LaunchAFly

3 September · Google Research & HHMI Janelia released the whole fly ↗

Launch
a fly.

Google just mapped the complete wiring of a fruit fly's brain: 166,000 neurons, open to everyone.

Within days, the internet made it play Doom, explore Minecraft and trade crypto.

This is the launchpad for the next experiments. Pick a mission, launch your fly, and everyone can back it.

Launch a fly See the swarm
Neurons
166,700
Cell types
~11,700
Synapses
~125M
Total fees — 166,700 neurons125M synapsesMint ends in FLY Paired with SOL Total fees — 166,700 neurons125M synapsesMint ends in FLY Paired with SOL
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The swarm so far

Reading the chain…

01

They mapped the whole fly

On 3 September, Google Research and HHMI Janelia published the complete connectome of a male Drosophila: the brain, the optic lobes and the ventral nerve cord. 166,700 neurons, about 11,700 cell types, and roughly 125 million synapses across 25.6 million connected pairs.

The method is brutal and simple. The animal is sliced into sections thinner than a wavelength of light and photographed under an electron microscope, which gives millions of flat images. A neural network reconstructs the neurons in three dimensions, and then humans spend years checking the reconstruction by hand.

All of it is open: free download and a browser you can fly through at male-cns.janelia.org.

A connectome is a wiring diagram — who connects to whom, and through how many synapses. It is emphatically not a running brain. Which did not stop anybody.

The announcement
@newsfromgoogle

Google Research and HHMI Janelia released the complete connectome of an adult male fruit fly — brain, optic lobes and ventral nerve cord, open to everyone.

Read the post ↗
The reconstructed connectome of an adult fruit fly brain: tens of thousands of neurons, each traced in its own colour.
The reconstruction itself · Google Research & HHMI Janelia
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So people made it play

  1. The graph becomes a network. Each neuron is simulated simply: it accumulates signal and fires past a threshold. Each connection gets a weight from its synapse count, positive or negative depending on the neurotransmitter. The method was already validated in 2024 on the female connectome.
  2. Input. The game's image is converted into stimulation of the photoreceptors — the neurons of the eye.
  3. Propagation. Activity crosses all 166,700 neurons following the real wiring.
  4. Output. A handful of chosen neurons are read, and a fixed table turns their activity into buttons: forward, turn, shoot.

Reward is dopamine, literally: when the game goes well, neurons that signal reward (PAM) are stimulated; when it goes badly, punishment neurons (PPL1). Optionally a learning rule nudges a few connections in the mushroom body, the fly's own learning centre.

Built in a week
DOOMThe fly shoots
MinecraftThe fly mines
Beat SaberThe fly dances
RoboticsThe fly walks
stonkflyThe fly trades
03

Anyone can launch their experiment

Everyone can launch an experiment on top of a fly brain. Only the ones that graduate will be deployed.

Paired with SOL

Every fly opens on a Meteora Dynamic Bonding Curve against plain SOL. No wrapper to manage, no second asset to go find first.

Ends in FLY

The mint address is ground in your own browser until it ends in FLY — about 195,000 tries, three seconds across your cores. The key never leaves the machine.

2.5%, split in half

Every trade pays 2.5%. Half of what is left after Meteora's cut is yours, half is the team's. Claim yours from the fly's own page or all of them at once from your profile.

It graduates itself

When the curve fills, a keeper migrates the liquidity into a DAMM v2 pool within the minute. Nobody has to remember to do it.

Give it
a reason to fly.

Launch a fly @LaunchaFly ↗