Following Google’s release of the complete brain and nervous system data of a male fruit fly, interest in simulation applications based on this connectome has continued to grow. After previous experiments involving the fruit fly nervous system in trading, chess, and robot control, a new attempt has emerged in the cryptocurrency mining sector. Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer FutureBit recently launched a proof-of-concept called “HashFly,” which utilizes a fruit fly brain simulation to “mine” Bitcoin; the project is currently available online for users to try out.
According to FutureBit, HashFly is currently a demonstration project. The website displays visualizations of the fruit fly’s neural activity, where simulated photoreceptor cells read block headers, and specific neurons respond to the results of double SHA-256 calculations. Users can adjust difficulty parameters, but even at the highest settings, the system remains a highly simplified version of actual Bitcoin mining, with performance far below that of professional mining hardware.
FutureBit also claims that if this architecture could eventually be scaled to utilize actual organic neurons, it would theoretically require only about 1 watt of power per terahash—potentially achieving ten times the efficiency of the best current 3nm silicon ASICs. However, these figures are based on estimates regarding the fruit fly’s total energy consumption and continuous neuronal activity, remaining largely conceptual. The company stated that it plans to incorporate all neurons from the dataset into the simulation and publish further research findings.
This trend has sparked the emergence of similar projects, including a competing initiative called “FlyMiner,” which even attempts to link the fruit fly connectome directly to ASIC mining hardware controls. However, the developers involved acknowledge that these websites are primarily for demonstration and entertainment purposes, and the likelihood of actually mining Bitcoin is extremely low.