Largest U.S. Ethereum Miner 'Donates' Computing Power to Support Coronavirus Drug Research

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Babbitt Information (ID: bitcoin8btc)

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CoreWeave, the largest U.S. miner on the ethereum blockchain, is dedicating 6,000 specialized computer chips to research to find a cure for the coronavirus.

Those GPU computing power will go to Stanford University's Folding@home - a research effort launched on February 27 to develop drugs to study the new coronavirus through a unique method: it connects thousands of computers around the world , forming a distributed supercomputer for disease research.

Brian Venturo, co-founder and chief technology officer of CoreWeave, said the project at least has a chance of finding a cure for the virus. Therefore, CoreWeave doubles the processing power of the entire network through its GPU (used to handle repeated calculations).

According to Venturo, these 6,000 GPUs account for about 0.2% of Ethereum’s total computing power and can mine about 28 ETH per day, worth $3,864 at press time.

There is currently no cure for the new coronavirus (although many organizations, including IBM's supercomputers, are working on a vaccine and fighting the disease). Venturo noted that Folding@home has already made major breakthroughs in the development of other important drugs.

"Their research has had a profound impact on the development of first-line anti-AIDS drugs, and we hope that our computing power can help fight the new coronavirus."

Corona virus has caused major losses around the world. Italy and Spain are in lockdown. Conferences, shops and restaurants were shut down to stem the spread of the disease, and the resulting panic spilled over into financial markets.

When someone came up with the idea of ​​using GPU computing power for coronavirus research, the CoreWeave team didn't hesitate.

Venturo said they had the test system up and running "within minutes." Since then, the project has snowballed. CoreWeave contributed more than half of the computing power to Folding@home's new coronavirus research.

"We never thought about 'Should we do this?' It just happened. We were excited about how we could help."

Folding@home is a decentralized project similar to Bitcoin. Folding@home is not conducted by a single research company using a single mainframe computer, but by collecting the computing power of anyone around the world who wants to participate in the research-even if it is just a laptop with a tiny computing power.

In this project, computing power is used to find useful information related to the new coronavirus. As in bitcoin mining, a user may discover a "solution" and distribute this information to others.

Venturo says:

"Their protein simulator is trying to find potential scenarios, whether existing (Food and Drug Administration) approved drugs or other known formulations can help suppress or treat the virus."

Folding@home explained in the article that viruses contain proteins that "are used to suppress our immune system and reproduce themselves. In order to deal with the new coronavirus, we want to understand how these viral proteins work and how we can design treatments to prevent they."

Modeling these proteins and then looking at them from different angles could help scientists better understand them and potentially find a cure. Computers can quickly shift these variables to speed up the process.

Folding@home can use more computing power. Venturo is calling for other GPU miners to join.

Even without calls, other cryptocurrency miners are already going it alone. Last week, Tulip.tools founder Johann Tanzer called on Tezos bakers (the equivalent of miners) to send 15 XTZ, worth about $25 at press time, to the main contributor of Folding@home.

To Tanzer's surprise, the plan was a hit. Although they may not be contributing as much as CoreWeave, 20 Tezos miners are contributing their power right now. Tezos users have also started donating, which has grown to around $600.