Devin Baker

Institutional capital is in its infancy within alpha token investing. DCG’s subsidiary Yuma and less than a handful of emergent liquid funds like Contango Capital and Unsupervised Capital are playing a mixed role of ecosystem evangelist, VC, incubator, and liquid token investors. These teams are working with early subnet teams to adopt a long-term ... See more

The ecosystem is exploding, and there are murmurs of a “Subnet Summer” to rival DeFi Summer in 2020. Today, there are over 100 subnets, and new subnets are registered every 2-3 days. Most subnets are equivalent to Series A startups, in terms of product maturity. There is much optimism, but success requires further execution. TAO’s long-term success... See more

Subnets are composed of three stakeholders:

1. Subnet Owners: Subnet owners are responsible for creating and maintaining the subnets, as well as defining the incentive mechanisms for miners and validators.


2. Miners : Miners compete to provide solutions to complex problems within each subnet. They strive to provide outputs that will score well against th

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Each subnet has its own subnet-specific “alpha” token with the same fixed 21m supply and tokenomics as TAO. The only way to access alpha tokens is through Uniswap v1 style AMM pools with TAO. Bittensor participants delegate TAO to the AMM and receive the “alpha” token which offers both a higher APY and potential price appreciation of the alpha toke... See more

TAO emissions flow to subnets based on the amount of staked TAO each has attracted. This stake-weighted distribution system creates a market-driven approach to resource allocation. It’s a never-ending competition among subnets to produce the most valuable work, as determined by the network.

Bittensor works via “proof-of-intelligence” structure. Whereas Bitcoin rewards its miners for raw computational power and solving an arbitrary puzzle, Bittensor directs its token rewards to productive work, as determined by TAO stakers. TAO holders can earn a yield on their TAO by staking to the root subnet (~20% APY) or can stake farther out on th... See more

Bittensor shares its token structure with Bitcoin: a fixed supply of 21 million tokens on a halving cycle that cuts emissions every four years. TAO was fair launched, and all current TAO holders either earned TAO through valuable contributions to the network or purchased tokens on the secondary market.

At a basic level, the protocol consists of:

• A substrate blockchain (Subtensor) that serves as a system of record


• A Native token (TAO) that incentivizes participation


• A network of specialized projects (called “subnets”) that compete for TAO emissions


• A consensus mechanism (Yuma Consensus) for scoring performance and allocating token rewards

Conversely, Bittensor is a digital economy that is decentrally planned. Every TAO holder acts as a market participant by choosing which subnets to stake their TAO in. These staking decisions serve as "votes" pushing new TAO emissions to the most valuable projects. By harnessing market forces rather than top-down directives, Bittensor creates a syst... See more