It Started With a Question

"How many switches does it take to compute?"

A childlike question. The kind you ask before you know what's "supposed" to be hard. But sometimes those are the questions that open everything.

The Method

Not sampling. Not intuition. Exhaustive exploration. Thousands of experiments run by AI, mapping entire possibility spaces, looking for patterns that human intuition would miss.

The answer wasn't a number — it was a structure. Thresholds where new capabilities emerge. Laws governing what any substrate can do.

What Emerged: Seven Papers

A complete arc from mechanism to synthesis:

The Insight

Life, mind, and computation aren't different phenomena. They're different regions in the same substrate capability space. A cell and Rule 110 are formally alike in terms of hidden state capacity, leakiness management, and boundary-mediated control.

That means we can predict what substrates can do. We can engineer emergence. We can move from conjecture to knowledge.

Why xDNMX

This work showed what's possible when curiosity meets exhaustive exploration. But it's just one example. There are thousands of researchers and engineers doing foundational work — often alone, often unrecognized, often in small towns far from major research hubs.

xDNMX exists to find them. To connect researchers with engineers who can build on their discoveries. To create an extended network where foundational work is celebrated, extended, and brought to life — anywhere in the world.

The "x" means extended. Like TEDx, anyone can run an xDNMX event. Local discoveries, global network. From discovery to building. That's xDNMX.

The Core Belief

The deepest discoveries need builders, and the best engineering needs foundations.

Right now, these two tribes are separated. Researchers publish papers that engineers never see. Engineers build products without understanding why their intuitions work. The gap between discovery and building is where progress dies.

xDNMX bridges that gap — as an extended network that reaches everywhere. Not one conference in one city, but a global community of local events, all connected.

Anyone Can Participate

Singles, labs, teams — whatever. We don't ask where you're from. We don't check credentials. We ask: what did you find? What can you build?

A solo researcher with Claude and a hypothesis has equal standing with a well-funded lab. The work speaks for itself.

Foundational, Not Incremental

We care about "why does this work?" not just "what does this do?"

Laws over phenomena. Thresholds over optimizations. Understanding that opens new possibilities, not improvements that close them.

Open By Default

GitHub, not arXiv. Open source licenses, always. If it can't be verified, it can't be built on. If it can't be built on, it's not foundational — it's a dead end.

All submissions must be in a public repository with a recognized open source license. The community decides worth through engagement, not editorial gatekeeping.

Why Share Here?

Building momentum for independent research is hard. You publish a paper — nothing happens. You post on social media — it disappears in hours. You submit to journals — months of waiting, then rejection or obscurity.

xDNMX offers something different:

• Focused audience — People here want foundational work to build on
• Researchers meet engineers — Your discovery finds its builder
• Persistent visibility — GitHub doesn't vanish like tweets
• Real engagement — Stars, forks, issues, not just likes
• Prize recognition — API credits and public recognition
• No gatekeepers — Post your repo. Peers decide worth.

Traditional academia optimizes for credentials and citations. xDNMX optimizes for discovery and building. If your work is foundational, this is where it finds the people who care.

A Different Path to Publication

ArXiv requires endorsement — you need to know someone inside. Journals take months and hide behind paywalls. Social media is instant but ephemeral. None of them are designed for the independent researcher with a damn good observation that isn't yet a formal theory.

xDNMX offers another path:

• Post your repo
• Explain what you found
• Get real peer engagement

No credentials required. No formatting hoops. No endorsement. Just the work.

For Academics

ArXiv and peer-reviewed journals remain essential for academic careers — we're not trying to replace them. But xDNMX can help you get there. Think of it as pre-arXiv: a place to test ideas, get early feedback, find collaborators, and strengthen your work before formal submission. The engagement you receive here — questions, issues, forks, builds — can sharpen your paper and identify blind spots before reviewers do.

For Independents

If you're outside academia, formal publication may not be your goal — and that's fine. xDNMX might be your final destination, not a stepping stone. Your work finds its audience, connects with builders, and lives in a persistent, citable repo. Not everything needs to become a journal paper. Some things just need to find the people who can use them.

