Author(s): LucianoSphere (Luciano Abriata, PhD)

Originally published on Towards AI.

How a recent study used decentralized distributed computing through the Golem network to simulate the chemical reactions underpinning the emergence of life on Earth.
Figure composed with Dall-E 3 to illustrate how the origin of life on Earth from abiotic materials was “illuminated” by computations based on a protocol that runs on the Ethereum blockchain.

Studies on the origins of life on Earth and technologies like blockchain computing/cryptocurrencies may seem totally unrelated. However, a recent paper describes how the latter was put to work for the former, allowing researchers to access large-scale computing resources in an unprecedented way that entailed lower costs and much higher flexibility than traditional alternatives. Beyond the specific results relevant to the biological study, the paper demonstrates the power and benefits of using blockchain-based decentralized computing for scientific applications, possibly paving the way for a future where sharing of computing nodes optimizes resources, finances and sustainability.

I bring to you here a very recent peer-reviewed study that made use of distributed blockchain computing to probe the largest-ever network of (billions of) prebiotic reactions that may have been involved in the chemical emergence of early life on Earth. Although the endeavor was technically feasible with regular HPC or cloud-service hardware, running the calculations on a blockchain incurred lower costs, less burden, and much higher flexibility than the traditional means while being orders of… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI