DeSci: Eternal Technology and the Future of the Galaxy

Original Author: Andy Yee, Fellow, CryoDAO Translation: LlamaC

(Portfolio: Burning Man 2016, about Tomo: illustrator for the ETH Foundation)

**Recommended Message: The article describes the specific projects and achievements of CryoDAO, including the construction of infrastructure, fundraising, and the advancement of scientific research, and how these efforts contribute to the realization of the vision of an interstellar future and immortality." **

Decentralized science is breaking the stagnation of science and ushering in a new era of human progress. Guided by the philosophy of cosmism, it is time to boldly pursue our goal: to transcend death and expand into the universe. CryoDAO is leading the journey towards cosmic fulfillment and consciousness awakening, bringing us closer to the moral realm of interstellar immortality. ********

Main Text

The study of the long-term development trajectory of human civilization usually places the future of humanity under several scenarios. Philosopher Nick Bostrom summarizes these four scenarios as extinction, periodic collapse, stagnation, and post-humanity. Recently, an interdisciplinary research team formally classified these trajectories into four categories: status quo, catastrophe, technological change, and astronomical. Historian David Christian marks the imagined future global scenarios as collapse, contraction, sustainability, and growth in his book ‘The Future of Humanity’.

No matter what terms we use, we can draw some common conclusions from these studies. First, it seems impossible to maintain the status quo or a stable trajectory, where the level of civilization is limited to a narrow range. Instead, civilization is likely to either extinct or transform. The cumulative probability of these scenarios increases monotonically over time, eventually breaking through this range. However, achieving our survival in the distant future through transformative technologies or cosmic expansion is not a sure thing. The prevalence of major extinction events in Earth’s history, combined with our current technological capabilities that cause serious environmental and social harm, suggests that a disaster trajectory is more likely to occur.

Stagnation of Scientific Progress

In fact, humanity may have reached a technological level capable of completely self-destructing, whether through nuclear war or artificial intelligence (AI), but has never reached the level of technological maturity required to achieve a post-human or interstellar future. We are still far from becoming a technologically mature civilization in which members can live extremely long and fulfilling lives through biomodification, or participate in space colonization. To make matters worse, scientific inertia has been a prominent feature of our society since the mid-20th century. The Gilded Age of the late 19th century saw epochal technological advances in fields as diverse as automobiles, energy, materials science, and communications, transforming our society from “an animal-driven, low-quality civilization to one that is electrified, mechanized, and of high quality.”

In fact, a recent paper published in the journal Nature reveals a significant decline in disruptive science and technology over the past 60 years, exacerbating concerns about a slowdown in innovation. Part of this is due to scientists’ narrow focus on their own areas of expertise, lacking grander ambitions to drive overall scientific progress. As pointed out by Peter Thiel and Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin, recent advances in information technology have only created the illusion of rapid progress. These advances only make our society operate more efficiently, but they do not change the material or energy basis of civilization itself.

We cannot become complacent. For the first time in Earth’s history, humans have developed the technological capacity to manage the planet on a planetary scale, both in terms of atmospheric composition and geographical features. David Christian refers to this new complex entity as ‘a managed or conscious planet.’ We may be on the verge of overcoming the ‘Great Filter,’ a concept used to explain the Fermi Paradox, which refers to insurmountable challenges that prevent intelligent civilizations from spreading in the universe. As long as we do not self-destruct before becoming a spacefaring civilization and are determined to acquire the necessary technology, we have reason to be hopeful for the astronomical future.

Achieving this feat requires a transcendent goal capable of motivating society for decades or even centuries to invest and break through the stagnation that has developed in many areas of science and technology. The history of our species is the history of the expansion of life and intelligence in space and time, and we have occupied the earth and have a longer lifespan. Therefore, it is only natural that we should build on this heritage and imagine boldly: to expand into the universe and beyond death. It is only through such ambition that we can ignite new societal forces and channel sufficient resources to achieve the technological breakthroughs needed to accomplish this transcendent goal.

Revive our cosmic ambition

We already have a solution to this problem. At the beginning of the 21st century, American sociologist William Bainbridge proposed the creation of a galactic religion - the cosmic order - that could unite this high-demand social movement. Through the religious viewpoint that ‘heaven is a sacred domain, and we should enter it to transcend death’, people will see the meaning of life in the cosmic context and believe that this can be achieved through science and technology. This viewpoint has deeper roots in cosmism, a Russian philosophy and spiritual movement at the turn of the 20th century, exploring our position in the universe, immortality, and resurrection. The cosmist movement attempted to use science to expand human current spatial and temporal limitations, inspiring the Soviet space program and directly leading to contemporary transhumanism. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a follower of cosmism and the father of astronautics, famously said, ‘Earth is the cradle of humanity, but humanity cannot stay in the cradle forever’.

Nikolai Fyodorov, the mentor of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and a Christian philosopher, conceived cosmism in his work “The Philosophy of the Common Task.” In essence, the project of the common task is to create technological, social, and political conditions to resurrect all the people who have ever lived, so as to achieve reconciliation and unity between past and future generations. This must be a conscious human endeavor, not relying on divine grace. Secular technology is seen as the salvific power that overcomes death and fulfills the Christian promise of universal redemption. Fyodorov firmly believed that the ideal of science and progress is to study “the blind forces that bring hunger, disease, and death, in order to transform them into life-giving forces.”

