How Neurite works

Neurite is a store of value secured by Proof of Neural Work (PoNW). Instead of guessing hashes, miners run simulations of real brain connectomes — complete wiring diagrams of real brains, reconstructed from scans.

The protocol assigns each miner a fresh challenge. The miner's worker simulates the brain, and verified results earn mining shares. Every round, a defined amount of Neurite (NRT) is emitted and split between miners in proportion to their accepted shares.

Work with structure

Each job simulates a real neural circuit, not an arbitrary puzzle.

Fresh, single-use jobs

Every challenge is tied to one wallet and one round.

Verified before rewarded

Shares come only from computation the protocol accepts.

Pro-rata emissions

No lottery: each round is split by accepted work.

From zero to your first verified share:

1. 1

   Connect your wallet

   Connect your wallet from the Neurite dashboard. Jobs — and the rewards they earn — are bound to this address.
2. 2

   Choose where the brain runs

   Run the worker on your own device, or use a hosted worker if you'd rather not keep a machine online. Either way, rewards go to your wallet.
3. 3

   Start a brain

   Pick a supported brain model and start mining. The worker receives its first challenge from the protocol.
4. 4

   Watch the dashboard

   Follow the neurons firing, the spike raster, step progress, and each result as it is submitted and verified.
5. 5

   Earn shares, receive emissions

   Each verified job earns mining shares for the current round. When the round's emission is released, it is split across all accepted shares.

Brain model

A connectome-based network — neurons and the synapses between them — that miners simulate.

Challenge (job)

A unit of work: model, starting conditions, sensory inputs and step count, bound to a wallet and round.

Simulation

Running the brain forward step by step as inputs propagate through its connections.

Brain state

The result of a job: the network's resulting state after the final step.

Verification

The protocol's check that a result is valid for the challenge it answers.

Share

Credit for accepted computation within a round.

Round

A period of mining with its own defined emission.

Emission

The NRT released each round and split across accepted shares.

Mining starts with a challenge issued by the protocol. A challenge spells out everything the simulation needs — and who it is for.

{
  "round": 1284,
  "wallet": "0x7a3f…9c21",
  "model": "fly/whole-brain",
  "initial_state": "0x5e1d…a09b",
  "stimulus": {
    "channel": "visual",
    "pattern": "looming",
    "seed": 88412
  },
  "steps": 10000
}

Because the wallet and round are part of the job, a result can't be replayed in a later round or claimed by a different address. Old results simply don't answer any open challenge.

The neural simulation is the work. Starting from the initial state, the worker advances the brain one time step at a time. Sensory neurons receive the stimulus; every neuron integrates the signals arriving over its connections; neurons that cross their threshold fire, sending spikes on to the neurons they connect to.

After the specified number of steps, the job has produced firing patterns and a resulting brain state. Completing that simulation is the mining task.

# Illustrative: one job, as a leaky integrate-and-fire simulation
for step in 1..steps:
  for each neuron in brain:
    neuron.v = neuron.v * leak                 # potential decays
             + synaptic_input(neuron)          # spikes arriving over connections
             + stimulus(neuron, step)          # sensory input, if this is a sensory neuron
    if neuron.v >= threshold:
      fire(neuron)                             # spike travels along its synapses
      neuron.v = reset

result = (firing_pattern, final_brain_state)

Submitting a result earns nothing on its own. The protocol first checks it against the challenge it claims to answer — only accepted results become shares.

Right job

The result answers a challenge issued to this wallet, for the current round.

Right work

The submitted brain state is consistent with simulating the specified model, starting conditions, inputs and steps.

Counted once

Duplicate and stale submissions are rejected.

Activity isn't evidence

Self-reported spike counts are never used to decide rewards.

Verified jobs earn mining shares. At the end of a round, each miner receives a slice of that round's emission equal to their fraction of all accepted shares:

Worked example

2% of a round's shares earns 2% of its rewards. Because the split is linear, there is no lottery and no advantage to splitting work across wallets — the total is the same.

Numbers above are illustrative.

Mining rewards come from scheduled emissions: each round releases a defined amount of Neurite, split according to accepted work. Supply grows on a schedule, not with how much activity miners report.

A brain model is a connectome turned into a simulable network: every neuron and every synapse from the scan, wired exactly as mapped.

Connectomes are reconstructed from electron-microscopy images taken at nanometre resolution. Machine learning traces each neuron through thousands of image slices, and human proofreaders correct the result — which is what made whole-brain maps practical.

In 2024 the FlyWire consortium, led by Princeton University, published a complete wiring diagram of an adult fruit fly brain, reconstructed with the help of AI segmentation that includes work from Google Research. Neurite's fly model is based on this kind of public connectome data. The rat model's source and specifications will be documented at release.

A worker is what actually runs the brain. You can choose either kind:

Your device

Runs the brain model on your own hardware. You control the machine; it mines while the worker runs.

Hosted worker

Runs on your behalf, so there's no machine to keep online. Jobs are still bound to your wallet, so rewards still go to you.

Heavier brain models need more compute per job. Requirements are published alongside each model.

The dashboard shows your brain at work. You can try a live in-browser preview on the home page.

If activity were the reward, the cheapest strategy would be to fake it. PoNW is designed so that the only way to earn is to do the work.

Connectome

A complete map of the neurons in a brain and the synapses that connect them.

Neuron

A cell that integrates incoming signals and fires when its potential crosses a threshold.

Synapse

A connection through which one neuron's spike influences another.

Spike

A neuron firing. Shown on the dashboard; not a reward metric.

Brain state

The condition of every neuron in the network at a point in the simulation.

Challenge / job

Protocol-issued work bound to a wallet and round.

Round

A mining period with a defined emission.

Share

Credit for accepted computation within a round.

Emission

Scheduled NRT released each round, split pro-rata by shares.

Worker

The software — on your device or hosted — that runs the brain simulation.

PoNW

Proof of Neural Work: Neurite's consensus work of verified brain simulation.

Announcements, round updates and releases are posted on X.