PeptideDAO

01 Background

Peptides are short chains of amino acids, typically 2-50, that can be naturally occurring or synthetically developed [1]. They regulate essential biological functions by primarily acting as cell signaling molecules to deliver biochemical messages to cells, thereby initiating biological effects [2], such as hormone level control, skin, muscle and tissue repair, cell movement and digestion [3]. Their precision and compatibility with biological systems make them invaluable tools in medicine due to their high specificity, ability to inhibit large protein-protein interactions, and lower risk of off-target effects compared to small molecule drugs. This is reflected by the rapid growth of the global peptide therapeutics market, projected to exceed $117 billion by 2034 [4]. Additionally, peptides exhibit reduced immunogenicity and lower production costs compared to biologics, making them a safer and more accessible therapeutic option [5]. Despite their promise, the development of peptide therapies faces challenges, including limited funding for early-stage research and complex regulatory requirements, synonymous with several peptides being banned in 2024 due to lack of safety data [6]. Regulatory agencies require robust data to validate their safety and efficacy, yet traditional funding models often prioritize more established therapeutic classes, leaving peptides relatively underfunded. This is reflected by metabolic peptides currently dominating the market and expected to capture 58% of the market share by 2030 [7] and the current use of GLP-1 receptor agonists by 12% of adults [8]. PeptideDAO addresses these limitations by decentralizing funding, fostering collaborative innovation, and accelerating innovation in peptide research and development.

02 The Peptide Challenge

Limited Global Awareness and Accessibility

While North America dominated the peptide therapeutics market share at 45% in 2023 [9], public and scientific awareness remains minimal in other regions. This disparity limits the access to peptides and emphasizes the need for expanded global outreach and education, ensuring equitable access for people worldwide and cultivating broader interest in peptide research.

Fragmented Research and Development

Peptide research is often siloed across academia, biotech companies, and independent researchers, limiting collaboration, innovation, and the efficient sharing of data and resources. The lack of decentralized infrastructure results in slower progress in peptide discovery, missed opportunities for synergy, and limited funding access for promising projects, further delaying the advancement of peptide science.

Regulatory Data and Oversight

Peptides often fail to gain regulatory approval due to the requirement of extensive preclinical and clinical data, in part due to insufficient funding and collaboration, preventing the generation of robust datasets and delaying market entry. Additionally, regulatory agencies have intensified scrutiny over compounding pharmacies producing peptides, citing unverified safety and efficacy concerns [6]. While oversight is essential, this stricter regulation often disproportionately affects smaller producers and research groups, creating barriers to both innovation and patient access. In the context of experimental peptides, this also creates significant barriers to consumer adoption, hindering their integration into mainstream healthcare and slowing the growth of biohacking and wellness markets.

Limited Funding and Pharmaceutical Disinterest

Traditional funding models deprioritize peptide research in favor of high- margin drugs such as small molecules and biologics. Pharmaceutical companies often view peptides as less profitable due to their complex manufacturing and storage requirements, further limiting peptide research and development.

03 Advancing Peptide Science

Our Solution

PeptideDAO takes a decentralized approach to funding and innovation by directly addressing the systemic barriers facing peptide research and development. By breaking down silos and promoting collaboration among global researchers, the DAO creates a shared platform for data generation and project acceleration. Blockchain-powered governance ensures that funding decisions are transparent and community-driven, allowing underfunded projects to secure the resources needed to succeed. PeptideDAO also advocates for greater regulatory clarity and supports global outreach to raise awareness about peptide therapies, ultimately bridging gaps in accessibility, funding, and innovation.

In addition to funding and supporting peptide research, PeptideDAO is committed to building a platform that unites the global peptide community. As part of this effort, we aim to explore ways in which researchers, biohackers, and healthcare professionals could contribute observational insights into real-world peptide use. Such data could provide valuable perspectives on safety, efficacy, and novel applications, complementing traditional research efforts.

We envision a future where the benefits of peptide research extend beyond laboratories to everyday consumers. By addressing the barriers to regulatory approval, we enable a broad range of applications, from healthcare breakthroughs to consumer wellness innovations.

Breakthrough Applications of Peptides

Peptides have already demonstrated transformative potential in medicine and science through numerous applications:

• Insulin: As one of the first peptide therapies, insulin revolutionized diabetes management, saving tens of millions of lives globally in the last 100 years [10].