However, technology will overcome not only temporal constraints, but also spatial constraints. The resurrected lifeforms cannot be fully contained on Earth, and eventually they will settle in the vastness of the universe. Fedorov wrote: "By resurrecting all the generations that have lived on this earth, consciousness will spread to all the worlds of the universe. "Alexander Svyatogor, the later cosmicist, leading representative of the biocosmic-immortalist party, went one step further and developed the goal of the resurrection towards the realization of personal immortality. In his 1922 manifesto, he outlined the ambition to simultaneously conquer time and space: “The struggle for individual immortality – for survival in the universe – embodies the universal will.” "

Towards Decentralized Science and New Frontiers****

Nikolai Fedorov also thought about the social organization needed to realize the vision of cosmism. Since science and technology play a key role in achieving immortality, resurrection, and universal salvation, participation in knowledge and research must include everyone. Only in this way can the gap between scholars and non-scholars be bridged and kinship feelings restored. Applied science can then be directed toward a higher goal, which is to regulate the blind lethal forces of nature. This belief in the power of universal participation in science bears parallels with today’s decentralized science (DeSci) movement.

In an era of scientific stagnation, DeSci offers the social organization envisioned by Nikolai Fedorov and promises to reinvigorate scientific progress. Today’s academia is ossifying, creating a “publish or die” culture that prioritizes quantity over less popular but far-reaching research. In addition, scientific publishing and peer review systems are opaque and inefficient, resulting in limited data availability and transparency, hindering the replication of vital research. In contrast, DeSci plans to leverage blockchain technology to implement new governance mechanisms, such as decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), that allow for democratic participation by a wider range of scientists and investors. As a result, more high-risk, high-reward or non-routine research can be supported under the principles of open access and transparency. In the DeSci space, DAOs have formed that focus on far-reaching fields ranging from the science of longevity to space exploration.

The emergence of parallel institutions driven by decentralized technology, replacing traditional institutions, is part of a larger cyber nation movement pioneered by entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan. In his vision, the cyber state is a highly coherent online community with the capacity for collective action, which can crowdfund territories on a global scale and ultimately gain diplomatic recognition. While Balaji seeks to use this concept to reopen Earth’s physical boundaries and rekindle America’s pioneering spirit, we can apply the same digital technology and set our sights on the ultimate frontier: overcoming death and colonizing space. As a global coordinating body, decentralized science will be ideally suited to foster a network of human cooperation on a global scale, as well as a renewed loyalty and commitment to our transcendent goals.

CryoDAO: Preserve Beyond Death through Low-Temperature Research

The field of longevity is a perfect example of how DeSci is infused with fresh and disruptive ideas. In the 20th century, the life expectancy of humans increased by several decades due to advances in public health and medicine. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that we are approaching the limits of existing methods, and that radical human life extension is not possible if we continue with the current way. In its Longevity Acceleration Roadmap, the Longevity Biotechnology Research Society (LBF) outlines three parallel strategies to achieve unlimited lifespan. The first two are whole-body replacement and advanced bioengineering with the aim of completely solving the problem of aging. However, given their uncertain timelines, biostatic is the key third method and backup plan. Biostatic is a strategy to buy time, to suspend aging indefinitely through cryopreservation when all other contemporary options for life extension have been exhausted, providing the possibility of future resurrection.

Due to public perception and other historical reasons, biostasis is a capital-intensive life extension strategy with very few startups and academic labs in the field. According to the LBF, the total cost of a whole-body cryopreservation and revival project is about $2.4 billion. However, compared to research budgets in the pharmaceutical industry, this amount is relatively small. Even a small amount of attention and funding could make significant progress in this field. In this context, DeSci is well-positioned to attract unconventional funding and talent to achieve breakthroughs in this field, which, if successful, could fundamentally extend our lifespan.

Among decentralized science (DeSci) DAOs, CryoDAO is at the forefront of the field of biological static preservation. Its goal is to contribute to cryopreservation research projects with high potential to improve the quality and ability of cryopreservation, and ultimately to realize the future resurrection of humanity. There are many challenges to the static preservation of organisms, including preservation techniques, methods for assessing the quality of preservation, and future resurrection techniques. The good news is that these are mostly engineering issues, and we already have an initial roadmap with clearly defined goals and key technical milestones to achieve successful preservation and resurrection. This coherent plan is essential to attract talent and funding.

In the first round of fundraising in early 2024, CryoDAO raised about $3 million and has funded several groundbreaking initiatives. One project aims to use molecular analysis and machine learning to discover safer and more effective cryoprotectants, compounds used to prevent biological tissues from forming ice crystals (vitrification) at extremely low temperatures, thus preserving cellular structures. Another project aims to achieve the world’s first live birth from a vitrified and transplanted whole sheep ovary. This will be the first time in history that the recovery of a complex organ from ultra-low temperature storage to a fully viable state is shown to be possible. In December 2024, CryoDAO completed another round of fundraising, raising $900,000 for the ambitious frozen rat project. The project aims to demonstrate the first cryopreservation and resuscitation of a small mammal (rat). This complete resuscitation has not been attempted since the 1960s.

