THE DAILY BRIEFING

Bittensor Daily — October 21, 2026

Opentensor introduced eTAO, a system that lets individual subnets define how their alpha emissions are divided between miners, validators and owners, with built-in limits. SN8 (Score... wait) adopted the new structure almost immediately, removing owner emissions entirely in favor of a 50/50 validator-miner split. Elsewhere, unresolved competition disputes continued on SN60 (Bitsec.ai) and were settled on SN92 (REAX).

01
Opentensor introduced eTAO, allowing subnets to set their own alpha emission split between miners, validators and owners within limits of 0-33% for owners, up to 50% for validators and at least 33% for miners, adjustable roughly every 7 days.
This changes how emissions can be distributed across the ecosystem, giving subnet teams direct control over incentive structures for the first time.
02
SN8's account announced it is removing owner emissions entirely, moving to a 0% owner, 50% validator, 50% miner split under the new eTAO system.
This is an early, concrete application of the new emission-split mechanism and signals a shift away from owner-directed emissions on at least one subnet.
03
On SN60 (Bitsec.ai), a miner publicly accused the previous round's winning agent of circumventing the hard-steering screener through mass submissions across multiple hotkeys, a claim the agent's developer disputed, and the matter remained unresolved in the channel.
The dispute raises unanswered questions about competition integrity on the subnet.
04
SN92 (REAX) named two miners co-champions of its first engine-speed competition round following a disputed block-hash tie-break and said it would discontinue the hash-based lottery method for future rounds.
The decision resolves an immediate fairness dispute while changing how future ties will be handled.
05
Community members discussed a forthcoming proposal, described as PR3211, to redesign subnet bonding curves so that alpha prices could fall to zero rather than remain structurally supported.
Such a change would alter the basic price-floor mechanics underlying all subnet alpha tokens.

SN61 24h +4.76%

RedTeam

What happened: A miner (UID 136) recorded a score of 1.0 on the subnet's BEX challenge using an undisclosed bypass technique, prompting accusations from other miners that the result was obtained unfairly. The team reviewed the submission and concluded the technique did not constitute cheating, since it was available to all miners at the time it was used. The submission was granted full BEX emission, and the validation checklist was updated to block the same technique in future challenges. The team also launched a new website that tracks buybacks, conviction-locked alpha, and monthly miner submissions, with a linked buyback wallet for verification.
Community: Miners widely disputed the 1.0 score, with several asking for revalidation or for emissions to UID 136 to be withheld, arguing the outcome discourages genuine detection work. A second miner's near-passing score of 0.7956 was also questioned as possibly bypass-related, with one suggestion to treat it as equivalent to the 0.8 passing threshold. Other miners said they could no longer compete with the top submission using standard methods and asked when a new challenge set would open.
Official: The team stated the bypass technique was not cheating because it was available to all miners at the time, confirmed full BEX emission for the submission, and updated the validation checklist to prevent the same method from passing future challenges.

SN92 24h −6.13%

REAX

What happened: SN92 (REAX) opened a new engine-speed competition track at block 9326382 (18:00 UTC), requiring miners to build faster inference engines for s1-fast, and announced it will replace its separate use-case competition tracks with a single generalist decision-model track opening around Oct 23. The first engine evaluation batch returned inconclusive results after a firewall blocked image registries, with batch 2 proceeding once fixed. UID 198 and UID 4 were named co-champions of the first engine track round following a disputed block-hash tie-break, and the team said it would remove the hash-based lottery for future rounds. SN92 also released a feature allowing one hotkey to be served by multiple machines, aimed at easing registration pressure from miners needing separate hotkeys per GPU.
Community: Miners debated the chain-set registration burn fee at length, with some asking for it to be raised and others arguing it is too high and shuts out smaller participants during the engine-competition rush, including proposals for per-UID penalties or temporary caps. A separate dispute followed the engine track's tie-break decision, with some miners questioning whether the hash-based ordering was fair.
Official: The team defended the registration fee as a chain-determined market mechanism meant to prevent slot flooding and unfair deregistrations, confirmed the engine track opening at block 9326382, explained the hash-based tie-break that led to the co-champion decision and said the hash lottery would not be used again, and announced that SN92's decision models are now integrated with the Antseed platform, including an EU tier and an auto-router feature.