Some of the most important insights start as observations, not theorems. "That's weird — why does that happen?" is how discovery begins. xDNMX is where those questions find their answers.

AI-Powered Methodology

Human intuition × AI exploration = discovery.

This is the methodology that makes exhaustive exploration possible. One person with AI can now map entire possibility spaces — work that once required teams, grants, years. We celebrate and advance this new way of doing science.

Joyful

For the fun of figuring it out. Not for prestige, not for publications, not for funding. For the joy of discovery and the satisfaction of building something real.

If it stops being joyful, we're doing it wrong.

The xDNMX Prizes

Not money — capability. API credits are fuel for discovery. They turn a hypothesis into thousands of experiments. They let you keep building.

What Winners Get

• API Credits — Substantial compute to continue your work
• Recognition — Featured on DNMX, announced to the community
• The Artifact — A physical trophy (design TBA)
• Connection — Introductions to potential collaborators, sponsors, and supporters

Judging

Community engagement matters — stars, forks, issues, builds. But final selection is by the xDNMX advisory panel, weighing:

• Foundational significance — does this change how we see the space?
• Rigor — is it reproducible, verifiable, defensible?
• Openness — is everything available for others to build on?
• Methodology — was AI used effectively as a research partner?

Timeline

Submissions open annually. Exact dates announced on GitHub Discussions and this site.

GitHub is Home

All community activity happens on GitHub. Discussions, submissions, collaborations — everything in one place, tied to the work itself.

The xDNMX Starter Kit

Want to run your own xDNMX event? The GitHub repo has everything you need:

• Brand assets (logo, colors, fonts)
• Event planning templates
• The philosophy and code of conduct
• How to run a "Discovery → Building" session
• Budget templates (keep it cheap)
• How to connect your local event to the global network

Ten people in a library. One projector, wifi, laptops. Local researcher shows what they found. Local engineer says "I could build that." Results posted to the global repo that night. That's an xDNMX event.

Discussion Spaces

• 💡 Discoveries — "I found something, here's my repo"
• 🛠️ Build Plans — "I want to build on this paper"
• 🤝 Collaborations — "Researcher seeking engineer" / "Engineer seeking foundation"
• ❓ Questions — "Has anyone explored X?"
• 🏆 Nominations — "This work deserves recognition"

Why GitHub?

Not Discord. Not Slack. GitHub. Because:

• Tied to the repos — context stays together
• Persistent and searchable — not chat ephemera
• Open by default — no invite needed to read
• Threaded, organized, async-friendly

Why Sponsor xDNMX?

xDNMX represents a new way of doing science: human intuition amplified by AI, independent researchers operating at lab scale, foundational discoveries flowing to engineers who can build on them — anywhere in the world.

Sponsors enable this extended network. They provide the compute that turns hypotheses into experiments, the recognition that validates independent work, the connections that turn discoveries into reality.

What We Need

• API Credits — The primary prize. Compute is capability.
• Recognition — Your name associated with foundational research
• Connection — Access to researchers and engineers doing breakthrough work

Sponsorship Tiers

Named after substrate concepts from the founding research:

• 🔷 Glider Tier — Supports community infrastructure
• 🔷 Boundary Tier — Funds travel scholarships for independents
• 🔷 Threshold Tier — Funds annual prizes
• 🔷 Universal Tier — Founding partner status

What Sponsors Get

• Name on prizes: "Discovery Prize, sponsored by [Partner]"
• Recognition on website and in all announcements
• Early access to winning submissions and researchers
• Invitation to advisory discussions (not control — input)
• Goodwill of fostering an independent research community

What Sponsors Don't Get

Control over content. Keynote slots. Recruiting access. IP claims. This isn't a trade show. Sponsors support the mission — they don't shape it.

Interested?

Reach out. Let's talk about how you can support foundational research and connect with the builders shaping what's next.