• GLP-1 Receptor Agonists: Therapies such as semaglutide (Ozempic) have reshaped the treatment landscape for obesity and type 2 diabetes, showcasing the potential of peptide-based interventions.

• Diagnostics: Peptides can be used to detect disease biomarkers due to their specificity for biological targets, such as peptide-based biosensors [11].

• Skincare Science: Cosmetic peptides, such as Matrixyl, have created innovative anti-aging solutions by promoting collagen production and cellular repair [12].

• Agriculture & Food Industry: Peptides are being developed to enhance crop protection and pest control, offering sustainable alternatives to traditional methods [13].

These breakthroughs illustrate peptides’ capacity to address complex biological challenges while inspiring future innovations.

Peptide Research as a Catalyst for Innovation and Growth

Peptides present a unique business opportunity due to their versatility and transformative potential in addressing unmet needs across multiple industries. Over 7,000 peptides exist in the human body, yet only a small fraction have been studied [14]. Additionally, although 14,000 protein-protein interactions (PPIs) have been explored, this represents a mere 1% of all PPIs, highlighting the vast untapped potential for peptide discovery and innovation [5]. Beyond human peptides, thousands more have been identified in plants, animals, and synthetic sources, with databases cataloging over 5,000 antimicrobial peptides and hundreds of therapeutic peptides currently in clinical development [15]. By investing in peptide research, PeptideDAO positions itself at the intersection of innovation, collaboration, and commercialization, unlocking significant novel opportunities in:

• Therapeutics Development: Peptides enable precision treatments for conditions like metabolic disorders, chronic inflammation, and cancer. Successful therapies such as GLP-1 receptor agonists demonstrate the immense revenue potential and impact of peptide-based solutions.

• Vaccines: Synthetic peptides mimicking pathogen antigens, such as peptide-based vaccines for infectious diseases like COVID-19 [16].

• Cancer Immunotherapy: Peptide vaccines and inhibitors are paving the way for more effective and targeted cancer treatments [17].

• AI Driven Drug Discovery: AI and machine learning algorithms can accelerate and optimize peptide drug design [18].

• Biomaterials: Peptides can be used to create self-assembling materials for tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, and regenerative medicine [19].

• General health: Peptides are rapidly gaining attention in consumer markets due to their potential to address everyday health and wellness, such as skin rejuvenation through cosmetic peptides such as Argireline, muscle recovery and weight management with GLP-1 receptor agonists, and anti-aging solutions in longevity-focused biohacking.

The DAO’s decentralized approach cultivates an ecosystem where peptide innovations can scale rapidly, enabling early supporters to participate in the creation of groundbreaking therapies and solutions while capturing long-term value. By advancing research and supporting real-world applications, PeptideDAO unlocks the potential of peptides to drive scientific innovation and improve global health.

Building on a Scientific Framework that led to a Nobel Prize

The 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, awarded to John Jumper, Demis Hassabis, and David Baker, demonstrated how large-scale scientific collaboration can lead to transformative breakthroughs in life sciences. Their work on AlphaFold and RoseTTAFold brought together researchers from multiple institutions and disciplines to solve one of the most complex challenges in biology; predicting 3D protein structures and designing novel proteins [20]. While their research was conducted within centralized organizations (DeepMind, University of Washington), its success relied on interdisciplinary collaboration, data sharing, and a global network of contributors. This model accelerated discovery and made critical findings publicly accessible, enabling further advancements by scientists worldwide.

PeptideDAO embraces a similar collaborative framework, reimagined in a Web3-native way to accelerate peptide research. By leveraging decentralized funding and governance, PeptideDAO fosters an open, efficient ecosystem where researchers, biohackers, and institutions can collaborate seamlessly. This model removes barriers to funding and participation, enabling peptide innovations to scale rapidly while allowing early supporters to contribute to groundbreaking therapies and solutions. By advancing research and facilitating commercialization, PeptideDAO unlocks peptides’ potential to transform industries and improve lives.

04 DAO Design

PeptideDAO will operate on blockchain, leveraging its secure infrastructure to govern research funding, IP, and community engagement. The PeptideDAO framework leverages community-driven decision-making and transparent incentives to facilitate scientific collaboration and innovation (Figure 1).

Our core components will include:

• Governance smart contracts based on audited and extensively used frameworks ensuring a secure, adaptable governance process.

