TLDR: Atom is building the financial infrastructure for DeSci ⛓️🧪

Description

Atom aims to accelerate scientific research by revolutionizing todays funding mechanisms for basic research. The current system of funding research is often biased, opaque, and inefficient with regards to allocating funds. Atom is building a platform utilizing quadratic funding and other blockchain powered models to identify and fund the most impactful early stage research projects.

Vision

New funding models can align incentives around open, collaborative science. Atom is building the financial infrastructure for the DeSci movement to reignite the pursuit for knowledge, which has dwindled in the last 50 years.

Problem

Nearly $800 billion dollars was allocated to R&D in the US last year. With innovation per dollar falling across many fields in science, researchers spending up to 50% of their time on grants applications, and decisions being made by small, biased and opaque groups the scientific funding landscape is seriously broken. Funding is inefficiently allocated in favour of established risk-averse researchers instead of young innovative scientists leading to stifled innovation in early stage research and beyond.

Current DeSci funding solutions rely heavily on the promise of commercialising IP to incentivise participation but this can leave essential explorative research with unclear outcomes under-funded. Furthermore there is a large negative sentiment toward crypto amongst academic communities so leading with a web3 first approach is an uphill battle. Lastly, as evidenced by the Gitcoin DeSci round criteria rightly restricting purely academic projects from applying due to limited ability to qualify valid projects there is a need and demand for a Gitcoin for Science.

Solution

Atom is building a space for our DeSci community to begin engaging with TradSci through funding.

We have begun work to develop a single hub for all academic grants. Atom is building an AI-driven grant matching system, used to onboard and connect researchers with relevant traditional funding opportunities, streamlining the grant application process and allowing researchers to focus on their work. This is used to validate researchers and projects for our DeSci grants.

The web3 grants stack will utilise quadratic funding to ensure that research projects with widespread support receive the necessary resources, free from bias and red tape typically associated with traditional funding sources. We have a pipeline of NFT drops planned, in collaboration with leading scientific figures, to help generate funds for matching pools while raising awareness for crucial research projects.

Team

As former scientists who transitioned from research into web3, DeSci falls the intersection of our passions.

Tomer du Sautoy (CEO): Tomer obtained a Masters in physics, going on to lead the blockchain team at an early-stage web3 startup, helping to scale their revenue by 100x in a year while onboarding traditional artists into web3.

Hamilton Evans (CTO): After launching a sellout NFT project while pursuing his chemistry PhD at Caltech, Hamilton dropped out with a Masters to join a web3 startup. There he lead the development team, writing smart contracts responsible for over 50 thousand unique mints.

Roadmap

1. Secure key partnerships (completed)
2. Prototyping TradSci grant discovery and management platform (In progress)
3. Build TradSci platform v0
4. Closed beta launch
5. Onboard first academic institutions
6. Integrate with Gitcoin’s Allo Protocol
7. NFT drop with leading public scientist to raise initial matching pool funds
8. Finish raising funds for Atoms alpha round
9. Launch alpha QF round
10. Open launch

… and so much more to come!

Funds

The proceeds from this grant will go toward accelerating the web3 efforts on our roadmap. With extra funding we will be able to bring forward the development of our initial funding drops, protocol integration and bring on support to help source matching pool funding and grant validation.