Watch the introductory video by Jacob Robert Steeves, co-founder of Bittensor, to quickly learn more about Bittensor.

Watch the following video to learn what makes a great subnet.

Round I — Subnet Ideathon（Dec 23, 2025 - Feb 25, 2026）

Design the most promising subnet with strong incentive logic, clear miner/validator roles, and meaningful use cases within the Bittensor ecosystem.

Submission Requirements

Teams must submit:

1. Subnet Design Proposal

Format: PDF, Slides, Notion doc, or GitHub repository

Example Proposal：https://moonshotcommons.notion.site/Ideathon-Submission-Template-Ridges-AI-2e9e74465ed580c3b8f9d323ff156f7e?source=copy_link

The proposal should include:

• Incentive & Mechanism Design

  • Emission and reward logic

  • Incentive alignment for miners and validators

  • Mechanisms to discourage low-quality or adversarial behavior

  • How this design when implemented as a subnet qualifies as a genuine “proof of intelligence” or more broadly at least a “proof of effort”

  • High-level algorithm describing task assignment, submission, validation, scoring, and reward allocation.
    

• Miner Design

  • Miner tasks

  • Expected input → output format

  • Performance dimensions (e.g. quality, speed, accuracy)
    

• Validator Design

  • Scoring and evaluation methodology

  • Evaluation cadence

  • Validator incentive alignment

• Business Logic & Market Rationale

  • The problem the subnet aims to solve and why it matters

  • Competing solutions, both within the Bittensor ecosystem and outside of it

  • Why this use case is well-suited to a Bittensor subnet

  • Whether there is a plausible path to long-term adoption and sustainable business

• Go-To-Market Strategy

  • Initial Target Users & Use Cases: Early adopters, pilot partners, or anchor use cases.

  • Distribution & Growth Channels

  • Incentives for Early Participation: Bootstrapping strategies for miners, validators, and users.

2. Explanation Video

• 5–10 minutes recommended

• Walkthrough of architecture, mechanism design, and flows
  

3. Public Introduction Post

• Short public introduction of the subnet idea on X (Twitter) or other public platforms

⚠️ No testnet or mainnet deployment is required at this stage.

4. Pitch Deck

• Create a 10 pages bussiness pitch deck for your subnet.

Round I Outcome

• Top 7 teams and honorable mentions will be selected based on idea quality and mechanism design.

• Selected teams advance to Round II — Hackathon
  

Selected teams are expected to be announced on March 2nd.

Round II — Subnet Hackathon(Testnet) （Mar 2,2026 - Mar 30,2026）

Validate that strong subnet ideas can be implemented and operate meaningfully on the Bittensor testnet.

Only teams selected from Round I are eligible to participate.

Execution Requirements

Selected teams must:

• Implement their proposed subnet or miner design on the Bittensor testnet

• Demonstrate:

  • Functional miner and/or subnet logic

  • Working validator evaluation flow

  • Evidence that incentive mechanisms behave as intended

    The winners of various awards are expected to be announced on March 31.

Polish is not necessary, but functional correctness and conceptual integrity are required.

About Bittensor

Bittensor is an open source platform where participants produce best-in-class digital commodities, including compute power, storage space, artificial intelligence (AI) inference and training, protein folding, financial markets prediction, and many more. Bittensor is composed of distinct subnets. Each subnet is an independent community of miners (who produce the commodity), and validators (who evaluate the miners' work). The Bittensor network constantly emits liquidity, in the form of its token, TAO (ττ), to participants in proportion to the value of their contributions. Explore the full vision at bittensor.com.