• Gnosis safe multi-signature wallet to manage to DAO’s treasury and requires multiple signers to execute transactions, enhancing security and transparency.

• Native governance token ($PEP) to facilitate voting, funding decisions and overall participation in DAO operations.

• Tokenized research outcomes and IP represented as IP-NFTs held transparently by the DAO and its contributors.

Decentralised funding and governance model of our research IP-NFTs

Figure 1. IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property-Non Fungible Tokens) are tokenized scientific IP, which PeptideDAO creates in order to fractionalize IP and create incentives for the DAO, researcher, research participant and funders. The process begins from the left when the researcher submits a peptide-related research proposal. If this proposal is approved by the community, the researcher will mint the IP-NFT, accepting its terms and conditions (T&C’s). The PeptideDAO treasury can directly fund the IP-NFT project, or the IP-NFT can be tokenized to allow crowdfunding of the specific project. Research participants are compensated with our native token for contributing, which will be licensed under the IP-NFT’s T&C’s. IPT (Intellectual Property Token) holders, including the community and research participants, govern the intellectual property pool associated with the IP-NFT, ensuring decentralized decision-making over licensing and commercialization.

Governance Module

PeptideDAO operates under a decentralized governance model, where decision-making power is distributed among token holders.

The DAO’s governance system enables $PEP token holders to:

• Propose and vote on funding for peptide research initiatives.

• Manage treasury allocations.

• Oversee the tokenization and licensing of IP.

The governance process is facilitated through platforms such as Snapshot, ensuring transparent and community-driven decision-making.

Treasury Management

The DAO’s treasury is secured through a Gnosis Safe multi-signature wallet, with all allocations requiring community approval through formal voting, ensuring transparent and secure fund allocation. Treasury funds will be used to:

• Support and fund peptide research.

• Acquire and manage IP.

• Cover operational expenses and community initiatives.

• Secure partnerships with potential collaborators.

Tokenization of IP

Using blockchain technology, PeptideDAO tokenizes IP as IP-NFTs. This creates:

• Transparent ownership of research outcomes.

• Revenue-sharing opportunities through licensing agreements.

• Liquidity for IP assets on secondary markets.

$PEP Tokenomics

The $PEP token powers the DAO’s ecosystem by offering token holders:

• Governance rights for decision-making.

• Staking rewards for long-term participation.

• Revenue-sharing from the commercialization of peptide-based products or therapies.

Token Launch

PeptideDAO will conduct a token launch using a fair and transparent mechanism, such as a Gnosis Batch Auction. This ensures equitable access to tokens and allows anyone to participate in the DAO’s early funding round. Proceeds from the auction will:

• Fund the first cohort of peptide research projects.

• Establish operational resources for the DAO.

• Create liquidity for $PEP tokens.

Following the launch, $PEP token holders will immediately gain governance rights and begin shaping the DAO’s direction through community-led proposals and decisions.

Sustainability and Growth

PeptideDAO is designed to scale sustainably. As funded projects generate valuable research and IP, the DAO’s assets grow, attracting higher-quality proposals and collaborators. This creates a positive feedback loop where successful research outcomes drive further funding and innovation, ensuring PeptideDAO’s long-term impact on peptide science.

Working Groups

To ensure effective decentralized coordination and the efficient execution of tasks, PeptideDAO is structured around specialized Working Groups (WGs), each responsible for a core operational area. These groups are designed to ensure transparency, accountability, and collaboration while adapting to the evolving needs of the DAO and its members.

Research Oversight Group

The Research Oversight Group is dedicated to identifying, reviewing, and monitoring research projects to ensure they align with PeptideDAO’s mission of advancing peptide science and generating high-quality, regulatory-ready data. This group plays a central role in evaluating project proposals for funding, prioritizing those with the greatest potential for scientific impact and community benefit. Once projects are selected, the Research Oversight Group works closely with researchers to ensure scientific integrity, clear milestones, and proper documentation of results. They will also facilitate collaboration between independent researchers, biohackers, and partner institutions while overseeing the standardization and transparency of research outputs, making data accessible for validation and replication across the DAO ecosystem.

