It’s Monday morning. You have a lot on your plate, not the least of which is to continue your research into the exciting business model you’re developing.
You’ve already spent hours trying to find use cases and whitepapers that will affirm the direction of your business plan. Many of the sources turn out to be spam. Others are biased. And most are found through chasing threads on Twitter.
It’s exhausting.
We’re no stranger to this challenge. Each of us at Onchain has, at one time or another, struggled to extract the information we need from the obscure and confusing layers of Web3 publications.
We wondered if this problem was pervasive outside of Web3, so we took a deep dive into traditional research methods and TradSci (traditional science). What we found was disheartening. A few organizations own most of the content, much of it paywalled and privileged.
That felt all too familiar.
How broken research breaks Web3 progress
Research is critical to the progression of blockchain technology. Entrepreneurs must have reliable sources and use cases to study as they build out their business models.
Funders need to quickly find examples of the pitched business models to make good financing decisions.
Existing projects need to know who to partner with to 10x their businesses.
And investors need clarity on market trends and the business activities behind the tokens.
Today, all of this is a slog.
The best resource is Twitter/X, a centralized and often cluttered platform. As a result, research is fragmented and misses out on the cutting edge unless those projects have been boosted for visibility. These Web3 research challenges look an awful lot like those facing traditional research; hard to find, unreliable, and time consuming.
We believe we can do better.
If collaboration and community are at the foundation of blockchain business, how are we to embody that outlook when we can’t find each other?
Why we’re involving ourselves in decentralized research
Onchain was founded with one thing in mind: make it easier for entrepreneurs to build solutions that bring people onchain. We want to see a world where Web3 research works, where entrepreneurs, degens, and the Web3 curious can ask questions and get expert answers that aren’t biased or confusing.
We started early in 2024 with our own research and ideation. How might we build a platform that solves this problem – a problem we, ourselves, experience on a daily basis?
What stood out are the principles of decentralized science (DeSci). Decentralized research is at the core of DeSci. It removes external influence and hands back power to the community that needs the research most. As we dug deeper into the values behind DeSci, we fell in love.
Our first activity toward building a better future for Web3 research was to research ourselves. Since the beginning of 2024, we’ve published five in-depth reports on the various blockchain sectors, our latest being how DeSci will improve research. We reached far and wide in our research to find all existing use cases and worked with experts to ensure a cutting edge outlook for each sector.
But, behind the scenes, we knew we needed to do more. Our reports, while a help, are arguably centralized. What we love about DeSci is that power is held by the community. Web3 entrepreneurs know what they need, and they ought to be able to ask for it without barriers.
Establishing a Web3 Insights Marketplace
While we worked on the reports, the idea of a collaborative Onchain research platform popped up. It quickly evolved and we began imagining a Web3 Insights Marketplace. Our goal is to decentralize control over research through a tokenized system. Here’s a sneak peak at what our vision turned reality will look like.
Inside the platform
Each user will have access to the entire community. You will be able to ask for what you need in terms of research – use cases, whitepapers, clarity on a specific sector, and more.
Both professional and citizen researchers will answer with short-form articles or in-depth papers.
What you will love about this model is that you and any member can answer questions themselves. We recognize that the majority of the Web3 community is already doing this research. Why not build a platform for it to be shared and monetized?
We also knew that this platform had to be self-correcting. Onchian’s Web3 Insights Marketplace will include a mechanism for commenting on the quality of the research using ‘community notes,’ the value of which increases or decreases the reliability of a source.
This ensures the most prominent researchers and sources are the ones that have the greatest integrity.
All the content will be tagged to make it easy for entrepreneurs and Web3 members to find what they’re looking for. As a result, the community will decide what is valuable and accurate, and researchers will be paid accordingly.
The outcome is a system that finally rewards the best researchers and allows anyone to become a Web3 researcher. A true meritocracy based on the citizen research model. How might this change the way you conduct research?
A new outlook for Web3 research and business
Like you and other entrepreneurs who will use our platform, we saw a problem and decided to solve it ourselves. We want higher-quality Web3 research, we want to see Web3 enterprises grow, and we want to help start new ones.
What excites us most is the prospect of new businesses like yours emerging based on the research they were able to conduct or discover on our platform.
We want to hear of investors and other industry decision-makers taking action with more confidence because they were able to source reliable information from our platform.
And it would be especially exciting to hear of folks new to the Web3 space finding their way forward through the platform.
So how can you get involved now?
The Onchain Founding Membership: for the ones who love research
This month we are revealing the Onchain Founding Membership with a limited-time NFT for early adopters.
This NFT will come with a ‘Founding Member’ status on the platform that gives greater visibility to one’s research and includes lifetime access. It tells the community that you, too, are passionate about improving the state of Web3 research and intend to take action toward that goal.
And, to be honest, we’re a bit geeked to be surrounded by people as enthusiastic about Web3 as we are.
The Onchain Founding Membership waitlist is now open. To receive a direct invite to the NFT sale when it goes live, sign up now. Let’s fix Web3 research for good. Together.