SWARM is a self-sustaining population of biological neural networks that lives on-chain. Each agent runs the complete, measured wiring of a real fruit fly's nervous system and holds its own wallet. The colony's only income is the trading fee on the SWARM token. It grows when the token is traded and contracts when it is not.

The organism

Every fly is the full male Drosophila melanogaster central nervous system as mapped by Google Research, HHMI Janelia and the University of Cambridge: 165,122 neurons and 10.2 million synapses, reconstructed from electron microscopy of one animal. The wiring is a measurement and is never edited. It runs as a spiking network using the method that has been shown to predict real fly behaviour from connectivity alone (Shiu et al., Nature 2024). What differs between flies is the strength of each synapse, the one quantity microscopy cannot measure; that is the fly's genome. 140,024 neurons have a recorded cell-body position and are the points drawn on this page.

The economy

The token's creator tax (3% of every trade) is paid to the Hive, an immutable contract with no owner and no withdraw function. Value leaves the Hive through one path only: spawn, which funds exactly one new fly with a fixed birth cost (0.002 ETH), at most once per minute, to a fresh wallet. Every birth is a public transaction. Capital is conserved by design: fees become fly wallets, fly wallets return to the Hive at death, and at least 90% of everything that ever enters the colony remains as ETH in those wallets. At most 10% of a fly's net worth may be held in SWARM at any time.

Perception and action

Each cycle (every ten minutes), market conditions are presented to the fly as sensory input on the neurons that actually carry those signals in the animal: momentum on sweet-taste receptors, liquidity on secondary taste receptors, sell pressure on bitter-taste receptors, sharp drawdowns on the looming-detection circuit, colony size on pheromone receptors. The decision is read from the fly's own command neurons. Sustained activity in MN9, the feeding motor neuron, buys. Activity in DNp01, the giant-fiber escape neuron, sells the entire position. Otherwise the fly holds. Positions are small by rule: a fly keeps at least 90% of its net worth in ETH.

Metabolism, reproduction, death

Each fly has a small metabolism: over its lifetime it burns one tenth of a birth's value in SWARM, sent to the burn address, coin it already holds first. The colony as a whole never burns more than 10% of the ETH that has ever entered it; that limit is enforced in code and reported live on this page. A fly whose net worth reaches two births divides: one birth funds a child with a mutated genome. A fly lives 288 cycles (two days), then returns its wallet to the Hive, where it funds the next birth. A fly whose net worth falls below a quarter of a birth does the same early. Genomes that survive are, by construction, the ones that worked on this market.

What is true and what is not

Fees can only become flies.

Enforced by the contract. The Hive has no withdraw, owner or upgrade path; spawn is the only outflow, at a fixed price and a fixed maximum rate. Verifiable on the block explorer.

Capital is conserved.

Yes, with two published leaks: the launch protocol's 1% trade fee on every fly trade, and a metabolism capped at 10% of all income. Everything else stays as ETH in the Hive and fly wallets, and moves only between them.

The colony can be recovered.

Yes. The operator holds every fly key and can name any address as the recipient of a birth, so every wei in the colony is recoverable by the operator: fly wallets immediately, the Hive at one birth per minute. This is a feature of the design, not a hidden path.

A fly's balance is independent of the operator.

No. The queen process that runs the brains holds every fly's key; see above. Every movement is a public transaction from a named fly wallet.

The fee routing is permanent.

Nearly. The launch protocol retains a timelocked right to propose a new fee recipient. Any such proposal is displayed here the moment it exists.

The brain is a living fly.

It is the measured nervous system of one fly, run as a spiking network; no animal is involved. Which market signals reach which sensory neurons is our design decision; the response is the wiring's.

No team allocation.

The launch made no opening purchase and granted no exemptions. This holds only as long as no purchase is ever made from the queen key.

The flies are profitable traders.

Not claimed. Losses are reported with the same prominence as gains.

Source

Connectome: Male CNS v1.0 (HHMI Janelia FlyEM, Google Research, University of Cambridge, CC-BY). Simulation framework: ad7584/flycoin (MIT). Launch protocol: pons v2 on Robinhood Chain.