Author: KKK
Once seen as a pioneer in the 'fusion of science and crypto', the leading $BIO of the DeSci track has faced pressure since its launch in January this year - despite having top investors including Vitalik Buterin and CZ behind it, it has still been unable to escape the dual impact of market conditions and liquidity, with its market value once shrinking by 95% from its opening peak, becoming a focal point of community dissatisfaction and skepticism, and pulling down the track that once produced the billion-dollar market cap myths of $RIF and $URO.
However, with the recent official launch of BIO Protocol V2, introducing new mechanisms such as Launchpad and staking points, the total amount staked surpassed 100 million BIO within a week, and the market value rapidly doubled, surpassing $200 million, reigniting market interest and imagination for the DeSci track.
Why has the luxurious $BIO fallen from grace?
BIO's listing story was originally a highlight moment for the DeSci track: leading exchanges such as Binance, OKX, and Kraken came together, and the trading volume on the first day of TGE surpassed $2 billion, with FDV once reaching $250 million, making it one of the most sensational scientific crypto asset launches at the beginning of 2025. However, beneath the excitement lay the seeds of a price drop.
However, the heat of this feast did not last long. BIO adopted an auction model for issuance, with an initial circulation ratio higher than most new coins. Coupled with a valuation that was pushed up upon listing, it appeared overpriced in the absence of immediate utility. In the early market, buyers were more driven by narrative and sentiment rather than practical value. When key functionalities such as Launchpad, staking systems, and BioXP points were still in the planning stage, investors quickly realized that the tokens they held could not bring actual returns in terms of participation benefits or governance rights in the short term. The gap between valuation and use cases became the first force driving the price down from its peak.
BIO's downturn is also closely related to rhythm issues. Core functionalities did not launch simultaneously on TGE day, leading to a loss of confidence during the waiting period in the market. In terms of ecosystem expansion, the arrangement of Molecule Catalyst independently operating the Launchpad diluted funding and attention, weakening the cohesion of the main platform. Coupled with the macro market entering a phase of reduced risk appetite, funds quickly withdrew from high FDV projects with no immediate cash flow. The lack of sustained news support and coordination with product implementation rhythms caused BIO, once a star project at the beginning of the year, to gradually fall into a trough of thin trading and price bottoming.
The resurgence of BIO Protocol.
Creating an accelerated experimental ground for scientific research.
In the first half of 2025, BIO Protocol has gone through a tumultuous journey - sliding from the peak of narrative at the beginning of the year to a price trough, yet its pace has not slowed down. It has not only delivered the most dazzling market performance in the DeSci track but has also pushed several biopharmaceuticals to the brink of clinical trials, allowing 'on-chain research' to catch a whiff of real medical validation for the first time.
The price pullback has not deterred the team's ambition; instead, it has led to more construction actions: in May, BIO postponed the unlocking of team and advisor tokens through community governance, sending a signal to the market that 'we are here for the long haul'. The progress of scientific research is equally noteworthy - VitaRNA and VitaFAST both initiated clinical trials in the UAE, taking only 11 months from concept to enrollment, while traditional models often require 4-6 years; 14 compounds predicted by AI to have over 85% success rates are awaiting therapeutic readouts in Q3. Meanwhile, five new BioDAOs, including QBIO, Long Covid Labs, Curetopia, SpineDAO, and MycoDAO, have been established, raising a total of $8.9 million this year, continuously fueling this high-speed scientific research machine.
V2: A leap from DeSci 1.0 to DeSci 2.0.
Additionally, the BIO team officially launched Bio Protocol V2 in August, aiming to shift scientific research financing and execution into 'high-speed mode', addressing pain points such as high FDV at launch, lack of immediate functionality, and ecosystem fragmentation that characterized DeSci 1.0.
The core of V2 lies in four engines:
Low FDV fixed-price initial offering: Following the successful paths of Pump.fun and Virtuals, V2 has reduced the initial project valuation to $205,000 FDV, with 35% of tokens sold directly, and all raised $BIO injected into the liquidity pool, providing depth and price momentum right from the start, tightly binding the community and the project.
BioXP point system: quantifies behaviors such as staking, LP, on-chain interactions, and social dissemination into points, linked with DeSci Score. Points are valid for 14 days and used to allocate quotas for low FDV projects, with high-participation users continuously enjoying priority opportunities.
