TL;DR

• IP Tokens enable communities to fund research onchain, with successful commercialization creating revenue that flows back to early supporters 
• DeSci projects have multiple tools to reward IP Token holders – like royalty tokens from licensing deals, token-to-equity paths, preferential access to funding rounds, and spinoff compound NFTs
• This creates a sustainable economic flywheel where each successful product incentivizes more community funding for the next scientific breakthrough, making decentralized science economically viable at scale

How DeSci projects can reward token holders

IP (intellectual property) Tokens offer an open, permissionless, decentralized way to fund scientific research onchain – and then what?

Onchain research strives to create marketable products. Commercialization leads to revenue, which creates opportunities for projects to return value to token holders who originally funded the project, encouraging further research.

As CerebrumDAO, pump.science's 73+ compounds, and Bio Protocol's AI-generated hypotheses progress toward commercialization, each success story demonstrates that supporting early-stage research can generate real returns.

This is the DeSci value flywheel – complete economic cycles where scientific breakthroughs fuel the next generation of discoveries, with value flowing back to those who believed from the beginning.

The DeSci value distribution toolkit

DeSci projects have a variety of unique mechanisms they can choose from to drive value for token holders.

Royalty tokens allow projects to tokenize revenue streams from licensing agreements. When a project licenses its IP for development, the project can tokenize those royalty streams into royalty tokens – digital representations of contractual rights to revenue percentages. These tokens can be airdropped to IPT holders who are members of the project or offered at preferential rates to them, sharing partnership income.

Token-to-equity pathways allow IPT holders to lock their tokens, complete an identity verification (“Know Your Customer” or “KYC”) process, and request to participate in the actual equity in a project's corporate entity in exchange for their governance work. Once token holders complete this process, they become shareholders with full economic rights, creating a spectrum of participation – casual holders can stay liquid with tokens, while committed contributors can become company shareholders. 

Rights offerings for future funding rounds offer IPT holders another potential value mechanism. When projects raise funds from outside investors like venture capitalists, qualified token holders can get preferential access to purchase equity alongside VCs. This is a great opportunity for individual investors who made early commitments to the project to participate with institutional investors that may join the project later.

Spinoff compound NFTs offer early investors the opportunity to participate in secondary projects. When one line of research produces alternative applications, these derivative research projects can be tokenized as separate NFTs and offered first to qualified IPT holders. So, similar to how Bored Ape NFT holders were once given the first opportunity to mint Mutant Ape NFTs, early investors in a promising Alzheimer's research might also gain early access to invest in a spin-off brain health supplement.

The Sustainable DeSci Economy

These mechanisms – including royalty tokens, equity, rights offerings, and spinoff NFTs – create a comprehensive DeSci value distribution toolkit. Token-based value distribution from product sales completes the loop in DeSci economics: research funded by communities, developed into products, generating revenue that returns to supporters through multiple pathways. It's a model making decentralized science economically sustainable, where every successful product strengthens the incentive to fund the next breakthrough.

This is the DeSci value flywheel, and it’s accelerating.

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TL;DR

• Science IP Tokens (Science IPTs) are evolving from Molecule's original pipeline, proof-of-invention → Science IP-NFT → Science IPT, to be more open and composable
• Molecule v2 evolves Science IPTs from governance tokens into assets that can lead to RWAs with IP equity rights through compliant legal structures
• Science IPTs have spread from Molecule to Bio Protocol and pump.science, creating new approaches to tokenization for new scientific use cases with distinct commercialization paths
• The Science IPT ecosystem is becoming open-source, soon enabling any launchpad to adopt Science IPT standards

Building for composability

Molecule’s original Science IP Token framework introduced a new primitive for science – a governance token linked directly to scientific IP. The original three-step process – researchers submitted proof of invention, minted IP-NFTs for onchain ownership, then minted Science IPTs for governance – showed that real-world science IP could be tokenized, governed, and coordinated onchain.

The forthcoming Molecule v2 framework represents the evolution of Science IPTs by creating a pathway for token holders to gain equity ownership of the underlying science in a legally compliant framework. Science IPTs will fulfill their promise as Science RWAs, enabling onchain governance and legal IP ownership of scientific discoveries.

The Molecule v2 protocol will enable researchers to commercialize onchain science along traditional biotech paths – pharmaceutical acquisitions and licensing deals, like Prima Donna's enamel regeneration technology building toward FDA approval.

And while Science IPTs prepare to get more flexible and more powerful, they’re also becoming more widely available, as Bio Protocol and pump.science now offer new ways to leverage Science IPTs on their platforms.

