The decentralized autonomous organization says that crypto fans like Vitalik Buterin have been interested in funding research to make people live longer for a long time.
VitaDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) focused on generating funds for human life extension research, has concluded a $4.1 million investment round alongside Pfizer Ventures and others.
Tyler Golato, who worked on the decentralized biotech protocol Molecule, started VitaDAO in 2021 to help fund research into how to live longer.Â
According to the organization, it has a network of over 9,000 “enthusiasts, researchers, and contributors,” and by 2022, it will have spent more than $3.5 million on projects investigating aging disorders, cellular biology, and repairing age-related bodily damage.
Pfizer Ventures, Shine Capital, L1 Digital, the decentralized science groups BeakerDAO and Spaceship DAO, and longevity enthusiasts like former Coinbase chief technology officer Balaji Srinivasan and Retro Biosciences’ Joe Betts-LaCroix have also participated in the newest fundraising round. Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has previously invested.
VitaDAO says that Pfizer is the first pharmaceutical company to vote on DAO ideas and take part in the development and sale of VitaDAO projects.
The money from the new round will be used to fund research on living longer and build VitaDAO’s first biotech company, which will be announced in the first quarter of 2023. Furthermore, through its cooperation with Molecule, the firm intends to invest further in the “commercialization and licensing of the non-fungible token (NFT) intellectual property (IP).
Laurence Ion, VitaDAO’s deal-flow manager, stated that numerous initiatives financed by VitaDAO have progressed to the next level of development, including clinical studies with Mantis Photonics to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease using retinal imaging.
“There’s a shift in medicine away from treating the symptoms of aging,” said Todd White, operations steward at VitaDAO. “There is a lot of debate over whether or not aging is a sickness. Many individuals today believe that aging and many of the problems associated with age… may be addressed.”
According to White, the organization is governed by its native VITA coin, and holders may vote on which initiatives to support, while a group of “stewards” aid in “facilitating” the implementation of those suggestions.
Ion told CoinDesk that the group’s democratic way of running things will allow it to grow beyond physical sites and think about “a hypothetical future sovereignty network.”
“I believe we require a new paradigm,” he stated. “We want to be a community with the size and resourcefulness of several countries.”
Crypto aficionados have always been interested in longevity research and the prevention of human aging. In December 2021, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong established a firm called NewLimit to “cure aging,” while former Ripple CTO and current Stellar co-founder Jed McCaleb founded the Astera Institute to finance longevity research.
According to White, the connection between the crypto sector and the longevity study area is not by chance. “Consider how crypto began: it was about breaking through boundaries and repairing a system that they saw as broken. The same is true for lifespan. “
“From the crypto community, there’s a lot more creativity and a lot more eagerness to try new things,” he continued.
