Investing88 Drops Its First Investor Letter: Here’s What You Need to Know

Jake Fan, Founder & CEO of Investing88, published the subnet’s inaugural investor letter on April 6, offering a holistic look at the launch of the 88 Public Index and the turbulence that came with it.

The Launch

The 88 Public Index went live on March 31 at 3pm ET. The product is built on top of the high-performing 88 Quant Fund model, powered by Bittensor Subnet 88 miner intelligence, and executed through the TrustedStake (TS) AUM app. It’s designed as a broad, diversified, low-risk index aimed at long-term growth.

Demand blew past expectations. The index was capped at 10,000 TAO. It hit 50% capacity within hours and was fully subscribed in under 24 hours. Sign-up required a minimum 20 TAO wallet balance, with 20% automatically allocated into 88 alpha by the TS rebalancer.

The Bumps

Jake was upfront about the rocky first 72 hours. A technical issue in the first 30 minutes inadvertently sold existing 88 alpha in some wallets, creating a visible dip on the chart. That was patched quickly. Then, transparency updates shared by both teams were used by speculators to time the market. On top of that, an oversized 4,000 TAO wallet signed up by mistake and had to be carefully unwound behind the scenes.

The combined effect: roughly 38% chart volatility over three days, translating to a worst-case peak-to-trough drawdown of around 8% in some accounts.

What’s Changing

In response, Investing88 is rolling out several structural adjustments for future rounds:

• Rolling allocation model: 88 alpha allocation will now scale with performance. At +5% return, 5% is allocated; at +10%, 10%; scaling up to the full 20% at +20% return and beyond. No allocation happens until an account is in the green.
• Wallet cap: A ceiling of roughly 500 TAO per wallet at sign-up, designed to limit the outsized influence of large wallets on both 88 alpha and AUM.
• No management fees: The team reiterated that the 20% is not taken as revenue. It goes directly into 88 alpha allocation; investors keep it.

Sign-ups are currently closed and will reopen once the benchmark wallet reaches 5–10% returns.

Performance So Far

Backtested maximum drawdown (excluding 88 alpha) sits around 3.5%, and the team expects single-digit drawdowns going forward. The second chart in the letter shows a backtested return of approximately 127% over 217 days, with live returns at 3.89% over the first six days. Fan projects live APR to exceed triple digits.

The underlying model is a proprietary ensemble built on processed Subnet 88 miner outputs, dynamically selecting and weighting a basket of assets while removing underperformers. Some of the top miners feeding the model have been delivering consistently for over six months.

The Bottom Line

The 88 Public Index is positioning itself as something genuinely new: a fully on-chain, publicly transparent investment product with no management fees, powered by decentralized miner intelligence. The launch was messy, but Jake and the team owned it. The structural fixes look sensible. Now it comes down to whether the miners keep delivering.

As Jake put it: investing is a long game.

Source: Investing88 Investor Letter #1 · April 6, 2026 || Cover image source: Subnet Summer