VDP-157: Develop VitaDAO’s first longevity product

One-liner: Develop VitaDAO’s first longevity product

Team: Alex Dobrin, Benji Leibowitz, Lukas Weidener, Paul Kohlhaas, et al

Objective: Develop scientifically-backed longevity products for the longevity community, advancing VitaDAO’s mission of promoting longevity research, and exploring new ways to deliver value to VitaDAO token holders.

Project Overview: This proposal aims to create a longevity supplement product offered and co-branded by VitaDAO. The product candidates will contain the ingredients submitted in the Longevity Prize. These ingredients will have life extension data in C elegans. Our goal is to generate a product VitaDAO can offer its members. We hope that the sales revenue can grow the VitaDAO treasury to enable VitaDAO to fund more longevity moonshots.

Key Deliverables:

  1. Data from the cocktails tested as part of the Longevity Prize
  2. Marketplace with all product candidates for pre-order
  3. Coupon codes for VITA and IP Token holders
  4. Shipments of compounds if the products receive enough preorders (200)

Implementation Plan:

  1. Build a marketplace to enable pre-ordering (Molecule team)

  2. List product candidates on pump.science (Web3 pod)

  3. List compounds on the marketplace for pre-ordering (Web3 pod)

  4. If any of the ~20 product candidates reaches 200 pre-orders, orders will be fulfilled

  5. All manufacturing, testing, and shipping of the product will be handled by an external partner (Zola - see below)

  6. VitaDAO has pro rata governance of product revenues based on IPT holdings

  7. VitaDAO will work with the cocktail inventors to secure patents and publications on the ingredients in the products

Timeline: 2 months

Budget: $10,000

This budget will be used to purchase an initial IP Token supply to fund downstream (fly and mice) experiments as part of the pump.science protocol (in development). In short, if the IPT price appreciates, more of this initial supply is sold programmatically to pay for in vivo longevity animal tests. If the IPT does not hit a 60k market cap within a month, the IP tokens will be sold and the proceeds (less 1% fees charged by pump.fun) returned back to VitaDAO.

Rationale

To date, VitaDAO has been singularly focused on funding ambitious longevity research. However, there has been little experimentation around creating consumer products for VitaDAO members that align with the mission of radical lifespan extension. Given VitaDAO’s expertise in biotech, developing a life extension supplement could provide immediate value to its community. While human data on the longevity effects of specific compounds is still limited, VitaDAO has a unique opportunity to generate valuable datasets by engaging its members to test which products positively impact lifespan through biomarkers. Delivering the same product to members is a first step in this direction.

A first product candidate should have the following criteria met:

  1. The product’s ingredients are classified as a supplements or food additives, which will accelerate the speed we can bring the product to members
  2. The product should be relatively low cost to VitaDAO to produce to minimize the financial risk of a pilot
  3. The ingredients should have evidence of lifespan extension in (at least) model organisms, ideally with a synergistic effect
  4. The ingredients should have validated demand within the community prior to productization

In VDP-156 there was strong disagreement with the choice of rapamycin as the active ingredient. Not everyone agrees on what the optimal first product ingredients are, so rather than arbitrarily determine this, we would ideally let the market decide. Neither a survey nor governance actually measure demand, as neither demonstrate a willingness to pay. A marketplace with products for preorder will most accurately measure demand.

Why the partnership with Zola Nutrition

Zola Nutrition is a supplement brand and manufacturer with operations based in Austria. We are exploring a partnership that would help VitaDAO ship a first product via a co-branding deal, where profits will be split between VitaDAO and Zola. We will handle the scientific side (research, whitepaper, formulation) and Zola will manage all logistical services (including sourcing, quoting, formulation, packaging, branding, third party testing, fulfillment and shipping). While we are confident that a partnership with Zola Nutrition can happen, there is nothing tangible in place and a deal will only be pursued after the successful passing of this proposal. If for unforeseen reasons the partnership won’t be closed, we will actively search for comparable opportunities for co-branding and development.

Why the partnership with pump.science

pump.science (PS) is a product for submitting longevity cocktails, tokenizing them, securing the IP, fundraising for in vivo experiments, and streaming the data to users. We think it should be easy to launch a longevity experiment, create a clear path to a potential product, and create a more engaging and interactive experience for users. We want PS to bring more funding and engagement for longevity research, and create a pipeline for longevity products.

In its pilot launch, PS generated significant interest and engagement that can be leveraged for VitaDAO’s benefit:

  1. Driving funding to IP created by VitaDAO
  2. Driving attention and demand to purchase any products VitaDAO commercializes
  3. Enabling research for the compounds originally tested on worms to be tested in flies and mice

Benefit to VitaDAO Members

Ultimately, this is an effort to benefit members of VitaDAO by providing members with access to cutting edge longevity supplements. Our goal is to provide members with the most cutting edge longevity products for personal consumption at low prices… This effort is also intended to support VitaDAO by generating revenue to the treasury to fund more moonshot longevity science.

  • Agree
  • Revisions Requested (Detail in Comments)
  • Disagree
0 voters

This is very interesting! - as well as creating some residential buildings, I would like to offer visitors a diet / supplement / exercise / health and longevity discussion / research place to gather here:

  • feedback appreciated!

