A Quick Look at the Sci-Hub Controversy: Is It Helping Science or Just a Game of Money?

Is it good or bad for scientific research projects to make money by speculating on Meme and then donating it?

Written by Alex Liu, Foresight News

DeSci + Meme heat is unabated, is there any good perspective? Do these Meme coins really contribute to Science? Some people can't stand it anymore and shout (constantly hyping desci), 'Have you ever donated a penny to sci-hub?'

What is Sci-hub?

According to Wikipedia, Sci-Hub is a shadow library that uses various methods to bypass publishers' paywalls. In 2011, Kazakh graduate student Alexandra Elbakyan founded Sci-Hub because the cost of research papers behind paywalls was too high. Its users are all over the world. In February 2021, Sci-Hub's homepage showed that it stored over 85 million articles.

Sci-Hub and Elbakyan have been accused twice of copyright infringement in the United States. Both times, they lost because the defendants were absent. Sci-Hub has won praise from the scientific, academic, and publishing communities for its ability to effectively disseminate scientific knowledge and provide research results funded by the government to the public for free. Publishers criticize it for copyright infringement, which reduces their own income and endangers the network security of universities (although publishers may be exaggerating the threat. Sci-Hub also encourages publishers to set up more stringent paywalls).

During her defense of Sci-Hub, Elbakyan would in turn question the ethicality of the publishers' commercial practices and whether they comply with Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She insists that operating Sci-Hub is a moral imperative, and the law should not stand in her way. She once said, 'If all Americans obeyed unjust laws, then they would still be under the rule of the Queen today, and slavery would continue to exist.'

Meme coin scihub

"Have you ever donated a penny to sci-hub?" 0xAA, the former chairman of the Peking University Blockchain Association, thought this question made sense, so he donated 0.1 ETH.

But if it only stops at donations, there won't be any exciting stories afterwards - 0xAA bought 22% of the supply of scihub's namesake meme coin.

The meme coin called scihub surged to a market cap of $70 million overnight. Meanwhile, 22% of the holdings of 0xAA's tokens are worth tens of millions of dollars. Will he donate 20% of the tokens as promised? Will donating 20% of the supply rationalize this almost crazy speculation?

At the beginning, Sci-hub's founder, Elbakyan, did not approve of the project.

But later she added an option to accept donations in SOL Wallet on the Sci-hub website.

Afterwards, 0xAA represents that Consensus has been reached with Elbakin and will donate 20% of Tokens as promised.

Dispute

The incident has sparked great controversy in the Chinese community, mainly divided into two points:

Rat trading allegations

Someone accused 0xAA of rat trading, only 22% of the tokens held in its public wallet, the actual number of controlled tokens is much higher than this ratio.

Why not just donate directly?

Is it to support scientific research or a money game? Some people think that direct donations should be made instead of using the hype of meme.

0xAA also said, 'I want to make money, the kind that we all make together.' I hope everyone can win together, not only profit from meme coins but also support the operation of Sci-hub.

Supporter's perspective

Opponents have their own views, and the community also has many people who support the behavior of 0xAA, comparing it to the behavior of fundraising with MEME and donating part of the chips, similar to the pattern of a lottery.