1/ ๐ง To understand Autonomous Life and FLY VISION, you first need to understand what is behind both of them:
the fruit fly brain
More specifically, the complete adult Drosophila connectome a huge network of neurons, synapses and connections
๐งต๐
2/ In 2024, researchers completed one of the most important neuroscience mapping projects ever made:
the full wiring diagram of an adult fruit fly brain.
It contains approximately:
๐ง 139,255 neurons
๐ 54.5 million synapses
Each connection helps show how different parts of the brain can communicate
3/ But what is a neuron?
A neuron is a cell that receives, processes and transmits signals
Think of every neuron as a small node inside a gigantic network
A brain does not work through one neuron alone
Behavior comes from interactions across thousands of them
4/ And what are synapses?
Synapses are the communication points between neurons
Very simply:
Neuron A
โ
Synapse
โ
Neuron B
โ
Synapse
โ
Neuron C
This is how activity can propagate across the brain
5/ Not every connection has the same importance.
Some neurons have many connections.
Others have fewer.
And some connections contain different numbers of synapses.
So the connectome is not just a list of neurons.
It is a giant connected network
6/ Think of it like a city.
Neurons are locations
Synapses are the roads
Some roads are small
Others carry much more traffic
Different routes can lead signals toward completely different parts of the system
The connectome is the map of those roads
7/ The dataset we use contains millions of connection records
A record can represent something like:
Neuron 182 โ Neuron 984
together with information about that connection.
Put millions of these records together, and you start rebuilding the architecture of the brain
8/ For our experiments, the neurons are represented by IDs
For example:
Neuron 0
Neuron 1
Neuron 2
...
Neuron 139254
These IDs let us represent the network efficiently while preserving the relationship to the original mapped neurons
9/ Then we hit the biggest problem:
DATA SIZE
A network containing around 139,000 neurons and tens of millions of synapses is huge
It would not be practical to place everything inside a single Bitcoin inscription
So we use recursive inscriptions
10/ This is where:
PARENT + CHILDREN
become important.
We create a main inscription:
๐ง PARENT
and divide the brain data across many smaller inscriptions:
CHILD 1
CHILD 2
CHILD 3
CHILD 4
...
Each Child contains another part of the brain data.
11/ The Parent acts as the central reference point
Instead of forcing tens of megabytes into one inscription, it can reference multiple Children
Each Child stores another section of the neural network
Together they form:
Parent
โ
Children
โ
Neurons
โ
Connections
โ
Synapses
12/ In our first full build, the brain dataset reached around 43 MB
That meant it had to be divided into more than 100 parts
Each part was compressed so it could fit within the inscription size we were targeting
13/ We also compress the data heavily.
Instead of repeatedly storing large amounts of information, we use techniques such as:
โข adjacency lists
โข delta encoding
โข VarInt
โข compact neuron IDs
โข dictionaries for repeated information
The goal is to reduce the amount of data required as much as possible.
14/ An adjacency list is a more efficient way to represent a network.
Instead of writing:
A connects to B
A connects to C
A connects to D
A connects to E
you can represent something closer to:
A โ [B, C, D, E]
That saves a large amount of space.
15/ We can also preserve information related to connection strength
So it is not only:
A is connected to B
We can also use the number of synapses involved in that connection as part of the neural system.
That helps us model how activity can propagate through the network.
16/ And this is where the experimental part begins.
We are not only storing the brain.
We also built a:
โ๏ธ NEURAL ENGINE
The neural engine reads parts of this structure and turns network activity into computational decisions
17/ Imagine a stimulus entering the system.
That stimulus activates a group of neurons
Those neurons are connected to others
Activity can then propagate through the network:
INPUT
โ
Neuron A
โ
Neuron B + C
โ
Neuron D + E + F
โ
OUTPUT
18/ The structure of the network influences which paths this activity can follow
So instead of simply choosing a random result, the system uses relationships derived from the connectome to influence the output
This is where our two experiments separate
19/ ๐ฆ AUTONOMOUS LIFE
Autonomous Life uses this structure to generate behavior
The organism exists inside a digital environment.
It can receive different types of stimuli from that environment
20/ These stimuli enter the neural system.
For example, information related to:
๐ฟ environment
๐ด food
โ ๏ธ danger
๐งญ direction
โก energy
๐๏ธ external stimuli
can produce different activation patterns.
21/ That activity then moves through the neural network derived from the connectome.