Governance and Operations Group

The Governance and Operations Group manages the structural, procedural, and technical aspects of PeptideDAO, ensuring the integrity of decentralized decision-making. This group oversees the entire governance framework, including the proposal process, token-based voting mechanisms, and the platforms used for community participation, such as Snapshot. It plays a critical role in maintaining operational efficiency by facilitating clear communication between working groups and the community, ensuring members are informed and engaged. The group also develops and enforces governance protocols, including voting thresholds and quorum requirements, while handling administrative processes, record-keeping, and the documentation of governance decisions to maintain transparency and smooth day-to-day operations across all levels of the DAO.

Security and Treasury Group

The Security and Treasury Group is responsible for safeguarding PeptideDAO’s financial assets and ensuring the secure management of tokenized IP while maintaining transparency in all financial activities. This group oversees the DAO’s treasury, managing the allocation and distribution of funds for research initiatives, IP acquisition, and operational costs, ensuring all expenditures are community-approved. They are also tasked with risk management, working to protect the DAO’s financial resources through strategic asset allocation while maintaining accountability through regular financial reporting. In addition to managing treasury operations, this group plays a crucial role in securing the DAO’s smart contracts, ensuring they remain fully audited and compliant with best practices for decentralized financial security.

Pathways to Commercialization

By tokenizing IP, PeptideDAO democratizes the discovery and commercialization process, creating liquidity and lowering entry barriers for innovators and investors.

PeptideDAO bridges the gap between research and application by:

1. Generating robust data: Supporting studies to meet regulatory requirements for safety and efficacy.

2. Facilitating licensing agreements: Developing partnerships to scale production and distribution.

3. Revenue distribution: Sharing income from IP licensing with token holders while reinvesting in new research initiatives.

PeptideDAO is committed to ensuring that innovative research projects funded through the DAO are positioned for successful commercialization. Once promising research projects yield sufficient data and demonstrate strong potential, PeptideDAO can pursue several pathways to bring these innovations to market. These include licensing IP or data assets to biotech or pharmaceutical companies, forming partnerships with industry stakeholders, or supporting the development of the assets directly.

To facilitate commercialization, PeptideDAO will collaborate with experienced legal counsel and industry experts to evaluate and secure IP rights, including composition of matter patents or method-of-use patents. This process will include comprehensive patentability assessments and the establishment of legal frameworks to protect inventions and optimize commercial potential.

PeptideDAO’s commercialization efforts will be community-driven, with governance decisions shaping the direction of IP monetization strategies. Options include licensing or selling IP, spinning out projects into sub-DAOs, or directly engaging in further development. The DAO aims to create win-win partnerships with licensees, ensuring fair valuation models that reflect the invested resources, the asset’s potential value, and the risks associated with product development. Transparent deal structures and community oversight will ensure that commercialization efforts align with the DAO’s mission and maximize impact in the field of peptide research.

Conclusion

PeptideDAO represents a groundbreaking initiative to address the significant gaps in peptide research, development, and commercialization. Despite the immense potential of peptides to revolutionize medicine, the current landscape is hindered by fragmented research, insufficient funding, and limited global awareness. The traditional pharmaceutical model has deprioritized peptides in favor of high-margin drugs, leaving many promising therapies unexplored. Regulatory complexities and heightened scrutiny on compounding pharmacies further exacerbate these challenges, creating barriers to innovation and accessibility.

By leveraging the power of decentralization, PeptideDAO breaks down these barriers. Our DAO model empowers a global community of researchers, biohackers, and innovators to collaborate transparently and effectively. Through blockchain-based governance and tokenized IP, we democratize access to funding and ensure that resources are allocated to the most promising projects. The DAO’s structure cultivates global collaboration, streamlines the research-to-commercialization pipeline, and creates a feedback loop where successful projects generate revenue to fund further innovation.

PeptideDAO also emphasizes regulatory readiness, ensuring that funded projects produce robust data to meet stringent approval standards. By engaging with legal counsel and industry experts, we aim to create a clear pathway for IP protection and commercialization. Our approach not only addresses current inefficiencies but also positions PeptideDAO as a leader in peptide research, unlocking transformative therapies that can improve global health.

This decentralized, community-driven model allows us to overcome the limitations of traditional research paradigms, making peptide therapies more accessible, efficient, and impactful. PeptideDAO is not only a funding platform, but a catalyst for innovation and a bridge between scientific discovery and real-world application, creating lasting value for researchers, patients, biohackers and the broader global community.

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