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.
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.