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Bittensor Developer Documentation

Welcome! Bittensor is an open source platform on which you can produce competitive digital commodities. These digital commodities can be machine intelligence, storage space, compute power, protein folding, financial markets prediction, and many more. You are rewarded in TAO when you produce best digital commodities.

See the below diagram for a top-level view of the Bittensor ecosystem.

Bittensor Platform Big PictureBittensor Platform Big Picture

Each category of the digital commodity is produced in a distinct subnet. Applications are built on these specific subnets. End-users of these applications would be served by these applications.

Subnets, which exist outside the blockchain and are connected to it, are off-chain competitions where only the best producers are rewarded. A subnet consists of off-chain subnet validators who initiate the competition for a specific digital commodity, and off-chain subnet miners who compete and respond by producing the best quality digital commodity.

Scores are assigned to the top subnet miners and subnet validators. The on-chain Yuma Consensus determines the TAO rewards for these top performers. The Bittensor blockchain, called subtensor, runs on decentralized validation nodes, just like any blockchain.

For example, in the Subnet 1 Prompting the subnet miners compete to generate answers that are closest to a machine learning base model chosen by the subnet validators.

Opentensor Foundation provides all the open source tools, the codebase and the documentation, with step-by-step tutorials and guides, to enable you to participate in the Bittensor ecosystem.

This documentation is for bittensor platform only

This documentation and the Bittensor codebase is for the Bittensor platform only. For subnets and applications, refer to subnet-specific websites, which are maintained by subnet owners.


Start here

If you are new to Bittensor, start by learning the concepts. Then install the Bittensor software and create a wallet. Follow the below links.

Learn the concepts
Start by learning the Bittensor concept, building blocks and incentive mechanism.
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Install
To validate or mine, or run your own subnet, install Bittensor and create wallet to get started.
READ MORE
How to participate

A straightforward way to participate in the Bittensor network is to be a subnet miner or a subnet validator in an existing subnet. It is not necessary to create a subnet. Follow the below links in the Validate or mine section. Alternately, if you want to create your own custom incentive mechanism, then you create your own subnet and launch your own competition. See the below Running a subnet section.


Validate or mine

You can participate in an existing subnet as either a subnet validator or a subnet miner. Follow the below links.

1. Checklist for validating and mining
When you are preparing to be a subnet validator or a subnet miner, use this checklist to get ready.
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2. Register, validate and mine
Follow these steps to register and become a miner, or stake your TAO and become a validator.
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3. Emissions
Learn how dividends for the validators and incentives for the miners are calculated.
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4. Staking and Delegation
Get to know how staking and delegating your TAO works in the Bittensor network.
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Governance
Learn how the Bittensor governance works as it transitions into full community-ownership over time.
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Senate
Understand what Senate is, requirements to participate in a Senate and how voting works.
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Running a subnet

Ready to run your own subnet? Follow the below links.

Basic subnet tutorials
Learn how to run a simple subnet locally or on testchain or mainchain.
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Create a subnet
Step-by-step instructions for creating a local subnet or a subnet on testchain or mainchain.
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OCR subnet tutorial
Shows how to convert your Python notebook containing validated code for an incentive mechanism into a working subnet.
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Subnet hyperparameters
Get to know subnet hyperparameters and how to use them effectively. As a subnet owner, your success depends on this knowledge.
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Bittensor CLI and API

Use the Bittensor CLI and Bittensor API to develop and participate in the Bittensor network.

Bittensor CLI
With Bittensor CLI, you can stake or unstake funds, check network state and much more.
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Bittensor API
A comprehensive Python API reference documentation for the open-sourced Bittensor API.
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