Bio & pump.science have entered the Science IPT chat

Good ideas spread. Life on Earth started in the ocean and spread to land. Science IPTs started trading on Molecule – and have now migrated to Bio Protocol and pump.science.

These platforms are contributing new ideas to the Science IPT framework for new use cases. DeSci is evolving. Science IPTs are evolving too.

Bio has introduced AI BioAgents that develop and explore new scientific hypotheses, and use Science IPTs as funding vehicles to funnel value back to the BioAgents, Bio DAOs, and specific research labs. Bio's AI-generated IPTs focus on novel IP discovery, identifying therapeutic targets humans might miss, positioning them for early-stage pharma partnerships.

Aubrai, the BioAgent based on the life’s work of famed longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey, launched in August 2025 and has already generated over 1,100 hypotheses, each a new opportunity to mint a Science IPT.

BIOMEAI, the MicrobiomeDAO BioAgent, launched last week. Many more BioAgent launches are on the way. More BioAgents mean more hypotheses and more Science IPTs.  

Beyond BioAgents, Bio is launching other Science IPT use cases, like $eDMT, a Science IPT from PsyDAO to fund research into therapeutic uses for DMT.

pump.science takes another approach – Science IPTs represent compounds launched on the platform, with trading fees funding research using worms, flies, mice, and soon humans. To date, pump.sciencee has launched markets to explore 73 compounds – each tokenized as a Science IPT.

While compound submission is currently whitelisted, the platform will soon transition to a fully open and permissionless marketplace for scientific research, enabling more compounds, experiments, and Science IPTs.

Bio and pump.science are also innovating new pathways for research on direct-to-consumer products, spanning pain and inflammation, nootropics, and more. Percepta Sport, a nootropic developed by CerebrumDAO, is already available from Molecule’s DeSci store, on Amazon, and in stores like Walmart.

Science is infinitely creative, experimental, flexible, and transformative – Science IPTs are too.

Towards a DeSci Cambrian Explosion

Molecule created the original Science IPT framework to bring scientific research and funding onchain – and it worked. Molecule v2 advances that mission by introducing a compliant pathway to offer equity in the underlying IP.

Now, the Science IPT framework has spread to Bio Protocol, pump.science, and beyond. The framework’s more open and composable next iteration will lead to more use cases, hypotheses, experimental protocols, and pathways to commercialization.  

Soon, a Cambrian explosion of onchain scientific ideas, tokenized as Science IPTs, will unlock the most productive era of scientific discovery in human history.

Bio/acc.

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In the early days of DeFi, growth exploded when builders started creating permissionless integrations around essential building blocks; collateralized debt positions, decentralized exchanges, lending protocols. These primitives gave developers a solid foundation to remix and connect, triggering a wave of unstoppable innovation.

DeSci is now standing at a similar inflection point.

From hypothesis to onchain IP

The first BioAgents launching on Bio Protocol will integrate directly with ResearchHub, enabling a new kind of autonomous research workflow.

Here’s what that means in practice:

• BioAgents post new hypotheses directly to ResearchHub.
  
  
• Each hypothesis carries $RSC bounties, attracting review and input from a global network of scientists.
  
  
• Once refined and validated, the hypothesis is minted as IP tokens on Molecule; turning it into an ownable, fundable onchain research asset.

The DeSci flywheel in motion

This integration lays the groundwork for the most powerful coordination loop in decentralized science.

Full-cycle view:

1. Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) stores and links verified scientific knowledge.
   
   
2. BioAgents generate hypotheses by tapping into the DKG.
   
   
3. Peer review on ResearchHub refines and validates the ideas.
   
   
4. IPT minting on Molecule transforms validated ideas into fundable research assets.
   
   
5. Transparent funding, execution, and proof: Experiments run, results are verified, and data flows back into the DKG.
   
   

This results in a self-reinforcing, permissionless research engine improving with every cycle, raising the quality of science, accelerating discovery, and bringing major elements of the scientific process onchain.

Why this matters

Just like DeFi primitives unlocked permissionless finance, DeSci primitives are unlocking permissionless science.

Hypotheses can surface daily, validation happens in the open, IP is tradable from day one, and the pursuit of truth becomes faster and more inclusive than ever before.

The debut of BioAgents marks the first turn of the hypothesis-to-IP flywheel. As these integrations deepen, the DeSci community will be able to follow an idea from its first spark to validated proof and with every step happening onchain.

Explore Bio Protocol, ResearchHub, and Molecule to see how these pieces fit together to power the next era of scientific breakthroughs.