Hey there, Vitalians! Welcome to the monthly VitaDAO Newsletter, a recap of all that’s happened and is happening within the VitaDAO community. Spoiler alert: as always, a lot was going on last month! VitaDAO members have been busy coordinating a DeSci Summit in Dubai, sponsoring DeSci London, passing two new governance proposals, and launching $VITA on Base. In this newsletter, you’ll find recaps of past important events, updates on votes happening in the DAO, and exciting opportunities to contribute.
👋New here?
Welcome! VitaDAO is a decentralized organization of individuals from across the globe working to fund early-stage longevity research. You might be wondering, “So, what is the point of having a $VITA token?” $VITA is a governance token that allows members to contribute to the DAO’s decision-making. By allowing the community to vote on which research projects to fund, VitaDAO leverages the collective knowledge of its community to support projects that might not otherwise be funded. If you’re interested in learning more about how VitaDAO funds longevity research through IP-NFTs, check out VitaDAO’s whitepaper.
🌎DeSci in Dubai
DeSci hit Dubai with a storm. Amid the biggest rainstorm in decades, researchers, innovators, and enthusiasts gathered in Dubai for two Crypto x Longevity events in Dubai: the DeSci Summit and the Akshay Summit. At the Museum of the Future, VitaDAO hosted the DeSci Summit Dubai. Held during #TOKEN2049 week, this summit featured notable speakers such as @balajis and @bryan_johnson, along with 16 other in-person speakers such as Maxim Kholin, Akshay BD, Paul Kohlhaas, and Dr. Sameer Al Ansari. Todd White, VitaDAO’s Coordination Steward, gave a talk titled “Pharma On-Chain: Making Drug Development Liquid (Again)”. Max Unfried from VitaDAO discussed the world of DeSci and VitaDAO contributor Anthony Schwartz talked about launching a Biotech Company with crypto. You can watch a live stream of DeSci Summit Dubai on Twitter!
“DAOs help build coalitions of customers and patients that actually want the treatment and will help get it through the regulatory process.” -Balaji
The second DeSci event in Dubai was the Akshay Summit, a health and longevity gathering. In a fun twist, Nuseir Yassin lost a friendly bet to Akshay BD, resulting in the hosting of the Akshay Summit at the Nas House. This event featured speakers @bryan_johnson and @balajis alongside founding members from Mito Health, Ultrahuman, Let’s Live, Fittr, VitaDAO, and CryoDAO. Attendees had the opportunity to work out, take ice baths, measure their BMI, check their HRV, test their grip strength, and more before listening to Bryan Johnson and Balaji Srinivasan followed by 10 short talks. The Summit was a wild success with over 3500+ applications for just 200 spots.
🇬🇧Sponsoring DeSci London
As if visiting Dubai wasn’t enough travel, VitaDAO members also attended and sponsored DeSci London. On Day 1 (a live stream of Day 1), Logan Bishop-Currey from Molecule and recipient of VitaDAO’s first IPT, Victor Korolchuk, talked about tokenized research projects and how they work in practice. On Day 2 (a live stream of Day 2), Maria Marinova discussed DeSci and Longevity on a panel with David Wood from the London Futurists, Michael Geer from the Humanity Health App, and 8-year-old Nina.
🏆The Longevity Challenge Goes On
The challenge continues! In February, VitaDAO launched its monthly Longevity Challenge, a competition to reward active community engagement on Discord. The first challenge focused on optimizing exercise for longevity. In Nina’s Quick & Easy Guide on Exercise for Longevity, Nina Patrick defines different types of exercises and outlines the creation of an exercise plan. In March, the second challenge launched, focusing on improving health through the optimization of nutrition. Nina authored another guide that outlined the importance of balancing glucose, increasing fiber, and avoiding added sugar and processed foods.
