Blockchain networks could harbour the next form of life

Researchers recently claimed that Blockchain networks have similar characteristics to living organisms and could provide environments for life based on artificial intelligence. How did they come to this conclusion? What are blockchains and what does it mean for them to harbour life?

What are blockchains and what does it mean for them to harbour life?

In a recent work, researchers suggested that blockchain-based networks of thousands of computers possess characteristics associated with living systems. To understand how they arrived at this conclusion, we need to look at what it means to have life, what blockchains are and finally, how a blockchain network could harbour life?

What is life? This is a question that has puzzled almost everyone at some point. Different definitions of life abound in the scientific community and Carl Sagan’s famous article and Schrodinger’s book immediately come to mind. You might be familiar with a basic definition of what constitutes life from the high-school acronym: MRS C GREN — Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity to environment, Control of one’s own system/Homeostasis, Growth, Reproduction, Excretion and Nutrition. When these criteria are fulfilled by a “body”, it is said to live. Most living molecules also have a molecule called DNA or RNA which qualifies it for life. DNA can replicate by itself and is present in all cells in a body. It is passed down from generation to generation (with a few mutations or changes occurring when passing down). This begs the question: what do blockchains have to do with life?

Let’s begin with what blockchains are. It was introduced by the mysterious Nakamoto with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a currency that can be used without needing to trust anyone (like a bank) to maintain your financial transactions. Blockchains are at the heart of bitcoins and could be put to other purposes beside currency. Put very simply, a blockchain is a chain of blocks. Each block has a message or data (e.g. about the financial transactions made: e.g. I pay you 20 $), a hash or a unique address that identifies the block — a fingerprint that is usually 256 binary digits long — and the hash of the previous block.

Imagine a bunch of users (like you and me) behind computers, each with a copy of the blockchain. Each user in the network has a private key and a public key (like your password and email address). Your public key is known to everyone but your private key is known only to you. Every time you want to make a new transaction, you encrypt it with your private key and send it to everyone in the network. Anyone can verify that it was ‘you’ who had made the transaction by decrypting it through your public key without ever knowing your private key.

After verification, each user tries to add a new block to the blockchain containing this transaction as the data — this step is called mining. There is effectively a competition between the users now. Each user is taking the latest hash in the blockchain that they have and the new message that has arrived and try to find a new hash that qualifies certain conditions (e.g. has 30 zeros in the beginning). If you’re curious about what the HASH function looks like, check out this website. To do this, they will try to find a random number such that the hash of the block i.e. hash of [the previous hash, the new message, the random number] has about 30 zeroes in the beginning. The first user to have achieved this will add the block and the hash obtained to the blockchain which everyone else can verify it easily. This process keeps building up the blockchain. It takes a lot of time to create a new hash. This makes the system very secure against any fake transactions. Because each new block also includes the hash of the previous block, it is almost impossible to cheat in this system. More details and a very nice explanation of blockchains can be viewed here. So what could blockchains and life have in common?

The researchers used the public data of the Ethereum blockchain which is another cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin. They made observations on this data to show how it is similar to life:

1. They suggest that blockchain is similar to DNA. It stores information in the form of computer code whereas DNA stores information in the form of molecular base pairs. A blockchain, however, has more information content; keeps growing in size and does not undergo any mutations. This leads them to suggest that “ a blockchain may be a superior genetic carrier for evolutionary efficiency”.
2. The computers that make up the blockchain are similar to biological cells. They are driven by the same DNA i.e. the blockchain-stored instructions. This makes the network look like a biological body.
3. The network uses real world resources such as electricity much like we need food. The growth of the network is approximately constant because the cost of adding a new block depends on the load. It is lower during periods of low demand, and higher during periods of high demand.
4. Growth in the blockchain can happen by the addition of a new block or a new node (new cell).
5. Every time a new node joins the network, the blockchain is copied to the new node: much like DNA is copied onto a new cell.
6. Reproduction of a blockchain network can be made to happen and this is called a ‘hard fork’ event. The result is two blockchains: a new ‘child’ chain, that is identical to the ‘parent’ chain before the split but different from the ‘parent’ chain after the split occurs.

A major objection is that the process is largely guided by humans. To address this, they state that this is becoming gradually more automated with increasing use of AI. They cite examples such as autonomous vehicles and global satellite-based internet to show how automation would remove the need for humans to maintain this technology.

Since this system does not undergo ageing and death, they claim that it will be a superior system to biological life. Overall, the study predicts that this could enable complex systems fundamentally indistinguishable from biology.

So, are you convinced? Do you think that artificial intelligence is the future of life on Earth? Let me know in the comments below.