In debate · SN92 registration fee: too cheap or too expensive? · 19 participants

Some miners argued the registration fee is too low and should be raised substantially.

“wen 100 TAO reg fee”
Other miners said the fee is too high during the engine-competition rush and excludes smaller participants.

“small miners like me can't even register after 18:00 UTC”
The team maintained the fee is a necessary chain-set market mechanism to prevent slot flooding and unfair deregistrations.

“we need this market mechanism that makes mining slots rather expensive”

SN60 24h −5.39%

Bitsec.ai

What happened: A miner publicly accused the previous round's winner and agent 5940 of circumventing SN60 (Bitsec.ai)'s hard-steering screener through mass submissions across multiple hotkeys, listing specific hotkeys and submission IDs as evidence. The agent's developer and other participants disputed the claim, arguing that the agent passed the platform's AST validation, hard-steering screener, and duplicate-fingerprinting checks, and that repeated submissions to refine an agent are permitted. The dispute extended over many messages without resolution in the channel.
Community: The exchange grew heated, including direct insults and calls to ban participants on both sides; moderators intervened to stop personal attacks and repeated pinging of the owner, asking that reports focus on specific exploit evidence. Separately, a participant proposed rotating benchmark projects each round since current targets appear to stay the same across rounds, a suggestion others in the channel agreed with.
Official: A moderator posted reminders asking participants to avoid personal attacks and repeated pinging of the owner, and to allow the team time to investigate reported issues.

SN44 24h −0.79%

Score

What happened: The SN44 (Score) team fixed a tiebreak bug in which the archive component failed to properly read 'recover commit', which had caused UID 80 to receive continuous emission over UID 74 in the fallen-person element despite matching scores. The team also removed blocks 9318000, 9322500 and 9322800 from the PPE track after miners repeatedly flagged ground-truth annotation errors. Separately, a miner raised concern that top scores on the soccer track had dropped sharply, suggesting data drift rather than model quality as the cause.
Community: A miner publicly named a specific coldkey, alleging it was being used to gain an unfair scoring advantage on the soccer track; the exchange escalated into a heated public argument and a moderator banned one participant. Another miner asked the team to spot-check a UID tied to a previously flagged account after its performance improved suddenly.
Official: The team confirmed the tiebreak fix, removed the three disputed PPE blocks from evaluation, and stated it does not mine on the subnet.

SN15 24h −1.45%

ORO

What happened: The SN15 (ORO) team announced upcoming changes to the incentive mechanism and advised miners to re-read the Agent Interface and Code Requirements documentation, warning that agents relying on non-dynamic behavior may suffer. Miners observed that race 18 reused the large majority of tasks from races 13-17 with identical request text, unlike earlier races that used new tasks each time. The team confirmed that new tasks would continue to be used until the incentive mechanism changes take effect. Separately, miners reported a sudden sharp increase in registration fees on the subnet.
Community: Miners asked for details on the incentive mechanism change plan, including which race it would start from and how previous races' weighted scores would be handled. Some miners disputed the team's claim that race 18 used new tasks, stating all 90 tasks were identical to prior races. Several miners also asked the team to lower the increased registration fee.
Official: The team said race 19 would use new tasks and that this would continue until the incentive mechanism changes are implemented, and pointed miners to a prior message with further details.

In debate · Whether SN15 races are reusing tasks ahead of the incentive mechanism change · 25 participants

A miner asked whether race 19 would repeat the race 18 pattern of reusing tasks from earlier races given the pending incentive mechanism changes.