Staking & veBIO: Staking BIO not only earns points but also provides governance voting rights; staking other assets within the ecosystem yields a higher point return, encouraging support for the entire network.
Liquidity Engine: Automatically generates LP after the initial offering, charging a 1% transaction fee on every trade in the secondary market (70% goes to the project treasury, 30% goes to the protocol), forming a positive cycle of 'active trading - increased research funding - advancement of results - renewed market enthusiasm'.
Accelerate implementation, welcome a new cycle of DeSci.
VitaRNA and VitaFAST are pushing DeSci from concept to reality. The two drugs will simultaneously advance trials in the UAE, Singapore, and Switzerland, and are expected to become the first cases of drugs fully funded by DeSci that enter the clinical phase at a cost of less than $500,000 within two years. This not only breaks the traditional barriers of drug development, which often takes years and costs tens of millions of dollars but also sets a benchmark for on-chain scientific research. Meanwhile, BIO is collaborating with Pfizer to explore a compliant Intellectual Property Tokenization (IPT) model, establishing a new capital flow and value distribution mechanism for future drug development.
Bio Protocol will launch decentralized research agents to automate key research processes such as drug screening, clinical operations, and fund allocation. The upcoming BIO Copilot will serve as an on-chain research assistant for scientists, pushing research into a programmable, scalable, and machine collaboration-driven phase, allowing research to break free from human bottlenecks and enter a high-frequency iterative intelligent track.
Moreover, the flywheel of capital and market has quietly started. Launchpad 2.0 plans to launch 10-20 low market cap projects in the coming months, covering areas such as Agent, IPT, and research tools, with an average fundraising of $70,000. The Base chain will launch first, followed closely by Solana. Meanwhile, the 'Founding LP Program' is attracting liquidity providers willing to invest over $100,000 in BIO LP with return incentives, point bonuses, priority allocations, and exclusive support for participants. By drawing on the flywheel model of high new investment returns from projects like Virtuals, BIO seeks to ignite a new wave of market enthusiasm, creating a closed loop of research funding flow, token flow, and information flow, driving the arrival of 'Scientific Singularity'.
What is DeSci? A decentralized engine to accelerate scientific research.
If the operational logic of traditional science resembles a massive steam engine, decentralized science (DeSci) is more like a high-speed electric motor - lighter, faster, and more transparent.
In the past, the funding sources for scientific research were almost firmly held by government foundations, academic institutions, and large pharmaceutical companies. A project often had to go through several months or even years of approval processes from project application to funding disbursement; research results were locked behind expensive paywalls, and even publicly funded research projects could not be accessed for free by the general public. The storage of research data, the ownership of intellectual property, and the transformation of results were all tightly controlled by centralized institutions and processes. Although this model is stable, it also leads to inefficiencies, conservatism, and a natural rejection of disruptive innovation.
What DeSci aims to disrupt is this top-down, slow, and closed scientific ecology. It uses the open ledger of blockchain to make the flow of funds, progress of results, and data usage completely transparent; it replaces small review panels with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), allowing the fate of research projects to be decided by a broader community vote; and it employs a tokenized incentive mechanism to deeply bind early supporters to the benefits of research outcomes, thereby attracting more funds and talent. This model not only shortens the funding turnover cycle of scientific research but also breaks down barriers of discipline and geography through global collaboration, giving previously hard-to-fund innovative ideas the opportunity to materialize.
In this track, BIO Protocol is undoubtedly a representative and ambitious player. It not only provides early financing channels for biotech projects but also builds a complete set of infrastructure including project selection, fundraising, on-chain liquidity management, data transparency, and research automation. Through BIO, researchers can 'crowdfund' research funding directly from the global community like launching a crypto project; investors can intervene in the project's initial stages and share the profits when research outcomes are commercialized. Compared to traditional research, what BIO aims to achieve is a scientific ecology that does not require waiting for funding approval, is not monopolized by a single institution, and allows everyone to participate and benefit.
Summary
BIO Protocol has experienced dramatic fluctuations from its high-profile launch earlier this year to a price bottom mid-year, but it has achieved a phase rebound with the launch of V2. The new low FDV initial offering, point staking, and liquidity mechanisms have injected new momentum into the ecosystem and reignited market interest in the DeSci track. However, whether this rebound can continue and bring stable new investment returns still depends on the rhythm of project implementation and market conditions, with short-term uncertainties still present.