I think the idea has promise, but the implementation will face many challenges. It may be better to focus on a few concrete things.

First, I am unclear on the target market. Is this a new way to fundraise off VitaDAO members, or is it aimed at the general population? Either way, demand testing should be the top priority. If you can’t sell, no point wasting time/money on the rest.

Choose your own compounds sounds like a cost-ineffective disaster. Most people don’t want 1000 choices. They want one compounded thing that works. If you’re not sure what the best one is, maybe have a cocktail prize-- have a call for proposals. Test the top 5-10 in worms or flies, and give the winner equity in the company and/or a cash prize. Then test the pilot run for the top few choices in the team for taste, solubility, etc, give the winner equity/cash and tweak from there. While I believe we should build a product we stand behind, this is standard eCom. Test demand, spin up a product, sell said product. Does it work? No one will be able to validate if it works or not because the real experiment takes 30-80 years. Will there be biomarker tests and other social proof tests later? Sure. Preferably by someone with zero relationship to VitaDAO. Do I want the product to work? Of course. But more important to ship than to dither or bury people under tons of choices.

This is also why I am uncertain about the potential Zola partnership. Better to pay Zola for a service than split profits or equity. And white-labeling (or sourcing from SE Asia) may be cheaper. The eCom bros use AI to manage some of the stuff you want Zola to do, and do fulfillment/shipping themselves at first. For example, see the various bowtied eCom successes in the past few years like NOBS by Gator/Fawn, RampHealth by Brosiedan, Morning Would by Kobra, and PreSleep by VampDeer.

Think the implementation should be landing page/demand testing/sourcing. Also isolate as a newCo to limit liability.

IP should be something different. Doubt that most of the compounds that are supplements/food additives/cheap can be protected. This is longer term and will take research so that Rx drugs can be used.

What relation will this have to VitaLABS?

1 Like

Thanks for your questions @bowtiedshrike <3

The primary goal is not to fundraise, but provide value and test demand. Tried to emphasize this in the proposal as I agree with you completely that this is the top priority.

I must say I’m a bit confused here. Your suggestion is almost to the tee exactly what this proposal states. We’re not listing 1000, we’re listing 20 (close to the 5-10 you suggested). We had a call for proposals, and that was the Longevity Prize, all of which have been tested on worms already, and the top three are getting a cash prize! Maybe i’m missing something.

The Zola partnership (or a similar one), is to work with a brand and manufacturer with supply chains and manufacturing set up already. What you’re talking about with sourcing from SE Asia may indeed be cheaper, but doesn’t guarantee a baseline level of quality that we would want in the first products delivered to Vita members. As you said, testing demand is more important than anything else (including cost efficiency).

This is exactly the plan.

Ideally, Vita Labs is continuously submitting new longevity cocktail ideas, which can be pre-orderable products through the marketplace, at any point they choose to. We want Vita Labs to be the power users of this, testing many longevity cocktails and productizing the best performers.

From the proposal, it sounds like people mix and match these 20 options ala cart. That is 19 options too many in my opinion.

I am talking one product. One product that is a pre-set blend of whatever things you think will best work that are non-Rx. Sell that one product, and then think about adding different flavors and then other options based on feedback from customers.

The demand test comes before you have the product manufactured. Cart has an ‘out of stock’ when they try to check out, so no card is charged. That way you know how well the ads convert.

I agree quality needs to be #1. I also do not trust any manufacturer (in the US, Europe, SE Asia), so the product will need to be tested by a third party. Since cost factors into demand, the challenge will be finding quality from SE Asian providers. But maybe the European costs will be lower, idk.

1 Like

This may be true and fragment orders across multiple products. However there are a few benefits that outweigh this cost imho.

  1. Getting the entire community to agree to a stack will be heinously difficult. Ask two people, get four opinions.
  2. It is very likely that buyers will gravitate to the compounds that perform best in the model organisms

I think there would be vigorous discussion, but I think it is possible. I also think one compromise or consensus stack will sell better than trying to make your own.

I don’t quite get the value-add to buying single compounds. Why would I buy single components from some VitaDAO marketplace instead of any other third party? Why would I think a single component is going to make a big enough difference to warrant purchasing it?

Also disagree on the ‘perform best in model organisms.’ for two reasons. First, things like Nattokinase belong in any longevity stack, but I would be surprised if it helps C elegans or Drosophila because they don’t have a real circulatory system. Second, if the target audience is large enough to make this sustainable, the buyers will purchase what is sold to them. The specific compounds matter less than the marketing-- they will trust the authority rather than dig through 1000 papers.

Can agree to disagree here, but I appreciate you raising this. We can converge on an “Immortality Stack” as we see interest from the individual compounds, I believe. One other thing to keep in mind is cost. More ingredients = more expensive. Another reason to not start with the full “Immortality Stack” product.

We are not using single compounds but rather cocktails submitted as part of the longevity program as mentioned below. Out of the 22 eligible cocktails submitted, only one has a single compound in it.

I agree it’s not perfect. If/when we incorporate human data in the future, this should be more important to consumers than the animal data.

We don’t have to make them read 1000 papers here, just look at small amounts of open source data that has been generated, both in raw form and summarized (percentage lifespan extension in different animals). This is certainly more transparent than others out there, nor does it require reading 1000 papers.

Thanks bowtied