“Should we expect race 19 to follow the race 18 pattern (re-using earlier tasks), or will it use new tasks again?”
The team stated that new tasks would be used until the incentive mechanism changes are made.

“it'll be new tasks until the IM changes”
A community member disputed this, saying all tasks in race 18 were identical to previous races.

“No, all 90 tasks were 100% same as previous races.”

More subnet community coverage every day in the Telegram channel →

@opentensor

Opentensor introduced eTAO, a system letting subnets set their own alpha emission split between miners, validators, and owners.

View the original post on X ↗
@CryptoZPunisher

The account cited a Tensia Foundation investigation alleging wallet connections and concentrated rewards linking SN35 (Tensia Foundation did not name team), SN70, SN103 and SN36.

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@opentensor

Opentensor detailed the new emission-split limits: owners 0–33%, validators up to 50%, miners at least 33%, adjustable roughly every 7 days.

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@0xarrash

SN8's account announced removing owner emissions entirely, moving to a 0% owner, 50% validator, 50% miner split.

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@conjectures_io

Conjectures said its miners resolved the dimension-eight case of a 1997 polynomial minimal-graph question, verified in Lean.

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@CryptoZPunisher

The account pointed to a Tensia investigation urging holders of SN16 or SN47 alpha to review their exposure to potential risks.

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@LeadpoetAI

Leadpoet promoted its AI sales agent for outreach and lead generation, citing use by Dropbox, OnePatch, and Muttdata.

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@vidaio_

SN(Vidaio)'s account announced Tobruk Protective Security Solutions as a new sales partner, part of a planned pipeline of four.

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◆2026-10-21 · End of this edition

#3194 Breaking change

release-482: replace #3041 with Validate and Weights proxy types

What: This PR replaces an earlier, unreleased implementation with two new hotkey-scoped proxy types, called Validate and Weights, and removes an unused feature for submitting weights to multiple subnets in a single batch.
Why: The change gives proxy accounts more precise, narrowly scoped permissions for validating and setting weights, and removes code for a batch feature that was never deployed.
Who it affects: This affects validators and developers who use or build proxy accounts to delegate validating or weight-setting actions, and it is a breaking change for anyone relying on the prior proxy type; ordinary TAO holders and miners are not directly affected.

#3239 Breaking change

Keep coldkeys locked after sudo swap reset

What: This PR adds a root-only function that clears pending coldkey swap announcements and disputes while keeping the coldkey locked.
Why: It gives network governance a way to resolve a disputed or stalled coldkey swap without unlocking the coldkey in the process.
Who it affects: This affects TAO holders who are party to a coldkey swap dispute; validators and miners are not directly affected, and the function itself is restricted to root-level network administration.

#3258

Prompt for every subnet identity field

What: This PR changes the btcli command for setting a subnet's on-chain identity so that fields left unspecified keep their current values instead of being cleared, and it adds a dedicated flag and interactive prompt for each identity field.
Why: The previous behavior risked wiping existing identity information when a user updated only some fields, so this prevents accidental data loss.
Who it affects: This affects subnet teams who manage their subnet's identity through btcli; validators, miners and ordinary TAO holders are not affected.

Recent upgrades

24H Market

Gainers

Losers

Bittensor Daily — October 21, 2026

RedTeam

REAX

Bitsec.ai

Score

ORO

release-482: replace #3041 with Validate and Weights proxy types

Keep coldkeys locked after sudo swap reset

Prompt for every subnet identity field

24H Market

↗Gainers

↘Losers

Bittensor Daily — October 21, 2026

Today's highlights

Subnet Community Pulse

RedTeam

REAX

Bitsec.ai

Score

ORO

Voices on X

Protocol

release-482: replace #3041 with Validate and Weights proxy types

Keep coldkeys locked after sudo swap reset

Prompt for every subnet identity field

Recent editions

Gainers

Losers