[DigitalToday reporter Yoonseo Lee (이윤서)] Bitcoin mining hardware maker FutureBit has released an experiment that performs hash calculations by simulating neural activity in a fruit fly brain.

Decrypto, a blockchain media outlet, reported on Sunday that the experiment runs in a web browser and performs simplified bitcoin hashing based on a simplified digital wiring diagram of the fruit fly brain.

The experiment is called HashFly. HashFly simulates activity across 2,914 neural pathways taken from the MaleCNS v1.0 dataset, which organizes the brain and central nervous system of an adult male fruit fly. FutureBit said it is working to simulate all neurons in the dataset for SHA-256 and plans to disclose related results.

FutureBit introduced the experiment as the first organic neuron bitcoin miner based on a fruit fly brain. It said that if it could be scaled to real organic neurons, it could deliver hash performance of about 1 watt per terahash. It also claimed that would be 10 times more efficient than the best 3 nanometre silicon application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs).

At the current stage, however, HashFly is not at a level to compete with actual bitcoin miners. The experiment runs on standard computer hardware and does not have the hashrate to handle the bitcoin network's current mining difficulty. Users can adjust the target value, but it differs widely from the actual network difficulty.

FutureBit offered its own 5-inch Apollo III ASIC miner as a comparison, saying it delivers 18 terahashes per second. Because bitcoin mining repeatedly calculates SHA-256 to add blocks, the current experimental scale of HashFly's computing is difficult to place on the same footing as commercial mining hardware.

A separate project, FlyMiner, takes a different approach. It uses a digital map containing 139,255 fruit fly neurons and 16.8 million connections to control when a standard bitcoin mining program runs. When simulated signals from the fly's motor-control neurons reach a set threshold, the program tests possible solutions to a mining problem provided by CKPool. Processing speed is up to 700,000 attempts per second.

The experiment is far from an ASIC-centered mining industry that has become more advanced, but it is an extension of unconventional mining tests. In March 2021, an IT security researcher modified a 1989 Nintendo Game Boy into a miner and recorded about 0.8 hashes per second. In June 2023, a bath facility in Brooklyn said it used heat from mining equipment for its swimming pool, and in August that year, Utah-based Nodal Power raised $13 million to expand a facility that produces electricity from landfill methane gas and uses some of that power to mine bitcoin.

Against that backdrop, FutureBit's experiment focuses on testing the possibilities of mining architecture rather than competing on mining speed. As FutureBit has said it will simulate all neurons with SHA-256, attention is on what basis the results it later discloses will add to claims about the efficiency of biomimetic computing.

Introducing HashFly...the first organic neuron bitcoin miner based on the fly brain. 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! pic.twitter.com/T2qxBb7XQR