Summary
The curation of a DeSci Hub in Singapore and possibly South East Asia (SEA) with VitaDAO. Motivation
The idea of a DAO has always been universal. Although, the DeSci movement is heavily concentrated in Europe. Being an avid longevity advocate and a Singaporean, I want to build a similar driven and passionate community in the SEA region. SEA boasts a dense population (700 million) of young people with a surprisingly large web3 adoption rate.
However, technology is just a tool and I want to cultivate a community toward real-life impact. Longevity research has always been promising in Singapore especially with the recent opening of the National University Health System’s (NUHS) Centre for Healthy Longevity. With the government’s co-sign and more attention being brought to solve ageing, this space’s bloom is inevitable. However, DeSci has not gained traction here, yet. Biopharma is still neither transparent, collaborative nor open source. I want to change that and empower researchers/longevity advocates in Singapore and SEA with the success of VitaDAO.
Specification
I will be leading this project. Although, I’m always open to Vitalians contributing and lending a helping hand if their passions align with my mission.
Implementation
Community is the lifeblood of any project. I want to build a community of quality rather than quantity similar to VitaDAO. I want to help spread the word of DeSci and VitaDAO to Singapore in the hopes of creating more impact in web3, let alone DeSci.
I will be bootstrapping this project for now. However, I am always open to receiving help from the VitaDAO community be it monetarily or not.
Conclusion
Being a Singaporean, ageing is a problem within our population. I think it’s a problem that can be solved. My country thinks so too. However, I think traditional methods might get us stuck in the same barely evolved position we’re caught in today. I have always admired VitaDAO’s vision/mission let alone what you’ve been able to curate thus far. I will continue to be part of VitaDAO as I believe longevity science should be democratised in my home too.
Sounds like a great idea to me to strengthen VitaDAO’s presence in Singapore and South-East Asia. With @Max_Unfried and his university colleagues, we already have a strong academic presence there. That could well be complemented with some more community building amongst crypto enthusiasts as well as a general audience interested in longevity and public health.
I’m absolute for this initial idea and would encourage anyone to map out a stakeholder network throughout Singapore (@consigli3re, Chloe, @Max_Unfried and colleagues, who else?) as well as the wider region with DeSci Japan being quite active recently and planning events for March 2022.
Sounds awesome, fully supportive and maybe we can give some $vita for representing and hosting a VitaDAO specific meetup/conference.
Also can recommend setting this up as a telegram group + meetup.com page potentially for “DeSci Singapore” which we can link on http://desci.global/ and which can apply for funding via setting up a grant for it on the next gitcoin desci round. Similar to https://www.meetup.com/desci-london/.
It was a great meetup today. We had several people attend who are interested in DeSci, DAOs and aging research. We are setting up something more official and regular for the future (meetup[.]com? discord? other channels?)
To support the local DeSci meetup, I volunteer to help with the science part of the meetup and I can also help out with my academic connections and through the “Singapore Longevity and Health Meetup” which I run.
Yeah, I think Japan and South Korea are also open to crypto/DAO, their medical research is advantege in Asia especially Japan. I also heard there’s a physician DAO in Japan.
