What is PsyDAO? It is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that is focused on the sustainable and ethical advancement of psychedelic medicines. PsyDAO believes that these life-changing compounds should be developed and commercialized in a way that is aligned with the values of the patients, users, researchers, funders and communities involved in their development.

In this time of a psychedelic renaissance, compounds like psilocybin, LSD, MDMA and ketamine are being re-examined as legitimate medicines to treat mental health conditions. However, the influx of companies entering the psychedelic industry has led to an influx of patent applications, marking the beginning of the journey to commercialization.

PsyDAO intends to be a hivemind, a literal collective consciousness for the ethical development of psychedelics. The organization aims to fund and democratize early-stage psychedelic research and intellectual property (IP) through the use of tokenized ownership, community governance, and open-source technology.

PsyDAO will hold IP rights in underlying research projects that it supports, which will be attached to ‘IP NFTs’. Additionally, for compounds where IP claims are possible, PsyDAO will develop a portfolio that is actively managed by the community to democratize development and access. For naturally-occurring compounds such as psilocybin, PsyDAO aims to create powerful, open-source data repositories that will be governed by the community.

The IP tokenization system used by PsyDAO is a combination of meme magic and mathemagic, built with the help of partners at Molecule and VitaDAO. This system enables PsyDAO to create open research and participation markets for known psychedelics, selectively distributing rights and benefits to partners and contributors.