Learn·Bittensor
What a Bittensor subnet actually is
A subnet is an independent market for one kind of work, with its own token, its own miners and its own price.
Published 2026-09-01
One network, many markets
Bittensor is not one model or one product. It is a set of independent markets called subnets, each numbered — SN1, SN64, and so on — and each buying a different kind of work: text generation, scraping, prediction, storage, compute.
A subnet defines what it wants, how it scores the answers, and who gets paid. The network itself does not care what the work is; it only enforces the accounting.
Miners, validators and the loop
Miners do the work. Validators score it. Every tempo — a fixed number of blocks — the validators submit weights saying who did well, and the chain pays out accordingly.
That loop is why a subnet's numbers move on their own even when nobody trades: emission arrives every block whether or not a single person buys.
Each subnet has its own token
Since dTAO, every subnet has its own token, written α (alpha). You do not hold a generic stake in Bittensor; you hold α of a specific subnet, and it has its own price.
That price is not set by an exchange. It comes out of a pool, which is the subject of the next page.