A team of chemists has made a groundbreaking discovery by harnessing blockchain technology to investigate the emergence of life on Earth. This innovative use of blockchain demonstrates its potential to solve problems beyond the financial sector, providing leads for scientists studying the origins of life.
Their research revealed that primitive forms of metabolism may have emerged without the involvement of enzymes, challenging previous assumptions about the early stages of life. Investigating prebiotic chemistry involves examining over 11 billion possible reactions between molecules, requiring significant computing power.
Lacking access to a supercomputer, the team turned to ‘Golem,’ a cryptocurrency-mining platform that coordinates calculations across hundreds of computers worldwide. By leveraging this distributed computing network, the team accessed around 20,000 CPUs, enabling them to create the Network of Early Life (NOEL) to simulate the complex interactions of early molecules.
Lead researcher Bartosz Grzybowski emphasized that their collaboration with Golem allowed them to harness computing power on a global scale, highlighting the potential for blockchain technology to facilitate scientific breakthroughs. This unprecedented application of blockchain in scientific research opens new possibilities for exploring the fundamental processes that led to the emergence of life on Earth.
