Culture as a Trust Signal

Full article by Kai Morris.

There’s something magnetising about Bittensor. Its rich architecture and revolutionary consensus model makes it teeming with innovation. The notion of subnets all running on one blockchain, but with command of their own specific niches, along with a scientific system of verifying meaningful work sounds enticing. It feels more three-dimensional compared to other blockchain systems.

It makes sense to look at these features and say they’re the drivers behind its success.

However, that’s not what primarily enchants us. While that may have drawn in curious minds at the start, something else is at play, hidden between the lines.

The features I described help give Bittensor its unique structure, but its character lies elsewhere.

I propose a different idea. Bittensor resonates with many of us because it feels lived in. It feels historical. It feels intentional and it feels messy.

It’s a historical web of subnets made up of many who’ve changed hands and goals. It’s an ecosystem of participants – miners, validators, subnet owners, thought leaders. It’s a set of laws governing the whole protocol, but smaller rules governing each project.

And woven within that, it emits a social code and decorum that transcends all.

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A Fully-Fledged World

Bittensor’s the first decentralized ecosystem that acts like an actual digital space. Giving something this embodied feeling is a core principle of community building within the blockchain industry.

Projects like Ethereum and Solana spend tremendous money and time attempting to craft it, but oftentimes it feels flat and listless. In most blockchains, your primary materials are the token and the smart contract. You use these to launch assets and develop decentralized apps, both running on your blockchain of choice. In doing so, you hope to foster a crowd who cares about your work, and who actively use your tools.

The problem, however, is that these are highly restrictive. Most projects boil down to a simple governance token and a financial protocol. There’s little variety.

In Bittensor, your primary material is the subnet. You’re asked to create something of value, based on a set of parameters, with incentives built in to convince people to engage with your system. You make a machine that drives outputs, inviting users to partake and get rewarded for their work.

I’ve given a nebulous description because anything more specific would disrespect the variety subnets offer. You can set them up to train AI models, run VPNs, fold proteins, collect data, develop AI agents, build 3D assets, run ad campaigns, develop sports predictions, and produce machine consciousness. And that doesn’t scratch the surface.

A subnet is an incentive factory. You set the conditions and goals, and then you convince others to work accordingly. In the past, they didn’t even have their own tokens – people were simply rewarded in TAO. Nowadays, that’s not the case. Since early 2025, every subnet comes with its own asset, but there’s some caveats.

Subnet tokens (called dTAO, or alpha) aren’t created by the subnet owner, they’re hardcoded into the system by the Bittensor blockchain. This means that owners are not creators, but more so custodians. They all work in the same way, with the same tokenomics and fundamentals underlying them, so the brunt of a subnet owner’s work isn’t in making them operate within the confines of their project. They often take a backseat, as owners prioritise their time on strengthening their networks, as this is where they can truly stand out and produce meaningful systems.

Bittensor as a City

The result is an ecosystem that feels distinct. Each subnet runs like its own constituency, set with rules, bylaws, beliefs, and history. When zoomed out, they all rest inside what feels like a city – a sprawling area that unites all, but which operates as fertile ground to exert your own perspectives and find a home that plays into your strengths.

Not only that, but there’s a history to it. Subnets have changed hands in the past. They’ve had different leaders and different laws. For instance, Subnet 37 used to be all about fine-tuning LLMs, now it’s about building aligned intelligence that we can trust. Subnet 45 used to be aimed at code generation services, now harvests trading signals. Subnet 23 has changed hands several times, going from providing image-generation, to incentivising truthful discourse, to researching AI safety. It’s hard to track this info down when starting out, but anybody who’s been around for long enough will likely remember these various iterations.

Of course, a city isn’t an inherently good thing. Like all metropolitan areas, there’s dangers lurking, and Bittensor’s no exception. Scammers are rampant, preying on those who’ve fallen in love with the blockchain but don’t yet know how to navigate it safely. A recent example of this is Subnet 67, once a bustling ecosystem, but after initiating a vicious exit scam, it collapsed. As of writing, the subnet slot is abandoned with no project operating there. In the average blockchain, if a project fails or falls, the remnants of it are cleaned up and brushed away. You might own a token, but beyond that there’s little to signify its existence. On Bittensor, subnets keep their position, but simply empty out, and if nobody else builds there, then it sticks out like a sore, ephemeral, thumb.

This is further accentuated by the fact that most of Bittensor’s ecosystem lives in one location: its official Discord server. Here, every subnet gets its own channel, where owners, miners, validators, and speculators congregate. You can travel to each hub with ease, as they’re all listed next to each other. While many subnets have their own specific digital communities, these are often secondary to the unified Discord server.

You spend enough time here, and you’ll see familiar faces across the board. Jacob Steeve (Const) will visit different subnet channels from time to time. Key players like Fish or MogMachine traverse several of them. A handful of Subnet 13’s miners can also be found chatting in the Subnet 46 channel.

Take a step back, and you run into projects on the periphery – spaces that aren’t attached to subnets, but which help the ecosystem flourish and gather.

