Several cryptocurrency mining projects – particularly those devoted to extracting new Ethereum tokens – have been pulled away from their mining duties and been made to turn their attention towards coronavirus research.
Ethereum Mining Rigs Are Helping to Battle the Coronavirus
The coronavirus was recently declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). As many as 245,000 people have been infected with the virus at the time of writing, while more than 11,000 deaths across the globe have been recorded.
Recently, world leaders such as President Donald Trump in the United States have declared a national emergency, while the governors of both California and New York have issued “stay at home” orders, asking that residents stay within their domiciles and limit their outdoor activities with others to stop the virus’ spread.
At this time, it seems like people need all the help they can get, and research regarding how to combat the virus is at an all-time high, but how, exactly, can crypto mining rigs help to get this done?
It’s not so much that they help with the research aspect, but what they do have is high computational power – enough so that the computers and devices conducting or holding present research can stay operational and functional during these stressing times, and it’s here where the mining rigs can serve great purpose.
Among the major companies working to better understand the problems and symptoms associated with the growing respiratory virus is Stanford University’s Folding @home, which helps to develop therapeutic drugs. As recently as last month, the company was devoting much of its time, energy and resources towards establishing drugs and products designed to combat HIV, but now, it has shifted focus to work on coronavirus research.
One of the main things that Folding @home does is sort through protein structures of products approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Proteins, depending on how they’re built, can lessen a disease or even fully treat it, and the venture is looking to see which proteins are available that could potentially bring the virus to its knees.
In a statement, the company explains:
Proteins have lots of moving parts, so we really want to see the protein in action. The structures we can’t see experimentally may be the key to discovering a new therapeutic.
Right now, Folding @home and several other drug-related companies are getting their power from sources such as Core Weave, which is one of the largest Ethereum mining projects in the rural United States. At press time, Core Weave is dedicating mountains of computational power to these companies to assist in their time spend performing appropriate research.
It’s Time to Fight Back!
The mining venture stated:
Core Weave is proud to support this effort with over 6,000 of our high-end GPUs.
As many as 20 separate companies are presently working on a coronavirus vaccine.
