In 2013, together with Alexei Navalny and Dmitry Gudkov began searching for undeclared property of high-ranking officials: Andrey Zayakin was then known in the blogosphere under the nickname "Doctor Z" (doct_z).

[7] These works served as one of the grounds for the emergence in February 2013 of the volunteer community network "Dissernet", whose main task was to expose fake dissertations.

In addition to Zayakin, the founders of Dissernet are the journalist Sergey Parkhomenko, the physicist Andrey Rostovtsev and the biologist Mikhail Gelfand.

[8][9] In Dissernet Zayakin leads a group of volunteers who write applications and apply for deprivation of academic degrees people with forged dissertations.

[14] On August 29, 2022, Zayakin was detained by police and charged with financial extremist activity for transferring 1000 rubles (about US$20) to the Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny.