What is Bittensor?
Miners perform a subnet's work. Validators evaluate it and submit weights. The protocol uses those evaluations to direct rewards, while TAO connects staking, emissions, and market participation.
Bittensor is an open network of incentive markets for digital work, with artificial intelligence as its main focus. Each market sets a task, measures output, and distributes TAO incentives.
- Bittensor is built around many specialized markets, not one single AI model
- Subnets define the work, validators measure quality, and miners compete to perform
- TAO connects staking, incentives, governance, and subnet-level market activity
Markets and participants
Bittensor coordinates miners, validators, subnet owners, and stakers. A subnet owner defines a task and incentive design; miners compete to perform it; validators evaluate the output. The quality of the market depends on both the task and the evaluation mechanism.
Subnets
Each subnet is a specialized market within Bittensor. Subnets may focus on inference, data, compute, storage, prediction, or other digital work. They share the network's incentive framework but can use different rules and scoring systems.
TAO and dTAO
TAO is used for staking, emissions, fees, and broad network exposure. Under dTAO, staking TAO into a subnet buys that subnet's alpha token, so users also take on subnet-specific market risk.
Is Bittensor only an AI model?
No. Bittensor is a protocol and network for creating incentive markets. AI is the central theme, but subnets can target different kinds of digital work, including compute, data, inference, storage, and market prediction.
What is TAO used for?
TAO is used across the network for staking, rewards, transactions, and broad network exposure. It is also the asset that enters and exits subnet alpha markets under Dynamic TAO.
Key pages:
learn about Bittensor,
Bittensor resources,
Bittensor subnet widgets,
Bittensor subnet comparison,
Bittensor glossary,
Bittensor emission gate,
Bittensor FAQ,
Bittensor subnet screener,
portfolio tracker,
subnet baskets,
Neuralteq validator,
and fees.