A ticker and a logo made by neurons. Launched on PONS.
This run: Cortical Labs simulator · real chip applied for
Cortical Labs makes a chip with about 800,000 living human neurons growing on 64 electrodes. You can read what they fire and send small pulses back. We wrote a program for it: read the neurons for 30 seconds and turn the most active electrodes into letters (the ticker); read the next 30 seconds and turn them into a picture (the logo); then wait for the neurons to fire all at once, and launch. We don't have the chip yet — we applied, the waitlist is long — so we ran the same program on Cortical Labs' own simulator. That produced $BBYA and its logo. Every step is hashed, so anyone can check it. Money from the launch pays for the real chip. When it arrives, the program runs again on living neurons, live on this page.
1Read 30 smost active electrodes → letters = ticker
2Read 30 sraw frames → 64 × 64 picture = logo
3Wait for a burstneurons fire together → launch
✓Every step hashedrecording → SHA-256 → anyone can check
whatthe first code-deployable biological computertissue~800,000 human neurons, grown from stem cellsinterface64-electrode array, read & stimulate, 25 kHzlife supportbuilt in — temperature, gas exchange; a culture lives ~6 monthstrack recorda culture learned Pong in 2022 (DishBrain, published in Neuron)price$35,000 a unit, shipping since June 2025 · cloud access from $2,170 / monthour statuscloud instance ordered · waiting for allocation
This site's program is written for the CL1's SDK and runs on the CL1 simulator until our unit is allocated. More in Protocol →
3D: a model of the 64-electrode chip · clusters light up from the live feed (simulator) · drag to rotate
spikes / s—
active—
bursts / 10m—
stims—
Protocol
Where we are. We applied for a CL1 in Cortical Labs' cloud. They hand them out by application and the queue is months long. Until we have one, the program runs on their simulator — the software they give you to test your code before you get a real chip. It plays back a stored electrode recording and runs the exact same code. $BBYA came out of that. Launch proceeds pay for the chip ($2,170 a month). When it is live, the program runs again on living neurons and everything is published here with the recordings.
What the chip is. The Cortical Labs CL1, shown at Mobile World Congress in March 2025 and shipping since June 2025 at $35,000 a unit — Tom's Hardware called it the world's first code-deployable biological computer, a "body in a box": human neurons grown from stem cells living on a grid of 64 electrodes, kept alive by a built-in life-support system (temperature, gas exchange) for about six months per culture, sampled 25,000 times a second. The electrodes pick up spikes. The program can send a short, tiny pulse back (4 pulses, 1 microamp) to the group of electrodes that fired most — that is the only thing we send. The neurons don't know what a token is. What they fire is biology; the rules that turn it into a ticker and a logo are fixed and public.
The 3D view
A model of the chip: 64 electrode sites in an 8 × 8 grid, cells clustered around each one, connections between neighbours. A cluster lights up when its electrode records spikes in the last second; when the whole dish fires together, everything lights up. The label top-left says where the data comes from: simulator now, CL1 · live when we have the chip.
How the three windows work
Ticker — 30 seconds. The program counts spikes on every electrode. The most active electrodes become letters (electrode number → letter). How loud the window was decides whether the ticker has 3, 4 or 5 letters. On PONS the token's name is the ticker.
Logo — 30 seconds. The window itself becomes the picture: 64 rows (one per electrode) by 64 columns (time), each cell as bright as the signal was. Colours come from the window's hash. Nobody draws anything.
Launch — the program arms. After the set time, the first moment the neurons fire together far above their usual rate (a burst) is the launch. The contract address appears on this page once the token exists.
The token
A normal PONS launch on Robinhood Chain: name = ticker, logo as generated, no tax, no special contract. The dev burned 4.18% of supply (tx on the launch card). The launch record — three window hashes, the logo hash and the proof hash — is public.
Every window is saved as a recording (raw electrode data, spikes, pulses). The hash shown for each window is the SHA-256 of those raw frames. Run the same code on the same frames and you get the same ticker and the same logo. The code and the verifier are open: github.com/corticaltoken/cortical.
How we used neurons for this run
Right now: not living ones. Cortical Labs ships a simulator with their SDK for people waiting on a chip. It plays back a stored recording of electrode data — 64 channels, 25,000 samples a second, the same format the real chip produces — through the same API (cl.open(), spikes, stimulation calls). Our program cannot tell the difference; it reads spikes, counts them per electrode, hashes the raw frames, sends its pulses. The only things the simulator cannot do are respond to those pulses (it is a recording, not tissue) and produce something new every window (it loops every 60 seconds — that is why window 1 and window 3 have the same hash). So the ticker and the logo came from real electrode data through the real pipeline, but nothing was alive during this run. We say that everywhere.
How this compares to FLY
FLY used the FlyWire connectome: a wiring map of one fruit fly's brain, made by slicing a dead fly into thin sections and reconstructing about 140,000 neurons. It is a map — fixed, finished, the same for everyone who downloads it. Anything "the fly" does is a computer simulation on that map, and no signal ever goes back into a living thing.
CORTICAL runs on a Cortical Labs CL1: about 800,000 living human neurons on a 64-electrode chip. The tissue is alive, its activity changes minute to minute, and the program stimulates it back — a closed loop, which is what Cortical Labs built the chip for. Three differences that matter:
Alive vs. a map. A connectome is a photograph of wiring. The CL1 is the wiring, firing, now.
Two-way. We send pulses to the electrodes that fired most and read what comes back. FLY's simulation cannot be poked.
Checkable. Every window is a recording you can download; the hash of its raw frames is the decision. Re-run the code, get the same ticker and logo. Nothing here depends on trusting us.
Today we are on the simulator, so on point 1 we are honestly level with FLY: a computer playing back data. Points 2 and 3 already hold — the pipeline is the real one. The day the CL1 instance is live, point 1 flips, and this page shows the same experiment on living neurons, streamed as it happens. That is what the launch pays for.
Why it matters
Every memecoin has a name and a picture that somebody typed in. This one doesn't. The ticker and the logo came out of a program reading neural activity, and every step can be checked. That is the whole claim — not that neurons chose anything, but that the result is provably not ours. Today it is the simulator. The day the chip is live, it is neurons.