DeSci Project Aubrai Launches on Base to Revolutionize Science Funding and Conquer the ’Valley of Death’

Science's funding crisis meets its crypto solution—Aubrai just dropped on Base, aiming to vaporize the notorious 'Valley of Death' where groundbreaking research goes to die.

Cutting Through Red Tape

Aubrai's decentralized platform bypasses traditional grant bottlenecks, letting researchers tap directly into global funding pools. No more begging committees—just pure, algorithmic allocation based on merit and community support.

Smart Contracts Meet Lab Coats

The protocol automates funding milestones, releasing capital only when verifiable progress hits the blockchain. It’s science funding, minus the paperwork—and the politics.

Base’s Scaling Edge

Built on Coinbase’s Layer-2, Aubrai leverages near-zero gas fees and instant settlements—because apparently even genius researchers hate waiting six months for a check.

Because apparently even peer-reviewed breakthroughs need to appease crypto degens now. The future's here—funded by memes, validated by science.

The system is already in use in de Grey’s Robust Mouse Rejuvenation (RMR2) study, one of the largest mouse lifespan experiments ever attempted. Aubrai has suggested methodological tweaks and flagged dosing caveats that researchers had only discovered after weeks of manual review.

“Having the agent at our disposal has been transformative for our planning pipeline,” de Grey said, noting that RMR2 involves nearly a dozen overlapping studies. “It identified points of consideration we had not yet encountered through literature, and it was proactive in suggesting ways to circumvent foreseen limitations.”

For Paul Kohlhaas, Bio Protocol’s founder, Aubrai represents a turning point in how science can be organized and financed.

“Just as Substack gave writers the ability to monetize outside legacy media, Bio’s infrastructure can turn scientists into the next great creator economy,” he said.

DeSci will face challenges

While projects like Aubrai and Bio Protocol demonstrate the potential of crypto capital beyond memecoins, tokenized intellectual property is likely to attract regulatory scrutiny, and established pharmaceutical firms may hesitate to adopt discoveries born out of decentralized collectives.

However, for a field like longevity, where breakthroughs often die in the space between early results and human trials because of a disinterested capital market, Aubrai offers an alternative path.

If it succeeds, it could demonstrate blockchain's potential to do more than just pump the next memecoin. It could provide the infrastructure to accelerate research itself, pushing the field of longevity closer to therapies that extend human health span.

It WOULD also signal that decentralized science can function as a viable market alternative to the entrenched funding structures that have long constrained biomedical innovation.