HYPOTHESIS AND THEORY article
Front. Blockchain
Sec. Blockchain for Science
Volume 8 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fbloc.2025.1657050
This article is part of the Research TopicBlockchain in the Age of AIView all 3 articles
DeScAI: The Convergence of Decentralized Science and Artificial Intelligence
Provisionally accepted
- Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
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Scientific knowledge production is undergoing a dual transformation. On one front, Decentralized Science (DeSci) leverages blockchain-based infrastructures to reconfigure how research is funded, verified, and governed, disintermediating legacy gatekeepers through tokenized incentives and distributed provenance. On the other, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is automating core dimensions of science, from hypothesis generation to experimental execution and model validation. This paper introduces DeScAI, a theoretical framework that unifies these domains into a recursive, self-verifying epistemic system governed by autonomous agents operating within decentralized, trust-minimized networks. We present a five-stratum architecture for DeScAI, hypothesizing that its integration enables epistemic acceleration, pluralistic inquiry, and cryptographically auditable trust. Methods include a structured literature synthesis (2018–2025), conceptual modeling, and descriptive analysis of 14 projects. Three hypothetical trajectories for future empirical investigation are proposed concerning cycle-time compression, epistemic pluralism, and reproducibility amplification. We conclude that DeScAI is not speculative: its core components are already deployed. What remains is orchestration, stitching together decentralized ledgers, incentive protocols, self-sovereign scientific agents (SSA), and cryptographic infrastructures into a single, recursive system. If successful, DeScAI could radically reduce the latency between hypothesis and verification, reconfigure scientific legitimacy as a live, contestable signal, and transform the incentive structure of research itself.
Keywords: decentralized science, artificial intelligence, Blockchain, Knowledge production, Cryptoeconomics, Epistemic infrastructure, autonomous agents, Recursive systems
Received: 01 Jul 2025; Accepted: 02 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Shilina. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Sasha Shilina, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
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