Frequently asked questions

Bittensor’s ambition is to sustain an economy that can produce intelligence beyond the control of any single company or government, while letting anyone build markets, businesses and livelihoods around it.

Not fully, yet. Today, chain upgrades are controlled by a multisig of three keys, and blocks are produced under proof of authority, where a select set of validator nodes run the chain. The roadmap moves block production to proof of stake and hands governance over to the community.

The economic layer, though, has been decentralized from the start. Neither TAO nor subnet tokens were pre-mined or allocated to insiders. Both are earned through useful work, which has spread ownership outward over time.

Participation has always been open. Anyone can mine, validate or launch a subnet without permission.

No. Bittensor launched in January 2021 with no pre-mine, no token sale and no allocation to insiders or investors. Every TAO in circulation was earned through useful work.

The first private sale came about six months after launch, when the Opentensor Foundation sold roughly $2M of TAO it had mined. From 2021 to 2023, it raised about $10.8M in total through over-the-counter sales of mined TAO, to buyers including Polychain, DCG and Firstmark.

Each subnet is its own proof-of-useful-work network, and its token is how miners get paid for that work. That makes the token price a dial: raise it and miners contribute more, better outputs; let it fall and the output degrades. Take the token away entirely and no miner shows up the next day.

This matters most once a business depends on the subnet, either because it’s the cheapest place to source an output or because the output is too specialized to build in-house or buy elsewhere. As that business grows and needs more from the subnet, the token price has to rise with it to keep the output coming.

That’s why teams buy back the token. Not as a favor to holders, but because that’s what growing the business requires.

Not necessarily. Often it’s the opposite. Equity gives a team capital to build the product and win customers, and every new customer means the business needs more from the subnet. Since the token price is what pays for that output, growth on the equity side has to pull the token up with it.

The risk comes when the token is optional. If the business could get the same output somewhere else, or pay miners another way, value can pile up in the company while the token gets left behind. So the real question isn’t whether a team raised equity. It’s whether their business depends on the subnet to grow.