Opinion by: Sasha Shilina, Epistime founder and researcher at Paradigm Research Institute
In 2024, nature reported A record-breaking number of scientific paper retraction: more than 10,000 papers obtained from journals due to fraud, copying or flawed methods. Peer analysis, the long spine of academic legitimacy, is under siege. It is very slow, very fuzzy and very easily gamed.
Meanwhile, meanwhile Artificial intelligence Models trained in this flawed data set generate trust but irrelevant output. Papers mention No study yet. Research decisions are guided by influence, not understanding. The Internet, sometimes appreciated as a Democratizing Force for knowledge, is now a field of false information, clicking and manipulated metrics.
We live in an epistemic crisis.
And yet, buried in the unlikely corner of Crypto x and Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) Forums, a new architecture forms. Not for the transfer of the value, but for the validation of the truth.
A layer 2 for knowledge
In the world of crypto, Layer 2S address the scalability issue. They help Ethereum Process more transactions faster and cheaper. But what if the real bottleneck scalability is not financial – it’s epistemological?
Science is not scaling. Reputation hierarchies, journals and funding of Gatekeepers this bottleneck. The brilliant hypotheses died in Grant Purgatory. The replications are unnoticed. Mistakes take years to correct, if before.
What does a “layer 2 for reality” look like? This system changes the scientific hypotheses in things onchain, public, repeated and open to a thorough investigation. Instead of groadcasting social media beliefs, participants bet it, put the skin in the game and expose their beliefs to real danger. Resolving becomes a hybrid process: AI parse models and score evidence, human validators are contests or proves outcomes, and decentralized oracles record the result clearly. Crucially, incentives move away from prestige and towards accuracy, rewarding the right ones, not just fixing.
This is not Decentralized Finance (DEFI). Not at all Decentralized Science (Desci). It is Agentic, Decentralized Science (Descai). More radical, however, it is epistemic finance: the markets built not around coins but claiming.
Betting on the truth
It’s not just gambling in science. This is a relapse structure. Today, the academic economy is a reward that is interesting, incorrect. Strong papers draw the media attention and provide renewal, if their findings will replicate. Meanwhile, the studies of replication, null and quiet work results often disappear.
Markets The script can be flipped. They will pay you to be right. Not to be a strong, famous or blessed institution, but just right about the world. If a biotech researcher predicts that a particular compound will reduce tumor growth by 20% in mice, and they are right, they win. If they are wrong, they will lose. Simple. Transparent. Brutal honestly.
In this model, belief becomes a measurable owner. Knowledge becomes liquid. The market is not just trading tokens; It exchanged the confidence of the epistement.
Oracle Problem has returned -make
In crypto, the ”Oracle problem“The acquisition of real-world data to Blockchain No confidence. In this epistemic architecture, Oracle is not just a price feed. It interferes with what is accepted as reality.
Related: Crypto policy trends to watch in 2025: Privacy, Development and Adoption
It raises uncomfortable questions: who can decide what is true? Can AI serve as a reliable resolver? What happens when markets are wrong?
The answer is no one Oracle. There is a protocol. Resolving becomes a process: part-automated, part-contested and part-historical. Participants are challenging, updating and refining claims. The truth becomes iterative, open-source and adversarial, just like the code.
Yes, it opens the door to epistemic volatility. In a world where even Nobel Laureates made a mistake, wouldn’t it be better than to be deprived?
From publishing to protocols
The Internet is interrupted by publishing. Blockchains are financially interrupted. Today, a third interruption is carried out: the protocolization of knowledge.
In this emerging paradigm, the architecture of the knowledge itself has been reimagined. The papers are no longer static PDFs but the dynamic contracts that are embedded with unpredictable weight, which are designed to inform and evaluate. Cotation becomes more than just scholar actions; They have changed on onchain links recorded with marks of confidence and traceable influence. When a closed gatekeeping ritual, peer analysis emerges into an open, opponent verification market where claims can be challenged, modified and resolved in public views.
In this model, science stops being a static archive and becomes an economic, dynamic and plural lifestyle.
The fact is that the next class of possession
We were making money, time and attention. We do not really price the belief. Not to this day.
A new type of market has emerged, one who does not reward the speculation but the verification -a Civic instrument for the alignment of incentives around reality at an age of noise. The question is not whether these markets are dangerous. All markets are. The question is: Can’t we just try?
If crypto is a new Internet, we need more than memes, memecoins and monkeys JPEG. We need infrastructure for the next period of epistemia: for verification what is important, if it is important, publicly.
The next big layer is not for the money. This is for the truth.
Opinion by: Sasha Shilina, founder of episteme and researcher at the Paradigm Research Institute.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be done as legal or investment advice. The views, attitudes, and opinions expressed here are unique and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of the cointelegraph.
