”
- Start researching “low hanging fruit” applications of superconductive materials and utilise DAO frameworks to distribute IP on-chain
We believe that blockchain can help streamline project management, facilitate collaboration, protect intellectual property, and promote open science.
Resources
Work will centre around DeSciWorld Github Repo: Superconductor Collective. This repo will become a living library of the research efforts of the entire Superconductor Collective, updated via pull request in a decentralised manner.
The Coordination Hub on Obsidian acts as a powerful resource for new entrants and experienced members to stay informed on all matters relating to the SC. Here, one can find useful updates, links and aggregated Q&A garnered throughout the process.
Contributing to the Collective
For an active communication channel, please join our Telegram Chat.
The contribution flow in the Collective’s initial phase is as follows:
- Researchers fork /DeSciWorld/Superconductor-Collective
- They utilise the existing github repository and the Coordination Hub on Obsidian to inform and assist their research
- Once they have produced something worthwhile, they may commit it back to the master repo. DeSciWorld will review for profanity and obvious errors before accepting.
DeSciWorld will maintain full transparency and accountability when accepting or rejecting pull requests to the master repo, and when updating the Coordination Hub.
Note: this is the initial phase of operations and we propose to transation to an open-source, DAO-governed alternative to github in the near future.
Utilising Obsidian and AI
Obsidian is a framework for the creation of knowledge vaults akin to wikis with links between markdown documents. Furthermore, there are a number of plugins available, including a ChatGPT plugin that will allow us to produce an AI that is aware of the research we aggregate - allowing anyone to ask questions and generate leads independently and immediately start participating.
Together these tools supercharge coordination efforts and allow to quickly built deep knowledge bases and supercharge the insight generation process.
Our goal with this project is to demonstrate the potential of these frameworks to allow for a decentralized group of highly motivated participants to tackle complex problems and have a say in the process of understanding the world around us.
Ultimately, this framework can be exported to coordinate any large research task in a decentralised manner. As we progress this effort, we can also track contributions and provenance accurately, providing a method for simple retroactive rewards and accreditation should funding become available for this.
Planned Future Developments
This is the first iteration of this framework and we will employ continuous improvement principles to develop it further.
Already in the pipeline is:
- An integration with Lateral.io to provide a living knowledge graph that allows anyone to connect a web3 wallet and begin exploring and developing the tree of nodes that is developed by the Superconductor Collective.
- Replace the /DeSciWorld/Superconductor Collective github repo with an open source git holder (GOSH.sh) that is controlled by the contributors
- Introduce incentive and on-chain accreditation mechanisms for contributors
- Upscale the framework for other research goals
An open invitation is extended to all DeSci protocols to contribute their tooling to this initiative if they can add value.
Final Notes
The LK-99 publication release sent a ripple across academia and the open science community. It showed the world what we in DeSci have been pushing for the last few years: accessible science leads to the best outcomes. We hope to assist DeScientists old and new in their endeavour to improve the world around them but providing these access terminals.
We want to thank At0x.eth and the Nerd Collective for pioneering this effort and entrusting the coordination efforts to DeSciWorld.
