By Pamela Limón, co-founder of DeSci México

I was invited to a space on decentralized science that I couldn't participate in, but I want to share the response here.

Precious, I feel deeply honored by the invitation—thank you for including me in this conversation

My name is Pamela Limón, and I’m the co-founder of DeSci México, an organization built through community participation to bridge opportunities for early-career scientists. We started three years ago, inspired by the idea of using new technologies to empower researchers dedicated to the well-being of both humanity and nature.

Our Projects

Our work focuses on rethinking science communication and participation. We have developed a series of workshops and a Spanish-language writing competition dedicated to science outreach and public understanding of science.

We also collaborated with Muse Matrix on Castalia, a pop-up city in the heart of Mexico City that brought together scientists, developers, economists, engineers, artists, designers, and collectives for three weeks of interdisciplinary collaboration. 👉 Read more here

DeSci México recap:

  • Community partner promoting DeSci and its opportunities
  • Participation in ETH Cinco de Mayo (ed. 1), Blockverse, ETH Zurich, Ethereum México, and BUAP.
  • Hackathons: ETH DAM, ETH Tallinn, Base, and Castalia.
  • DeSci Education Course with Muse Matrix and BUAP University — a program inviting more enthusiastic scientists to join as mentors and educators.

We’re now developing a functional technology to connect collaborators and funding sources, aiming to build a sustainable ecosystem for DeSci México’s growth stay tuned.

Challenges of Science in Latin America

I fully agree that inequality and scarcity are defining challenges in Latin America especially in science.

UNESCO recommends that countries invest at least 1% of their GDP in science and technology. In Latin America, the average is 0.6%, with Brazil reaching up to 1.2%. In contrast, the U.S., China, Japan, and South Korea invest between 2% and 4.5%. Mexico invests six times less than the UNESCO recommendation, placing it well below the regional average.

As a student in public universities, I witnessed how these limitations shape scientific life: lack of resources, hierarchical barriers, favoritism, and internal rivalries that restrict collaboration and discourage innovation. Job opportunities are scarce, and young scientists often face the paradox of “needing experience to gain experience.”

This economic constraint often pushes contributors to seek immediate rewards, which contrasts with DeSci’s long-term mission of education and open science. When the tech world moves fast and money circulates efficiently, sustaining slow, educational, community-driven work can be challenging but essential.

Cultural Diversity and Local Science

As Swift Evo mentioned, cultural and social diversity are crucial. Latin American creativity and adaptability allow people to shift across disciplines from design to programming, from art to engineering, driven by ingenuity.

Coming from biology, I see that same diversity reflected in our ecosystems and the need to preserve them. Many scientists in the region share this desire: to protect biodiversity and safeguard scientific knowledge for future generations.

- Access to information remains another barrier. Academic journals have become multimillion-dollar enterprises, excluding those without institutional privilege. DeSci offers a space for replicability, verification, and transparency through platforms like DeSciHub, DeScier, Causality Network, IPFS and many more, ensuring freedom and integrity in research.

Education as the Starting Point

At DeSci México, we start with education, followed by professional development and science outreach.

One of our current projects—developed with a senior human rights researcher under a DeSci World grantm focuses on protecting Indigenous communities’ rights and their role in preserving biodiversity. Our goal is to empower these communities not only to share their ancestral knowledge but also to preserve it using DeSci and crypto tools for future generations.

We believe blockchain can make scientific processes more transparent and equitable. While we’re not yet at the stage of full implementation, we continue to use public, open mechanisms for education and outreach, laying the foundation for future collaborations that integrate open science and regional approaches under the DeSci principles.

Conclusion

DeSci México was born from a simple but urgent idea: that access to science, knowledge, and collaboration should not depend on privilege or geography.

Despite limited resources, we continue to build bridges—between disciplines, people, and technologies toward a future where decentralized science is not an alternative, but a standard for transparency, cooperation, and collective growth.