What is Bittensor?

Many AI services rely on one company to decide who can contribute, how quality is measured and who gets paid.

Bittensor provides shared infrastructure for independent participants to compete, evaluate useful machine intelligence and earn rewards.

That does not mean every subnet will succeed. Each one still needs a useful purpose, a reliable way to measure quality and participants who produce honest work.

Bittensor is not one single market. It is made up of specialised markets called subnets.

Each subnet defines:

• The service or task it provides
• What miners should produce
• How validators measure quality
• How rewards are distributed
• Its own Alpha token

Subnet space is finite. Creating a subnet requires a dynamic TAO lock, and a subnet can be deregistered when the network is full and a new one registers.

All subnets share the Subtensor blockchain, which records registrations, stake, validator evaluations and rewards.

Technical note+

The number used to identify a subnet is called its netuid. Subtensor produces a block about every 12 seconds. Each subnet settles evaluations and rewards at an epoch boundary; the default tempo is 360 blocks, or about 72 minutes.

As reviewed on 5 August 2026, the protocol limit is 128 subnets. This is a network setting and can change.

Miners

Miners produce the service or result requested by the subnet.

Validators

Validators test or observe the miners’ work, score its quality and submit their evaluations to the network.

Subnet owners

Subnet owners design and maintain the rules used to measure and reward useful work.

At each subnet epoch, accumulated Alpha is split between the subnet owner, miners, and validators with their stakers: 18%, 41% and 41% respectively.

Yuma Consensus combines stake-weighted validator evaluations to decide how the miner and validator shares flow. Stake affects a validator’s influence, but useful work and honest evaluation still matter.

TAO

TAO is the network-wide token used across Bittensor.

It has a maximum supply of 21 million and a halving schedule tied to total issuance.

Alpha

Each service subnet has its own Alpha token.

Alpha represents a position in that particular subnet. Its price, liquidity and estimated rewards can change independently of other subnet tokens.

When you stake TAO in a service subnet, your TAO is swapped for that subnet’s Alpha token and linked to a validator.

Root staking is different. Your principal remains in TAO and does not pass through a service-subnet Alpha pool.

The first TAO halving occurred in December 2025. As reviewed on 5 August 2026, the chain emits 0.5 TAO per block, or about 3,600 TAO per day.

Most users can participate by:

• Holding TAO
• Swapping TAO into subnet tokens
• Staking with a validator
• Moving a position between validators
• Using applications built on Bittensor

Technical participants can also operate miners or validators, build applications or create and maintain subnets.

PotaTao supports the token-holder journey. It is a non-custodial interface for supported Bittensor swaps, staking and validator moves.

PotaTao is not a wallet, exchange, custodian, validator, protocol operator or financial adviser. It cannot reverse an on-chain transaction.