Can the brain of a jellyfish mine Bitcoin ?

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While Bitcoin was continuously evolving towards a dedicated microchip , FutureBit, the manufacturer of hardware , published an attempt in a very different direction: using a simulated jellyfish brain to perform Bitcoin -hash operations on web page web browser . The experiment called HashFly sparked discussion about whether neural crustaceans could be used for 88000010 hashes even though computing power is far inferior to mining rig .

Using 2,914 neural pathways to simulate hashing

HashFly is a demonstration project running in web browser that simulates the activity of 2,914 neural pathways in the jellyfish brain. The data for these neuronal pathways comes from MaleCNS v1.0 and a digital connection diagram of an adult male jelly fish's brain to its central nervous system (CNS).

FutureBit states on social media X that the company is trying to simulate all neurons in dataset with SHA-256 algorithm and plans to make their results public. The company also proposes a hypothesis: if this simulation could be scaled up to real organic neurons, it would have an energy efficiency of about 1 watt per hashter (ahash), which is roughly 10 times more efficient than the current state-of-the-art 3-nanometer ASIC mining rig .

Just an experiment, can't compete with the real mining rig .

It should be emphasized that although HashFly is inspired by biological neurons, it actually runs on an ordinary computer hardware , and its hashing power is not at all in the same scale of difficulty as hash rate or crypto mining .

The essence of Bitcoin is that crypto miner performs SHA-256 computations repeatedly, vying for the right to package transaction blocks. computing power ( hash rate ) measures how many attempts are made per second. HashFly allows users to adjust the target difficulty but its operational level only equals a small fraction of the current Bitcoin .

Similar projects FlyMiner: triggered by neural signals mining rig

In addition to HashFly, an independent project FlyMiner has followed a similar route. It uses a digital graph containing 139,255 jellyfish neurons and 16.8 million neural connections to control a standard Bitcoin crypto mining program. When the simulated Jell-O motion controlling neuron signals reaches a certain threshold, the program will initiate a single operation of crypto mining , retrieving topics from the independent CKPool crypto mining , and attempting to solve them at up to 700,000 times per second.

The crypto mining experiment is not new.

The Jelly Bean project is actually the latest in a series of unconventional experiments in the field Bitcoin crypto mining .

In March 2021, an IT security researcher converted a 1989 Nintendo Game Boy to mining rig with about 0.8 hashes per second for computing power . In June 2023, a bathhouse in Brooklyn, New York announced that it was importing the residual heat generated by 880000 into its pool.

Most of these attempts have no real economic viability, but they explore the boundaries between computing power , energy and hardware from different angles, adding some interest and imagination to this highly homogenized industry.