Google's simulated fruit fly brain 'mines Bitcoin' in web browser proof of concept - FutureBit says real organic neuron miner could have '10x the efficiency of the best silicon 3nm ASICs'

A project claimed to represent “the first organic neuron Bitcoin miner based on the fly brain” has gone live. FutureBit, the company behind the Apollo series of ASIC miners, introduced the world to its HashFly this week as a proof of concept.

HashFly Proof of Concept

If you open the dedicated HashFly site, you can participate in this agitation of fruit fly brains in the (vain) hope of a crypto payout. The web app displays a gently rotating fly brain with neuron traces firing. The website overlay shows 2,914 traces firing within the fly’s brain - a small subset of the full 165,122 reconstructed neurons in the MaleCNS v1.0 fruit fly connectome recently shared by Google.

Technical Details

FutureBit’s HashFly focuses on the simulated photoreceptors that would usually sense light in the fly’s eye. These read a block header, and neurons called PPL101 cells light up when a double-SHA-256 target is computed. You can adjust the difficulty by changing the ‘zeros’ parameter up or down. Even at maximum difficulty (level 6), the task is far easier than finding a real Bitcoin hash; about 80 blocks were checked off in an hour of testing.

Efficiency Claims

According to its designers, the experiment provides insight into the potential efficiency of organic computing (wetware). FutureBit teases:

“Fun fact. If this could be scaled on real organic neurons, it would hash at ~ 1 watt per terahash... 10x the efficiency of the best silicon 3nm ASICs!”

These guesstimates are based on “total power used by the fruit fly, and assuming all neurons could be used to hash Bitcoin functions and continually keep firing,” the company said in a follow‑up tweet.

Scaling Plans

FutureBit is working on expanding the simulation:

• Simulating all neurons in the dataset with the sha256 hash function.
• Publishing all findings.

The current web performance is roughly 100 kH/s, which underscores the need for scaling.

Performance Comparison

For context, FutureBit’s 5‑inch cube Apollo III is claimed to deliver “up to 18 TH/s of Hashpower.”

Related Fly Brain Projects

Since Google published the complete brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly, several other connectome‑inspired projects have appeared:

• Playing Doom
• Financial day trading
• Flying drones
• A rival cryptomining scheme dubbed FlyMiner

FlyMiner

Visiting the FlyMiner portal shows a fruit fly connectome under the control of an ASIC miner. FlyMiner admits it has “almost zero chance” of mining success, making it a brain‑nourishing rather than money‑spinning activity.

Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.