The decentralized science (DeSci) movement, poised to revolutionize research through blockchain’s promise of transparency and democratization, faces a critical juncture. As projects proliferate, fundamental contradictions have emerged between their stated ideals and operational realities—tensions that threaten to undermine the very goals of open, permissionless innovation. From Schrödinger’s IP, which shackles decentralized ownership to state-enforced patents, to Surveillance Publishing, where immutable ledgers expose researchers to retroactive deanonymization, these paradoxes reveal systemic flaws in current DeSci frameworks. At their core, these issues stem from unresolved conflicts between cypherpunk principles—privacy, decentralization, and anti-authoritarianism—and concessions to legacy systems of intellectual property, regulatory compliance, and centralized governance. This article dissects 10 (+1 bonus) such critical failures, demonstrating how they resurrect the very gatekeepers DeSci aims to dismantle, while proposing radical cryptographic solutions rooted in zero-knowledge proofs, prediction markets, and adversarial accountability mechanisms. By confronting these challenges head-on, we chart a path toward a DeSci ecosystem that truly embodies its founding ethos: a world where knowledge is a commons, governance is meritocratic, and innovation flourishes free from centralized control.

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