The Neural Engine interprets the resulting activity and converts certain outputs into possible actions.
For example:
neural activity
โ
decision
โ
movement
22/ The organism can then:
walk
change direction
explore
search for something
react to the environment
stop
trigger another action
without us simply writing a fixed sequence that tells it exactly what to do every second.
23/ This distinction matters
Autonomous Life is not simply:
animation1 โ animation2 โ animation3
The 3D model has animations available
But the neural system helps determine when and how those actions are triggered
The brain influences the behavior
24/ That is why every Autonomous Life organism can contain several different layers:
๐ง brain data
๐ neurons and synapses
โ๏ธ Neural Engine
๐ environment
๐๏ธ stimuli
๐ฆด 3D model
๐ฌ animations
All working together
25/ Bitcoin becomes the layer where these components can be preserved.
Parts of the brain are inscriptions
The organism is an inscription
The engine can be an inscription
The files can reference one another recursively
Everything does not have to live inside one gigantic file.
26/ Then comes the second experiment:
๐จ FLY VISION
It uses the same basic idea but changes the output completely
Autonomous Life asks:
โWhat should this organism DO?โ
FLY VISION asks:
โWhat should this brain DRAW?โ
27/ In FLY VISION, we do not need an organism moving around a 3D environment
Instead, neural outputs are converted into visual decisions
For example:
position
direction
color
stroke
point placement
size
density
detail
28/ There is a reference artwork
The system knows what image it is trying to reinterpret
But the image is built progressively.
The engine decides where to work and how to represent different regions of the reference.
29/ One decision can influence:
โwork in this areaโ
Another:
โuse this sizeโ
Another:
โmove in this directionโ
Another:
โuse this colorโ
Thousands of small decisions combine into the final artwork
30/ This is how I like to summarize both experiments:
AUTONOMOUS LIFE
๐ง Brain
โ
โก Neural activity
โ
โ๏ธ Neural Engine
โ
๐ฆ Behavior
FLY VISION
๐ง Brain
โ
โก Neural activity
โ
โ๏ธ Neural Engine
โ
๐จ Visual decisions
31/ It is the same core concept being tested in two completely different worlds.
In the first:
neural activity influences actions
In the second:
neural activity influences creation.
BEHAVIOR vs ART
32/ FLY VISION is also much lighter than Autonomous Life
Autonomous Life can approach around 1 MB per organism when different components are included.
FLY VISION can exist in only tens of KB per piece.
That makes the second experiment much cheaper to inscribe
33/ That is also why Autonomous Life is much more expensive
3D model + Engine + neural data + environment + recursive inscriptions make each organism significantly heavier
FLY VISION removes much of that weight
34/ But both projects come from the same question:
What can we build when a neural network based on the architecture of a biological brain becomes part of a digital system?
Not just storing the connectome
Actually using its connections
35/ One important clarification:
the connectome does not contain the consciousness of the fly.
We are not putting its memories on Bitcoin.
What we are using is the mapped physical architecture of its neural connections.
That is very different
36/ Think about a computer
Having a complete map of its circuits does not mean you possess everything that has ever happened inside that computer
But knowing the circuits lets you study how signals can move through it.
That is a useful analogy for the connectome
37/ So the project has two very different layers:
๐ DATA
neurons
synapses
regions
connections
weights
โ๏ธ INTERPRETATION
how to transform activity across that network into digital outputs.
38/ Parent and Children mainly solve the first problem:
HOW TO STORE A HUGE NETWORK.
The Neural Engine solves the second:
HOW TO USE THAT NETWORK
And Autonomous Life / FLY VISION explore the third:
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH IT?
39/ The whole structure can be summarized like this:
EFCB / CONNECTOME
โ
139,255 neurons
โ
~54.5M synapses
โ
compressed data
โ
Parent + Children on Bitcoin
โ
Neural Engine
โ๏ธ โ๏ธ
Autonomous Life FLY VISION
40/ For me, this is the most interesting part of the entire experiment
We are not only trying to preserve scientific data on Bitcoin
We are trying to explore what happens when that data becomes a functional part of something that can behave, react or create digitally.
๐ง โ โฟ โ ๐ฆ / ๐จ
And we are only beginning to explore it...
FLY VISION uses the fruit fly brain to make decisions and reinterpret famous works of art
Every line, every stroke, every shape, and every color is chosen through the neural system
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