Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong’s ResearchHub startup raised $5 million in a funding round led by Open Source Software Capital to expedite the scientific research. The platform is going to reward the scientists with ResearchCoin cryptocurrency for their contributions.
Open Source Scientific Research
According to the blog post published by ResearchHub, the seed round was led by OSS Capital’s Joseph Jacks, Boost VC RedHat’s Bob Young, Guillermo Rauch from Vercel, and Amjad Masad from Replit among others. The panel also included Garry Tan from the popular startup incubator platform, Y Combinator.
ResearchHub was co-founded by Coinbase’s CEO Brain Armstrong and Patrick Joyce with a common belief that scientific research must be like open-source software. In the announcement, they even expressed gratitude for being backed by investors who understand the importance and value of open-source communities.
ResearchCoin (RSC) Crypto Rewards for Scientists
ResearchHub is a tokenized social network and it rewards scientists with its native cryptocurrency ResearchCoin (RSC) for their contributions. In exchange for sharing the research findings in the open-source communities, they can receive these crypto rewards.
After earning the crypto rewards, scientists can use them to compensate other researchers for conducting peer reviews, answering research-related questions, and sharing other kinds of feedback. The blog post even mentioned that their goal is to build an academic town square where valuable research contributions are recognized and appreciated.
Addressing the usage of the funding, the blog post stated,
With this new funding, ResearchHub will be able to expand our platform to reach more scientists world-wide. We will invest in new features and tools that enable our community to work together more efficiently and capture more of the value they help create.
ResearchHub blog post
Overall, ResearchHub is paving the way for a new kind of open-source scientific research method that not only appreciates the research findings of scientists but also rewards them. The platform is also encouraging new researchers to join their teams to contribute to their scientific research.
