Crowdfunding and Crowdsourcing of Aging Science

Crowdsourcing is a term that describes a method of distributed effort by which a goal is accomplished by a large group of people, typically initiated by a public call-to-action and is a portmanteau of the words "crowd" and "outsourcing" coined in 2005. Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture via crowdsourced financial contributions. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding have been used to advance scientific progress for hundreds of years, with the frequency and scale of their use rapidly increasing during the twenty-first century, thanks to the advent of the internet and the mainstream adoption of related connective technologies. The field of aging research has uniquely benefited from this trend, with the emergence of multiple communities and platforms designed to coordinate gerontology funding and research collaboration. Furthermore, the recent widespread adoption of blockchain technology is also creating powerful new opportunities to crowdfund and crowdsource aging research specifically.