Project Leads (PSYC Holders):** Tyler (@TyQu), Chris (@Chris🔥)

Contact: tyler@psydao.io, chris@reimagineip.xyz

Overview

Challenges

Psychedelics like psilocybin, MDMA, and LSD have shown promising results in clinical trials, however, the vast majority of psychedelic experiences occur in non-clinical, natural settings. Traditional research methods often fail to capture these experiences, limiting our scientific grasp of psychedelics' true effects on human consciousness and well-being.

Among the naturalistic psychedelic studies that have been completed, most do not follow standardized, open science practices. For example, they typically do not share data, diminishing their scientific utility. A number of commercial entities are also developing similar psychedelic data collection; however, a community-oriented open science counterproject should be more attractive to the vast majority of psychedelic users.

Solution

This proposal seeks funding to build and run OPSY, a web3-native, open-access data collection platform, described in detail in the OPSY whitepaper authored by Balázs Szigeti, Warren Winter, and Chris Byrnes.

OPSY aims to:

1. Improve access to psychedelic use and experience data: OPSY is designed to support naturalistic studies, which can complement and strengthen clinical trial studies on the effects and safety of psychedelic substances.
2. Improve research standards within the psychedelic field: Open science practices, such as hypothesis pre-registration (e.g., via Proof of Idea), data sharing, and open source publishing will be conditions to utilize OPSY tools.
3. Create bidirectional incentives: Through OPSY, researchers receive data from participants while participants receive tokens, governance, and ownership rights over their data.

OPSY is a direct projection of PsyDAO's mission to transform the entrenched modes of psychedelic research. By enabling decentralized data collection and governance, OPSY empowers researchers to tackle complex and underexplored questions in psychedelic science that are often beyond the reach of traditional methodologies.

By funding OPSY, PsyDAO will enable the formation of a collectively owned and curated library of psychedelic knowledge, built collaboratively between psychedelic researchers and users. Following principles of open science and Ostrom-compliant IP commoning, OPSY will share datasets for non-commercial purposes, but charge for commercial use.

As for the types of datasets that OPSY collects and could have commercial value, we believe that OPSY can open up new ways to collect currently non-existent datasets, including large-N datasets on understudied groups (e.g., those with bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, etc.).

All commercialization decisions around the datasets will ultimately be made by the OPSY IPT holders who actually govern the platform and library.

Figure 1: Technical diagram of OPSY token flows for funding and participation incentivization

For further details about OPSY structure, see the whitepaper.

Governance & Oversight

To ensure oversight, transparency, and accountability to PsyDAO, we propose creating an OPSY multisig nested inside the Science WG. This multisig will hold the OPSY IP-NFT and manage the treasury for projects delegated by the Science WG. It will have 3 signatories:

1. PSYC-holding OPSY Project Lead/Conductor
   1. Is primary steward of the OPSY IP-NFT and will be PSYC-holder Tyler Quigley
   2. Has legally enforceable duty of care towards PsyDAO (pursuant to the terms of being a PSYC holder)
2. Science WG multisig or delegate
   1. Provides oversight over the treasury delegated from the Science WG to the OPSY multisig and the representative will be chosen by the Science WG while excluding the Project Lead/Conductor (i.e, Tyler) from the elections
3. OPSY IPT delegate
   1. Provides local accountability and oversight from OPSY IPT community with legally enforceable duty of care towards OPSY IP-NFT (pursuant to standard IPT agreement)
   2. Representative will be chosen by the IPT community while excluding both other multisig signatories

Upon approval of this proposal, we will mint this proposal and project plan into the OPSY IP-NFT. When minting, we will also tokenize the IP-NFT into IPTs, which will be used to administer the development and implementation of the OPSY IP-NFT (i.e., this OPSY Project Plan). A total of 102,334,155 OPSY IPTs will be minted (i.e., 40th band of Fibonacci, the same as used for supply of with PSY).

We will token-gate a crowdsale a certain number of IPTs, the number of which will be determined by the PSYC community, upon launch of OPSY and the crowdsale of which will be open to the PSY community (i.e, one must have PSY in order to participate in the OPSY IPT sale), as well as for various projects that use OPSY. For example, we will crowdsale IPTs to raise funds for the OPSY flagship study that we are discussing with Robin Carhart-Harris. We will crowdsale another batch of IPTs for a citizen science study led by Balazs Szigeti on psychedelic use at Boom festival.

Through iteratively crowdselling OPSY project IPTs, we will sell control of OPSY – the platform – to an invested community. Each batch of OPSY sold to support each subsequent project decentralizes ownership over time and across projects.

Milestones & Timeline

| Milestone | Estimated Completion | |---|---| | OPSY Application #1 submitted to PsyDAO | Winter 2025 | | OPSY portal launch | Early Spring 2025 | | OPSY Study #1 commencement | Late Spring/Summer 2025 | | OPSY Application #2 submitted to PsyDAO | Spring 2025 | | OPSY Study #2 commencement | Summer 2025 | | OPSY Study #1 & #2 manuscript submissions | End of 2025 |

Note: Completion estimates subject to change depending on DAO proposal process, researcher needs, etc.

Budget

This funding request is for one year of ongoing development and maintenance of the OPSY tool. It pulls from two funds, Development and Psychedelic Science. The funding requested from the Development Fund is to build out the OPSY platform. The funding requested from the Psychedelic Science Fund is an initial treasury allocation to the OPSY multisig to support the first OPSY projects.

| Development Fund | | | --- | --- | | Expense Category | Amount (USD) | | Qualtrics - Annual License | $15,000 | | Qualtrics - Implementation | $6,300 | | Qualtrics - Support | $3,600 | | Software Dev - Molecule, PsyDAO Layer of OPSY (see whitepaper) | $12,000 | | Total Budget | $36,900 |

| Psychedelic Science Fund | | | --- | --- | | Expense Category | Amount (USD) | | OPSY treasury allocation | $80,000 | | Total Budget | $80,000 |

Note: Because the Qualtrics license fee is annual, a new budget will be submitted each year, along with a review of how well objectives were met during the year. This budget reflects the build and maintenance of OPSY itself - individual projects utilizing OPSY will propose their own budgets through PsyDAO’s proposal process.