Bitstarter is a crowdfunding accelerator, where newcomers pitch subnet ideas and seek grassroots investments from the community. The project isn’t a subnet, so it doesn’t get its own channel on Discord, but it does have a Telegram group where people discuss ideas and strategies. Taostats is the main site for tracking pricing stats across the ecosystem. Places like Subnet Summer offer a beginner-friendly Telegram group where users can share perspectives on Bittensor’s trajectory.

Then there’s the rich podcasting and broadcasting arm of the community. People like Keith Singery, Siam Kidd, Mark Jeffery, and the team behind TAO Daily report on developments within the space, educating others and challenging the status quo. They represent the fourth estate, acting as journalists and town criers.

Bittensor Feels Lived In

Bittensor is brought to life by its rich history of subnets, bustling communities, peripheral services for people to congregate within, and voices who lead the discourse.

You dial in further, and you get distinct roles. Builders make the subnets, validators help assess the work, and miners produce the work. There’s room for holders, thought leaders, and researchers, too.

There are customs that span across the land – for example many believe your own tokenomic focuses should be on TAO and your own alpha token, you shouldn’t build incentives that require non-native assets to operate. Another custom is that projects that help grow the ecosystem inwardly are highly revered; Subnet 13 (Data Universe) is respected for its ability to provide social media data to other Bittensor projects, Subnet 93 (Bitcast) is revered for building an ad campaign network for inside the protocol. Nurturing the chain is celebrated.

Beyond that, there’s various ideologies flowing through the surface. You have people who believe Bittensor should harness its collectivist spirit and have everybody rally together to spread the word of TAO across the world. And then you have individualists who believe Bittensor works best when every subnet owner spends their time and energy on their own systems, generally ignoring Bittensor as an overarching environment.

All this history, tradition, and culture makes it feel ancient. Yet it’s only existed since 2019. This is what happens when you push past community building and start worldbuilding.

I doubt Bittensor’s original devs set out to create such an embodied atmosphere, but their actions have inadvertently fostered one. They wanted to push blockchain tech’s limits, but in doing so they’ve redefined what connectivity can mean. Most blockchains operate on a somewhat tribalist ethos (e.g. when you invest in an asset you’re grouped together with other investors, sharing the highs and lows as a collective), but Bittensor is the first chain that feels like a third space. It’s risen above simple comradery and towards an emotive network of participants.

That being said, enchantment has its cost. When you’re enthralled by something you struggle to judge it. Many of Bittensor’s fans love the ecosystem, but lack the knowledge to truly assess the projects inside it or the principles woven throughout. Dynamic TAO, Yuma Consensus, hotkeys and coldkeys, and certain incentive mechanisms require dedication to fully grasp. I’d go so far as to say only a small fraction of users wholeheartedly understand how Bittensor’s tokenomics work (this includes myself). Largely, it’s not a fault of the user – Bittensor is extremely dense, even by blockchain standards. A duller network would likely have a higher percentage of experts, as there would be no reason to be passionate beyond fundamentals.

The Culture Sets the Tone

Social proof is one of the most powerful trust signals in the world. If you find a community who’s excited and passionate about a project, it conveys safety. We’re pro-social creatures, so oftentimes this convinces us far more than technical capabilities or fundamentals. But Bittensor takes it further. It has its own distinct culture. It’s a rich and overflowing environment that provides a homely feel.

The anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor defines culture as a “complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by [persons] as a member of society”. This is, without a doubt, something Bittensor exudes.

To take this further, there’s ongoing discourse into how exactly culture contributes to human flourishing. Dr. James O. Pawelski, Director of Education and Positive Psychology Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania writes about the “practical effects of cultural engagement on human flourishing” and how “wisdom, narrative, aesthetic, and performance traditions of cultures across time and around the world [can provide] insights into the nature and development of human flourishing.”

A culture’s formation and existence can bring about greater well-being. Of course, much of the discourse around this is focused on cultures in the traditional, multi-dimensional and anthropological sense, but the concept has been explored in digital confines by researchers like Aliaksandr Birukou at The University of Trento. He notes that “culture is no more bound to a geographical area or a religion, as it is usually studied in anthropology. It becomes more appropriate to speak about the culture of online communities and such communities in general can not be characterized in terms of race, religion, or country.”

In other words, culture, even if it exists digitally, has the capacity to affect how we feel and orient ourselves within the world. This is a major part of why Bittensor’s thriving.

That’s not to say its architecture and incentive design aren’t important. Far from it. Without its fundamental structure, culture would never emerge. However, Bittensor is far more complex than other chains, so it can take a while to understand its processes. This type of intricacy tends to turn people away, and considering how impenetrable Bittensor is for newcomers it’s undoubtedly alienated people. But the reason many push on even in the face of confusion is because they see such a bustling society.

The culture calls them. The culture keeps them captivated.

I want to study Bittensor. That’s why I stay. I want to understand its people, its ideologies, its history, its tradition. I don’t want to just be a part of the social fabric, I want to comprehend its sociology. Not everybody will feel this specific pull, but I’m convinced that many of its fans are here because they can’t take their eyes off the ever-evolving culture. They want to call this city their home.