• Work

• External Shocks

• Reshaping organizational forms

The recent rise of decentralized science (DeSci) challenges the conventional forms of scientific knowledge production, dominated by research universities and later complemented by corporate research centers. Taking the form of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), DeSci enables direct collaboration between researchers, funders, and communities, potentially bypassing traditional intermediaries such as publishers and funding agencies. DeSci's ambitious agenda includes democratizing governance, introducing token-based funding models, creating new digital infrastructure and ensuring transparency and inclusivity in scientific processes. Despite its rapid growth – evidenced by the establishment of more than 50 DeSci DAOs by the winter of 2024, according to the web3 research project OnChain – the movement faces challenges in justifying itself in the eyes of both the scientific and crypto communities. This study examines how DeSci DAOs theorize their activities to legitimize the establishment of a new organizational field. This study explores how these organizations combine traditional scientific norms with the technological ideological legacies of early blockchain and current crypto world visions to explain DeSci mission and particular organizational goals. The exploratory research integrates David, Sine, and Haveman's (2013) theory of institutional entrepreneurship with Akrich's (1992) concepts of in-scription and de-scription from the science and technology studies. According to the first, we expect the problems of science and crypto solutions to be reformulated to be more consistent with each other, while emphasizing the proximity to established norms and practices of science and broader societal values. According to the second, organizations should distance themselves from the anarchistic early legacies of the technology and reformulate the current meaning of blockchain technology and describe the purpose, functions, and implications in new contexts, taking into account the needs of stakeholders in science. Empirically, the study draws on documentation from 25 research-centered DeSci DAOs actively working by spring 2024, including whitepapers, governance protocols, community guidelines, and funding mechanisms. A qualitative coding approach identifies recurring themes related to problem definition, norm formation, and technological theorization. The analysis identified 5 approaches to the theorization in DeSci: crypto-libertarian, crypto-commonal, open science, commonal open science, and libertarian open science. Initially inspired by open science problem definitions, DeSci's solutions increasingly reflect the influence of the crypto organization field, particularly the Ethereum ecosystem. The dominant crypto-commonal approach prioritizes collaborative governance and resource sharing, marking a departure from the libertarian ethos of early blockchain projects. However, it fails to integrate crypto solutions with existing scientific norms, deviating from the foundational goals of open science. This influence comes not from the original design of the technology, but from its reinterpretation within the crypto field, which shapes DeSci through technological adaptations and resource support. This study contributes to understanding the interplay of technology and institutional entrepreneurship in the creation of new organizational fields. By exploring how technological inscriptions are redefined and translated into new contexts, it highlights the different levels of technological influence in fostering a new organizational field. References: Akrich, M. (1992). The De-scription of Technical Objects. Shaping Technology- Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. David, R. J., Sine, W. D., & Haveman, H. A. (2013). Seizing Opportunity in Emerging Fields: How Institutional Entrepreneurs Legitimated the Professional Form of Management Consulting. Organization Science, 24(2), 356–377. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1120.0745

How is blockchain technology being reframed for scientific use and what prior uses are influential?

• External data
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• Text Analysis

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• Unstructured

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