Subnet Owners Respond to the Covenant Exit

In the hours following Covenant AI’s departure from Bittensor, something happened that the rug-pull narrative did not anticipate. The subnet owners, the people who actually run the network’s most important infrastructure, started speaking up. Almost in unison.

A wave of public statements from some of Bittensor’s most prominent builders, each one rejecting Sam Dare’s framing and reaffirming their commitment to the network. Some defended Jacob Steeves personally. Others didn’t mention him at all, choosing instead to make the simpler statement that their projects were Bittensor and Bittensor was them.

For a network whose entire crisis had been about whether it was actually decentralized or whether it lived or died with one founder, this collective response was its own kind of answer.

“Chutes Is Bittensor, and Bittensor Is Chutes”

The first major voice to weigh in was Jon Durbin, owner of Chutes, currently the largest subnet on Bittensor. His statement set the template that several others would echo almost word-for-word in the hours that followed.

“Chutes is and always will be a bittensor project. Chutes is bittensor, and bittensor is chutes.”

Durbin went further than the loyalty statement. He used the moment to publicly describe how the Chutes team is structured: a group of independent corporations with no CEO, with funds locked into a smart contract that pays staking rewards to fund team members. Then he made an offer to other subnet teams: if anyone wanted help setting up a similar smart contract structure to insulate their projects from the kind of unilateral founder action that Dare was accused of, the Chutes team would assist.

It was a quiet but pointed response. Without naming Dare, Durbin offered the community a structural solution to the very problem the Covenant exit had exposed, and made clear that the largest subnet on the network was already operating that way.

The Echo

Within hours, the same phrasing had begun to ripple across other subnet teams. Max Sebti, owner of Score, posted his own version:

“Score is and always will be a bittensor project. Score is bittensor, and bittensor is score.”

Tom, the co-founder of Bitcast joined with an identical structure:

“Bitcast is and always will be a bittensor project. Bitcast is bittensor, and bittensor is bitcast.”

These statements were short, almost ritualistic. It was a public declaration that the network’s builders were not following Covenant out the door, and that whatever Dare had alleged about Bittensor’s centralization, it was not enough to shake the conviction of the people running its most active subnets.

The Defenders

Not everyone kept their statements neutral. Some chose to defend Const directly, drawing on personal history.

Will Squires, co-founder of Macrocosmos, which operates Subnets 1, 9, and 13, was unambiguous:

“Const funded Templar, paid for their first website, wrote their first incentive, and hired their first team members. Knowing both parties, I can assure you it is not Sam Dare who is the wronged party here. Disappointing how money corrupts people.”

Squires’ statement matched the earlier account from Fish, the owner of Subnet 51 (Lium), who had described in detail how Const had built the first versions of both the Grail and Templar subnets and handed them to Dare, found developers for him, and even given him a 2,000 TAO Christmas bonus one year. Two independent voices from different corners of the ecosystem now telling the same story: that the founder Dare had publicly accused was the one who had made his entire operation possible.

Brian McCrindle, a founding engineer at Macrocosmos, added a more personal note:

“If there is anyone that has done the most for Macrocosmos, it has been Const. We would have never existed without his support. To think that he is the evil among us is completely misguided, and your actions will forever be a stain on your tablecloth Sam Dare.”

The intensity of these defenses is worth pausing on. These are not faceless community members or anonymous accounts. They are operators of major subnets, people whose own projects depend on Bittensor’s continued health, who have every commercial incentive to stay neutral in a public dispute, and who chose instead to defend a co-founder by name.

“The Genie Is Out of the Bottle”

Other voices took a different approach: not defending anyone, but reframing the entire conversation.

Will, co-founder of Bitcast, made the philosophical case that the entire premise of the Covenant exit was flawed:

“A subnet isn’t a single person, it’s an open network of contributors. Decentralised training on Bittensor continues with or without Sam — the genie is out of the bottle. As an ecosystem, we will learn, adapt, and inevitably be stronger not weaker following today’s drama.”

This framing matters because it cuts at the core of Dare’s narrative. If a subnet is truly decentralized, if it’s an open network of contributors rather than the personal property of its founder, then no single person’s exit should be able to kill it. The fact that Covenant-72B exists, that the research is published, that the model weights are open-source under Apache license, means the work continues regardless of who walks away. Will’s argument is that Dare’s exit, far from proving Bittensor is centralized, actually demonstrates the opposite: that the network’s most important achievement survives independent of the team that built it.

Seby, owner of RESI, struck a similar but more philosophical tone:

“Regardless, the show goes on for Resi. In permissionless networks, people will do what serves them. Onwards and surely upwards.”

There is a kind of stoicism in that statement. A recognition that in a permissionless system, you don’t get to choose how other participants behave, you only get to choose how you respond. Seby’s message is that RESI will keep building.

What the Pattern Tells Us

Step back from the individual statements and the collective response carries a message that may be more important than any single voice in it.

The first thing it tells us is that the Bittensor community of subnet owners is not buying Dare’s narrative. They are not even hedging. They are publicly aligning with the network and, in many cases, with Const personally.

The second thing it tells us is that there is real history here. Multiple owners are independently pointing to specific acts of generosity and support from Const including funding, infrastructure, code, and team building. Whatever you make of Dare’s governance critique, the picture of Const as a power-hungry centralizer is being actively contradicted by the people who have worked with him over years.

The third thing, and perhaps the most important for the long-term health of the network, is that several owners are using this moment to talk publicly about structure. Durbin’s mention of Chutes’ smart-contract-based corporate structure. Will Squires’ implicit endorsement of how Macrocosmos operates. The recurring theme that subnets should be designed as open networks rather than as the personal fiefdoms of their founders. These are concrete proposals for how the network should evolve.