- Ascendance.io’s “upvote” model for prioritizing biomedical research was criticized as gameable by mainstream campaigns and for lacking a clear mechanism that ties larger donations to stronger voting power.  
- Participants debated whether blockchains actually improve anonymity for sensitive research funding; they concluded that Ethereum is not anonymous and that simpler off-chain mixing or gift-card schemes can achieve equivalent privacy without blockchain complexity.  
- A distributed web-of-trust to prevent Sybil attacks was identified as an unsolved prerequisite for Ascendance, with the observation that the project appears to assume such software already exists.  
- Practical paths to human genetic engineering were mapped: IVF clinics behave like physician partnerships, Europe is constrained by anti-GMO sentiment, and East Asia (especially China and Korea) is seen as the most permissive region, already offering embryo selection and routine pediatric HGH.  
- A “genetic lottery” crowdfunding concept was proposed—100 couples each pay $1 k, one couple wins subsidized embryo engineering—raising the ethical issue of creating an un-enhanced control group.  
- Dog-based bio-experiments were dismissed as politically untenable; participants judged that public outrage would outweigh any scientific benefit, despite dogs being used as protein sources in some cultures.  
- Brain-upload scanning techniques discussed included nanopore arrays under high vacuum, MEMS multi-beam SEMs, and low-vacuum environmental SEMs; concerns centered on tissue dehydration and the need for cell-boundary labeling.  
- DropSynth, a new low-cost gene-synthesis method using emulsion microfluidics and bar-coded beads, was highlighted; it enables thousands of gene variants to be built from microarray oligos in a single reaction, demonstrated on bacterial essential-gene homologs.  
- A new bioRxiv preprint warning about pre-existing human immunity to Cas9 proteins was shared, flagged as a potential barrier to in-vivo CRISPR therapies.