Evolution of energy production adapted for RNA world in a "pre-RNA world"

Most of the metabolic processes are today driven by enzymes, i.e. proteins. This was known long before the genetic systems, with transcriptions and translation were discovered. Today we know that genetics is necessary for protein synthesis, but in the first half of the twentieth century a common thinking about molecular biology was that proteins could somehow self-replicate. Most scientists today agree that that is not taking place and has never taken place. But there are still some strange hypotheses claiming that such processes in early life periods existed, or that proteins could somehow spontaneously appear in specific sequences.

William Martin and Michael J. Russell have postulated generation of energy in the form GTP or ATP, and they have formulated this suggestion:

"Thermodynamic considerations related to formyl pterin synthesis suggest that the ability to harness a naturally pre-existing proton gradient at the vent–ocean interface via an ATPase is older than the ability to generate a proton gradient with chemistry that is specified by genes."

They have suggested that specific peptide chains survive better than others, and that enzymes were formed from these. This suggestion is most probably not possible at all, and it is totally unnecessary, because life got its energy for formation and handling of RNA molecules in much simpler ways. They suggest that large parts of the metabolic apparatus was already present, based on these, when the first RNA molecules appeared. A lot of enzymes are suggested, forming the reverse Krebs cycle and the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. But the most improbable and quite teleological suggestion is that the highly complex membranous ATPase was present before RNA. This complex changes an RNA molecule from a high energetic to a low energetic variant or vice versa. The high energetic variant was on the young earth readily present as pyrophosphate and other phosphate chains. RNA molecules were built from these.