This month, the third Longevity Challenge is underway: Thermal Therapy! In her third guide, Nina outlines what thermal therapy is and the science behind it. Participants in the challenge can collect points by posting images of activities on Discord that showcase thermal therapy practices, inviting friends, and initiating conversation on Discord. Prizes include 100 VITA to the first-place winner, 50 VITA to the second-place winner, and 25 VITA to the third-place winner. Ultimately, all participants win through the improvement of one’s lifestyle. Join the challenge on the VitaDAO Discord server channel #longevity-challenge today.
🤑$VITA is LIVE on Base
$VITA is now on Base! Base, a Layer 2 blockchain, was launched by Coinbase to improve Ethereum’s scalability and speed. The good news for you? It operates off-chain, thus reducing transaction costs. This allows for cheaper ways to participate in VITA and its governance. $VITA can also be found on Gnosis and Optimism! Find the Base official contract and Aerodrome Pool.
🚨VitaDAO in the Wild
- Nature published an article exploring the BioDAO model of VitaDAO for funding life sciences through the blockchain.
- A new Coingecko article detailed how VitaDAO supports scientific research and serves as an alternative to traditional biotech funding through the creation of IP on-chain as IP-NFTs.
- Rubedo Life Sciences, a company backed by the VitaDAO community, secured $40M in Series A funding to kick off human trials of their groundbreaking anti-aging drug. This is the first DAO-backed project to advance to Series A!
📣Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes: What YOU voted for!
Thanks to your votes, we’re making things happen! Since the last newsletter, two proposals successfully passed on Snapshot. These proposals include:
- VDP-143 (The Funding of Fission Pharma): Fission Pharma is developing a protein-protein interaction inhibitor that cuts the link between chronic inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction to treat multiple age-related diseases and extend human lifespan. This project was originally proposed as funding an external company with VDP-123 and was rejected. It was then revised as a VitaDAO company building project worth $250k and proposed as VDP-143 on March 15th, 2024. This proposal approved a research plan expansion to be covered with $83,333 in co-funding from Cerebrum DAO in exchange for a share of the resulting IP-NFT. The total approved project budget is $333,333.
- VDP-144 (The Longevist Annual Review Proposal): The Longevist is a quarterly issued preprint overlay journal where key opinion leaders in both academia and industry vote on chain on the top preprints. This proposal approved a budget of 25,000 $VITA for curator compensation and 15,000 $VITA + $35,000 USDC for operations for the Longevist in 2024. The VDP also outlined Longevist achievements thus far and five objectives for the future including:
- Expanding and developing a curator network
- Strengthening outreach and engagement
- Growing an academic reader community
- Developing and distributing educational material for the general public
- Hosting an annual Longevist award ceremony
💪Exercise Your Right to Vote
Visit VitaDAO’s governance hub (Discourse) to engage with, vote on, and discuss proposals before they are moved to Snapshot. Together, we can shape the future of VitaDAO and accelerate decentralized science.
💸Refer a Project, Get Compensated
VitaDAO is always looking for unique projects to fund. The cool part is that VitaDAO wins when you refer projects through the opportunity to grow its portfolio. The project wins as it can receive funding. The general public has the chance to win through the development of novel therapeutics to increase healthy lifespan. And YOU can win through compensation for your referral. Referrals for projects that are relevant to VitaDAO can earn 400 $VITA, locked for 1 year if independent reviewers score it over 3.6/5. If a project is funded, the bounty increases by $2000. If a project successfully exits as a spinout or is outlicensed, the bounty increases to 1% of the proceeds or IPT equivalent. That’s what I call a win, win, win, win! Refer a project today!
🤝What’s Going DAOn
Want to stay up to date with all that’s going on? Join us on Discord, subscribe to our Twitter, visit our website, and follow our Instagram! You can now connect your wallet to VitaDAO’s Members Portal to learn about exclusive member benefits and find VitaDAO’s treasury dashboard. Find updated information on VitaDAO’s funded projects on our website.
Want to join the team? Apply to be a Web3 Marketing Lead and DAO Governance Lead. If you enjoyed reading this newsletter, make sure to subscribe!
