After almost ten years in Crypto, I have seen that hundreds of projects promise to revolutionize everything from banking to art. However, these revolutions have greatly failed to materialize.
The problem is not technology. We have been creating solutions looking for problems, instead of focusing on solving real challenges and offering real value.
Most projects create tokens first, utility later. This speculation cycle has consumed the industry, measuring success for the price of token, not the creation of real value. We are losing the crucial ingredient: a mechanism that rewards to build useful things instead of building exaggerated useless things.
What would happen if there was a protocol that turned this model and the projects had to create value first and then be rewarded? That is bittensor.
Bittensor: Gratifying performance on Mindshare
Somehow, Bittensor is like the and combinator of AI. While and Combinator offers new companies money and tutoring in exchange for capital, Bittensor offers incentive builders through tokens emissions, measures performance through free market dynamics and reward to winners without human guardians.
Think about it as an economic game where independent teams compete to build valuable AI services. Every 12 seconds, the network distributes rewards based only on utility. No marketing budgets. No privileged information. There is no traditional fundraising. No Kols. Only performance.
Tokenomic is elegant but powerful. Like Bitcoin, Bittensor’s native Tao has a fixed supply limit of 21 million, with 7,200 tokens distributed daily and half of half of half of half of the four years. This creates a genuine shortage in the form of rewards that must be gained through performance instead of speculation.
This is where it becomes even more interesting: each subbre has its own “Alfa” file that the subnet participants win. Tao holders can participate in subnets in which they believe, receiving the alpha tokens of that subnet in return. The highest subnets attract more Tao stake and obtain a most of the daily emissions. This market -driven financing mechanism means that builders are paid only if their service really works and successful projects automatically obtain more resources, while rewarding those who bet.
These performance -based rewards mean that anyone can build, but the market decides the winner. And, from its open source software, if a project is not delivering, others create a better version.
This makes bittensor a transparent competition where all metrics are public. It has been called “capitalist Darwinism.” In other words, create value or compete.
Why bittensor changes everything
Big Tech control in AI is only strengthening. Bittensor represents our best opportunity to snatch control and anchor innovation in an open, transparent and democratic environment where the value accumulates for the most played innovations, instead of closed systems that benefit from the large network effects.
For the public, Bittensor represents Crypto’s original promise: coordinating the human effort towards valuable results without intermediaries, committees or guardians. The value is created first through the competition, then the chips reward to the creators; The opposite of waiting for speculation drives the value.
For builders, this means omitting VC releases, preserving capital and being immediately rewarded for building useful things. The most important infrastructure is being built by teams that spend “$ 0 in marketing, $ 0 in exchange listings” with a pure approach to value creation. Community governance ensures that builders are not locked in decision making.
For users, this creates access to quality competition services instead of winners of the marketing budget. Users benefit from the advantage by supporting the best projects, while community governance creates strong ties between creators and consumers.
For investors, Bittensor offers exposure to AI without having to choose individual winners. The impulse value of rethinking mechanics accumulates in the network instead of diverting it. Investors gain rise when supporting high performance projects, while community governance gives them a voice instead of forcing them to follow the agenda of an CEO.
The moment could not be better. With more than $ 55 billion in funds in the AI sector in the first quarter of 2025, $ 1.39 billion in funds that go to AI agents in the last quarter, the financing of crypto validates what Bittensor has already built. While others continue to raise funds, world -class AI teams are already building a computation without server (SN64) and decentralized training (SN3), as well as climate prediction markets (SN18) and algorithmic trade systems (my project, SN8).
Bittensor is a new paradigm for AI innovation because it is a test terrain that allows the best innovations to win without artificial barriers, inclined economy or titular advantages. And, as companies greatly funded continue to dominate AI, it is imperative that we promote independent and open ecosystems that reward innovation and determination, clean and clear.