CryoDAO demonstrates how the DeSci movement makes bold and unconventional projects possible. It also shows that if we set ambitious and ambitious goals, despite the difficulties and time-consuming, scientific progress can be rekindled and even benefit humanity in the short term. For example, improving cryopreservation methods can enhance the storage capacity of organs and tissues. This will not only benefit thousands of people globally by increasing transplantation opportunities, but also improve tissue engineering, trauma medicine, and basic biomedical research. In addition, the ability to store large amounts of tissues and cells will also facilitate the discovery, development, and evaluation of drugs.

Returning to cosmism, cryopreservation can also help achieve another pillar of this philosophy - interstellarism. Currently, long-term human space travel faces challenges such as limited resources for normal physiology and metabolism, exposure to interstellar radiation and zero gravity environment, and psychological stress. Cryostasis or cryopreservation can make these limiting factors insignificant. In this regard, CryoDAO will explore the feasibility of cryogenic sleep in deep space travel, together with organizations such as NASA and ESA.

The morality of interstellar immortality****

The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe is always increasing, irreversibly moving towards disorder. However, orderly areas still emerge in the process. Physicist Brian Green, in his book Until the End of Time, clearly illustrates how gravity and nuclear forces work together to give birth to ordered structures such as stars and galaxies from the primordial universe, while obeying the second law by unleashing the entropy potential locked in matter, creating low-entropy regions. Since then, the photons released by the sun have been used as a low-entropy, high-quality energy source for life processes and to maintain the ordered structure of living organisms.

Therefore, as our understanding of the universe deepens, we begin to understand that nature is not a blind destructive force, but a source of low entropy fuel that provides what life needs. The meaning of life lies in counteracting the increasing disorder in the universe and preserving areas of order and low entropy. For us, this may be made possible through cryopreservation technology. If we can preserve the brain structure of an individual before they reach the point of information-theoretic death, thereby retaining their memories, personality, and identity, we may one day be able to revive that person using advanced future technology. This is similar to the preservation technology described by Fedorov in “The Museum, Its Meaning and Mission”. In his vision, all the people who have ever lived should be preserved in museums and revived by future generations. As he wrote: “To transfer all traces of life to the museum is to transfer them to a higher order, to a field of study, to the hands of descendants, to the hands of one or several generations.”

This naturally raises the prospect of intergenerational justice, looking back on the past and looking forward to the future, brought about by the future of long-term preservation and potential resurrection of individuals. As philosopher Boris Groys pointed out, the project of resurrecting the dead by Fedorov is a technology oriented towards the past. Previous generations will no longer be excluded from a better future society. Therefore, the deceased will not be exploited for the benefit of the living. However, it should be noted that it is technically impossible to resurrect if the brain was not properly preserved initially. After all, perfect reversal of a thermodynamic system is impossible due to entropy constraints. Therefore, it would be impractical to resurrect all previous generations from less advanced eras.

A more hopeful prospect is to turn our attention to the future, aiming to preserve the integrity of information of today’s individuals and revive them with future technology. In Bainbridge’s ‘Cosmic Order’, this biological revival system can give people a new life. However, a person is only worthy of resurrection and new life if they contribute to the development of the cosmic order. Individuals who make extraordinary contributions will win the right to live multiple times on different planets, thus spreading advanced ideas throughout the galaxy through the principle of ‘survival of the fittest’. In this way, ‘each generation has a moral contract with future generations’. People alive today will not be sacrificed to favor future generations, as future generations will respect this moral contract if they wish their own descendants to do the same.

This interstellar immortal prospect will greatly deepen and enrich human experience. We don’t have to be afraid of living indefinitely. In Jorge Luis Borges’ short story ‘The Immortals’, the infinite time makes the cave dwellers’ lives dull and rigid, because ‘every action (and every thought) is the echo of past actions’. However, in the cosmic context, people can live new lives in a new world, gaining broader and richer experiences and personalities. In his influential essay ‘Time without end: physics and biology in an open universe’, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson provides quantitative evidence of how an open universe will provide an expanding domain of life, consciousness, and memory. No matter how far we go into the future, new things will always happen and new worlds will be waiting to be explored. If this is true, we must continue to advance the expansion of our consciousness across time and space.

DeSci is ushering in a revolutionary era of scientific research, revitalizing human progress. Now is the time for us to boldly pursue our ambitions. Guided by cosmicism, we should strive to expand the space and time of humanity before civilization falls into a catastrophic trajectory. Borrowing a quote from the philosopher and science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon in “Star Maker”: “There is a race between the perfection of the universe and the death of the universe, and there is a race between the full awakening of cosmic consciousness and eternal slumber.” CryoDAO is firmly advancing the perfection of the universe and the awakening of consciousness. Just as the biocosmic poet Olga Loz wrote over a century ago:

I pierce the soul of the blade into death****

Go tear apart the darkness of the grave****

Death God is a nauseating deity

Overturned by the hand of reason!