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I sometimes think about the American tv producer, actor and writer Dick Clair. He had AIDS and died on December 12, 1988, at the young age of 57. Unlike almost every other person who died that year - or any other year for that matter - there’s still hope for him. He’s cryopreserved. He’s still under medical care. There are people working hard to bring him back.

When Dick Clair passed, George H. W. Bush had just been elected president, and the Iron Curtain was beginning to crumble.

But 1988 was a vastly different world. There was no internet*, no smartphones, no self-driving cars. Google and social media didn’t exist, and it would be nearly three decades before the invention of large language models.

And no one had yet dreamed of the scientific movement known as DeSci.

* Well, there was, but you know what I mean.

DeSci, short for decentralized science, is powered by blockchain technology, specifically Ethereum-based smart contracts*.

* A smart contract is a self-executing piece of computer code that operates on a blockchain.

There’s no shortage of claims about how blockchain technology and the new web will revolutionize everything. In the case of DeSci, it’s said to offer a platform for individuals and scientific projects that don’t align with the traditional, often centralized and dysfunctional, research model.

Let’s take a look at a comparison from bio.xyz:

Inevitably, some uninvited skeptic will step in and dismiss it all, claiming that nothing has really changed and that blockchain technology is nothing more than a glorified database.

Well, I think the new biotech DAOism might beg to differ.

The old Daoists of Chinese philosophy and religion famously pursued immortality through inner alchemy and engaged in all sorts of bizarre lifestyle interventions (not so different from today, in other words).

The new DAOists, however, are decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs)*. Over the past few years, the DeSci space has seen a surge of activity, with DAOs like VitaDAO, PsyDAO, LabDAO, and AthenaDAO attracting tens of millions of dollars in funding.

* DAOs are online organizations run by member voting and automated rules via blockchain technology, operating without traditional management hierarchies. Members use tokens to vote on decisions and actions.

I’m planning an in-depth article on the DeSci ecosystem early next year, so consider this a very simplified speedrun.

The reason I’m bringing it up now - and circling back to Dick Clair - is CryoDAO. This organization is advancing cryopreservation research by funding projects. In a historically underfunded field, CryoDAO raised about $3 million in its initial fundraising and has already funded several groundbreaking initiatives.

Recently, CryoDAO closed another fundraising round, securing $900,000 for a highly ambitious project that might not have been possible without the DeSci movement. CryoRAT aims to achieve something that hasn’t been done since the days when Dick Clair was writing sitcoms: the successful revival of a cryopreserved mammal.

CryoDAO writes: ”The demonstrated limit for whole-body resuscitation has not been changed since the 1960s when Audrey Smith and colleagues were able to resuscitate (hibernating) animals from high sub-zero temperatures (~ -2 degrees Celsius) through a protocol of supercooling and control of ice formation. While major advances have been made in the vitrification of isolated organs, these whole-body results have never been surpassed by other researchers.”

”It was really proof of principle that circulatory arrest, cessation of breathing, cessation of heart beat is not the end, right?”, Aschwin de Wolf, who’s spearheading the CryoRAT project, said in an interview on X.

Aschwin de Wolf, CEO of Advanced Neural Biosciences, has been immersed in the cryobiology field since 2002. He’s essentially written the definitive guide on whole-body cryopreservation - a 700-page tome outlining detailed protocols for the procedure. He’s also an incredibly intriguing figure, and I highly recommend this portrait of him.

The project’s slogan, “To coldly go,” captures its ambitious spirit, but at the same time Aschwin de Wolf admits it’s a daunting project.

”It’s been important for me to say we need to temper expectations, we need intermediate goals. We need milestones that we know are doable or at least yield very interesting results so we actually getter a better understanding what the challenges are in this project.”

Below you’ll see those intermediate goals.

Daunting or not - it's happening. When Dick Clair was cryopreserved in 1988, he placed his faith in a future where science would advance enough to bring him back. He couldn't have imagined that future would include internet-powered communities of token-holding scientists and crypto enthusiasts funding breakthrough research.

Like those pioneering hamsters from the 1950s, cryopreservation research is being reanimated after decades in the scientific deep freeze. Thanks to DeSci, it's finally having its moment. The future is looking really cool.