Scide is a project with the aim of making science publishing more open and transparent. In this initial experiment, we attempt to create a new marketplace for science publishing with a fair economic model where both scientists/researchers and private investors can benefit from scientific and technological breakthroughs. When a scientist tokenizes a published paper in the form of an NFT, it brings his research to a new marketplace, where he will be able to earn royalties and further invest in his future research.
In this initial experiment we built a smart contract on Ethereum. The economic model and the visual representation were heavily inspired by two previous projects also built on Ethereum (Eulerbeats and Autoglyphs).
Similar to Eulerbeats, the Scide smart contract extends the ERC-1155 Ethereum multi-token standard to create non-fungible unique paper tokens and a set of fungible copy tokens for each paper. Each paper NFT has an unlimited set of copies priced on a bonding curve.
The token contains a visual representation of a paper in the form of a cover. This cover contains 2880 unicode characters and is composed by 4 different elements:
- a title (max 186 characters);
- authors (max 62 characters);
- the ethereum address of the owner who created the paper;
- the frame.
The frame of the cover is generated randomly and may contain one of ten possible symbols (#, |, *, \, X, &, +, -, =, %). Each one has a different weight and is determined at the time of "minting" (creation of the original paper).
This visual representation was inspired by Autoglyphs (https://www.larvalabs.com/autoglyphs). Like Autoglyphs, we store the unicode characters on-chain, but we also store a representative image off-chain using IPFS (https://ipfs.io) as a decentralized storage service provider.
By storing the visual representation of the tokens on-chain we ensure that Scide papers will last forever. An overview of NFT projects that store data on and off chain can be found here.
Scientists can create a tokenized version (NFT) of their published papers by submitting the title of the paper (max 186 characters) and the authors (max 62 characters). There is a maximum number of papers that can be created: 1125899906842624. This number is imposed in the smart contract and cannot be changed.
The creation of these NFT's in our platform is free but since they settle on the Ethereum main network, there is a cost for the transaction which is called gas. The gas price can vary. Scientists will need an Ethereum wallet to create (or "mint") an NFT.
Paper holders will receive 15% of the copy price on each copy sold of the original paper they own. The royalties are paid automatically as they are programmed into the smart contract and cannot be changed.
Paper holders can sell their papers on the secondary market. Once they sell an original paper, they will not receive royalties from that paper anymore. Those royalties will now go into the new buyer.
An investor or collector can buy a copy of a paper based on a price formula set on a bonding curve. As the number of copies in circulation grows for a particular paper, the price of issuing its next copy increases at an exponential rate.
The bonding curve used is set by this formula:
f(x) = a(b+x) + cx + d
where x denotes the current copy supply + 1 and
a = 1.1
b = -50
c = 0.026
d = -0.008
A percentage of the copy price gets instantly placed into a reserve in the smart contract. The reserve provides instant liquidity to a copy holder who decides to “burn” a copy. The reserve is not accessible by the project team and it’s only accessible by the smart contract to pay copy holders when they burn their copies.
The bonding curve acts as a liquid market that allows a copy holder to burn their copy token, thus reducing the current copy token supply of the associated paper, in exchange for receiving the burn price at that time. Thus, the burning process returns ETH to the copy token burner from the reserve. The burn price is determined according to the formula set on the bonding curve.
The bonding curve is used to set a price both for buying a copy or burning it. The higher the token supply the higher the print and burn price, and vice versa. The bonding curve is transparent and not changeable since they are programmed into a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain.
Scide was brought to life by two software developers with medical and biochemical academic backgrounds.
We have been fascinated by the power of decentralization and the tools already available today that are disrupting several industries and communities in our society. We’re trying to bring these tools to the scientific and research community.
We also want to bring onboard new members and we’re welcoming scientists and investors willing to participate in this project and sharing our vision of a more open, transparent and decentralized science community. As such, we will be making efforts to setup a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) in the near future.
Some goals of this DAO:
- create fair economic models in science research;
- decentralize the power and influence of science publishing oligopolies.
Please join our discord if you want to know more.
