Hopefully like book burning, grant canceling never becomes the norm. Even so, decentralizing how public money reaches science using state‑issued, US Treasury‑backed, zk‑proof stablecoins could introduce state-by-state comparative advantage to funding with skin in the game discipline.
Its not inconceivable, A state‑issued stablecoin model already exists: Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) is fully backed by dollars and short‑term Treasuries, over collateralized, and run under a dedicated commission structure.
The GENIUS Act and related banking guidance) require full reserves, independent audits, and clear redemption rights; zk‑proofs are emerging as a tool to prove reserves and compliance without exposing detailed positions.
Zero‑knowledge tools can also support state-residents to fund private, compliant payments (zk‑KYC, selective disclosure), allowing research funding flows to be democratized, auditable to regulators and institutions while preserving some transactional privacy on public chains.
Each state could issue a USD‑Treasury‑backed token under a common federal framework, but design different fee structures,grant‑allocation DAOs, matching rules, or risk profiles (e.g., long‑term basic science versus near‑market innovation) to create comparative advantages.
States that design low‑friction, high‑integrity, fast‑settling funding mechanisms would attract researchers, institutions, and private co‑funders, while states that politicize token‑denominated grants would lose talent and on‑chain capital flows over time.
Treasury‑backed reserves create a feedback loop: demand for state tokens indirectly supports federal borrowing via Treasury purchases, tying scientific innovation incentives to a liquid, standardized asset rather than ad‑hoc appropriations battles.
The NSF Tech Labs Initiative is a significant reframing of this problem. I'd argue that the grant-based structure itself is bad for science, and focused research organizations will be better. Definitely read the Convergent Research overview:
Brillaint piece on the ripple efects here. The PhD pipeline concern you raise is especially sharp since these students are mid-commitment when funding vanishes, unlike budget cuts where ppl can adjust beforehand. I ran into somethign similar during my postdoc when a collaborator's NSF grant got reassesed midway and watching that scramble firsthand was brutal. The automatic payout idea for terminations feels like the right incentive fix to make agencies think twice before pulling the plug.
> having 50 different science funders would be inefficient and lead to redundancy
There's no legal barrier preventing states from jointly coordinating science funding, just politics and ego.
But I agree that wouldn't solve the problem by itself. We need to change norms around science funding to make it explicitly apolitical. Giving block grants to independent non-governmental agencies would be one way to do this. Without direct political returns from targeted initiatives, overall funding may decrease. But the corresponding reduction in bureaucracy and regulation might be worth it. (And political initiatives are rarely successful in practice.)
It may feel too obvious to say, but I still see some who deny it, in word or published article, and so I think it is important to say. The best way to make grants resilient is to make sure they have bipartisan support. That won't help substantially against a President who is actively trying to cause pain and suffering to an institution to give him negotiating leverage, and it has limited benefit when someone like Elon Musk can listen more to Twitter than anyone thoughtful, but I thought at the time it was a mistake to let so much of the academy be so visibly opposed to conservatives.
The MAGA party embracing electoral denialism (unless they win), antisemitism, and other conspiracy theories makes it more, not less, important that work be something the median person of the opposite party would, if thoughtful and well-informed, be interested in supporting as part of the broad research package. Selling biochemistry is difficult enough: we need to work to recognize that politicization is a spectrum and we need to move back from where we are.
I think this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on. The system doesn’t have real guardrails, and never did. The conventions we loved under, even if recorded as laws, were just conventions. If the president wants to change funding, he can, especially with a supreme court that is willing to support his idea of executive privilege.
There will be no guardrails.
Congress could fully fund research up front, cash on hand. That would provide a means of protection, or the financial sector could insure the grant for a part of all research, because we are loath to make the financial sector suffer in any way.
Hopefully like book burning, grant canceling never becomes the norm. Even so, decentralizing how public money reaches science using state‑issued, US Treasury‑backed, zk‑proof stablecoins could introduce state-by-state comparative advantage to funding with skin in the game discipline.
Its not inconceivable, A state‑issued stablecoin model already exists: Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) is fully backed by dollars and short‑term Treasuries, over collateralized, and run under a dedicated commission structure.
The GENIUS Act and related banking guidance) require full reserves, independent audits, and clear redemption rights; zk‑proofs are emerging as a tool to prove reserves and compliance without exposing detailed positions.
Zero‑knowledge tools can also support state-residents to fund private, compliant payments (zk‑KYC, selective disclosure), allowing research funding flows to be democratized, auditable to regulators and institutions while preserving some transactional privacy on public chains.
Each state could issue a USD‑Treasury‑backed token under a common federal framework, but design different fee structures,grant‑allocation DAOs, matching rules, or risk profiles (e.g., long‑term basic science versus near‑market innovation) to create comparative advantages.
States that design low‑friction, high‑integrity, fast‑settling funding mechanisms would attract researchers, institutions, and private co‑funders, while states that politicize token‑denominated grants would lose talent and on‑chain capital flows over time.
Treasury‑backed reserves create a feedback loop: demand for state tokens indirectly supports federal borrowing via Treasury purchases, tying scientific innovation incentives to a liquid, standardized asset rather than ad‑hoc appropriations battles.
The NSF Tech Labs Initiative is a significant reframing of this problem. I'd argue that the grant-based structure itself is bad for science, and focused research organizations will be better. Definitely read the Convergent Research overview:
https://open.substack.com/pub/convergentresearch/p/the-future-of-focused-research-organizations?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=76x4s
Brillaint piece on the ripple efects here. The PhD pipeline concern you raise is especially sharp since these students are mid-commitment when funding vanishes, unlike budget cuts where ppl can adjust beforehand. I ran into somethign similar during my postdoc when a collaborator's NSF grant got reassesed midway and watching that scramble firsthand was brutal. The automatic payout idea for terminations feels like the right incentive fix to make agencies think twice before pulling the plug.
> having 50 different science funders would be inefficient and lead to redundancy
There's no legal barrier preventing states from jointly coordinating science funding, just politics and ego.
But I agree that wouldn't solve the problem by itself. We need to change norms around science funding to make it explicitly apolitical. Giving block grants to independent non-governmental agencies would be one way to do this. Without direct political returns from targeted initiatives, overall funding may decrease. But the corresponding reduction in bureaucracy and regulation might be worth it. (And political initiatives are rarely successful in practice.)
It may feel too obvious to say, but I still see some who deny it, in word or published article, and so I think it is important to say. The best way to make grants resilient is to make sure they have bipartisan support. That won't help substantially against a President who is actively trying to cause pain and suffering to an institution to give him negotiating leverage, and it has limited benefit when someone like Elon Musk can listen more to Twitter than anyone thoughtful, but I thought at the time it was a mistake to let so much of the academy be so visibly opposed to conservatives.
The MAGA party embracing electoral denialism (unless they win), antisemitism, and other conspiracy theories makes it more, not less, important that work be something the median person of the opposite party would, if thoughtful and well-informed, be interested in supporting as part of the broad research package. Selling biochemistry is difficult enough: we need to work to recognize that politicization is a spectrum and we need to move back from where we are.
I think this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on. The system doesn’t have real guardrails, and never did. The conventions we loved under, even if recorded as laws, were just conventions. If the president wants to change funding, he can, especially with a supreme court that is willing to support his idea of executive privilege.
There will be no guardrails.
Congress could fully fund research up front, cash on hand. That would provide a means of protection, or the financial sector could insure the grant for a part of all research, because we are loath to make the financial sector suffer in any way.