VitaDAO

VitaDAO is a decentralized autonomous organization that uses blockchain technology to manage its governance and internal structure. By using a blockchain to irrevocably record and determine corporate decisions, it becomes impossible for these decisions to be later overturned by administrative middlemen. Like other DAOs, VitaDAO replaces leadership with direct democracy by giving its stakeholders an opportunity to participate in the process, conducting votes through the blockchain that determine the direction of the organization. People and other organizations can contribute one of three things to receive tokens that signify their stake in the DAO: work, funding, or research.

VitaDAO intends to use non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to represent its intellectual property, and these tokens can only be transferred with the approval of the DAO; approval, for a DAO, means the consensus of its stakeholders. As Dr. Golato explained in an interview with us, VitaDAO is a membership collective that owns its IP as a whole. Members fund the DAO and receive tokens in return, and its portfolio consists of IP generated from its funding of research projects along with related data assets. Each stakeholder, then, owns a share of this IP as part of the DAO. VitaDAO intends to sell some of its IP on the Ocean Market, a decentralized exchange for data that has automatic price discovery and a mechanism for transferring private data while retaining its privacy.

As is to be expected from a company focused on collaborative communication, VitaDAO maintains a presence on common chat services, such as Twitter and Telegram. Its main discussion is conducted on Discord, where its members debate how the organization should use its resources.

Dr. Golato holds that VitaDAO, as a collaborative partnership system, may be able to engage in drug discovery in ways that conventional organizations would not. Because its approach to intellectual property and corporate governance are different, Dr. Golato hopes that this organization might be able to use emerging technology in new and innovative ways, thus reversing the current trend in which fewer drugs are being discovered despite an increase in resources.

In the second quarter of 2021, VitaDAO intends to formally found the DAO, transferring all existing IP and funding to the organization, as well as fund its first longevity research project with the Scheibye-Knudsen Lab. It will hold an open DAO vote to fund additional longevity research projects in the third quarter of 2021.