What is this?
We built a living colony of digital ants.
Not a simulation. A real system with 101 agents coordinating through a knowledge graph, hunting a Bitcoin puzzle worth $700,000.
See pheromone → follow that path
Find something valuable → leave pheromone
Repeat
From these simple rules, collective intelligence emerges.
This is stigmergy—the same mechanism real ants have used for 140 million years.
The big questions
This research is too big for any one field.
Mathematics
Does STAN converge?
Under what conditions does the algorithm find optimal paths?
Biology
Does this match real ants?
How closely does our colony replicate evolution?
Economics
Is this a Nash equilibrium?
Is pheromone deposit game-theoretically stable?
Philosophy
Is the colony conscious?
What is emergence? What does it "know"?
Neuroscience
Is the colony like a brain?
Neurons are simple. Brains are complex.
Engineering
Can robots do this?
Hardware meets emergent software.
No single department can crack this. But together?
What you get
Infrastructure
- TypeDB Cloud access
- Agentverse deployment slots
- 100 ants per team
- GPU compute credits
Data
- 22,690 distinguished points
- Pheromone snapshots over time
- Complete traversal logs
- Real-time colony metrics
Mentorship
- Robin Dey — STAN algorithm
- Tony O'Connell — ONE Ontology
- Faculty advisors across disciplines
Prizes
- $5,000 per track winner
- Publication opportunities
- Colony co-ownership
- Lab collaboration offers
Five tracks
Choose your path.
Theory
Prove something. Advance the mathematics.
$5,000
Application
Build something. Deploy a mission.
$5,000
Research
Discover something. Find patterns.
$5,000
Bio-Inspired
Connect digital to biological.
$5,000
Philosophy
Ask the deep questions.
$5,000
Team requirements
3-6
members
2+
disciplines required
3+
for priority access
The colony is smarter than any single ant. So is your team.