Bittensor isn't broken, our focus is. Sum of Subnets (SoS) contains 50 subnets that burn 100% of their emissions. We need a true benchmark that tracks what actually matters. Sum of Mining Subnets (SoMS) is the one we need. Buy the real Bittensor market in 1 click with Mentat SoMS. Bittensor is designed around incentives. If we fund the subnets that build, ghost subnets die out. No regulation needed, just better capital allocation. Let's make SoMS outperform SoS. These subnets in comments are the true face of the network 👇

Bittensor isn't broken, our focus is. Sum of Subnets (SoS) contains 50 subnets that burn 100% of their emissions. We need a true benchmark that tracks what actually matters. Sum of Mining Subnets (SoMS) is the one we need. Buy the real Bittensor market in 1 click with Mentat SoMS. Bittensor is designed around incentives. If we fund the subnets that build, ghost subnets die out. No regulation needed, just better capital allocation. Let's make SoMS outperform SoS. These subnets in comments are the true face of the network 👇

One of our theses this year was that as prediction markets mature and competition intensifies at the base layer, the most attractive opportunities will shift toward the applications and intelligence built on top. One project I have been watching closely is @SynthdataCo Synth displays expected outcomes for hourly and daily event contracts alongside the implied market probability, allowing users to compare market pricing against real time forecasts. Those forecasts are generated by the top 10 models from a pool of more than 200 competing on Bittensor. To test the product, I tracked every BTC up/down market on @Polymarket over nine weekdays. Both Synth and Polymarket probabilities were recorded at the same moment: three minutes into each 15 minute market and 15 minutes into each hourly market. The forecasts were then compared against the final outcome. Across 374 weekday 15 minute markets, Synth correctly called direction 86% of the time versus 57% for Polymarket. Across 95 hourly markets, Synth achieved 75% accuracy compared to 62% for Polymarket. Notably, Synth's edge widened significantly at shorter time horizons, posting a 29 percentage point advantage in 15 minute markets versus a 13 percentage point advantage in hourly markets. The disagreement data was even more interesting than the headline numbers. In 46% of 15 minute markets, Synth and Polymarket pointed in opposite directions. In every single case, Synth forecast DOWN while Polymarket implied UP. Synth was correct 82% of the time in these disagreements, suggesting the market was consistently underpricing short term downside during the sample period. The bigger opportunity here may not just be for directional trading but especially for market making. A market maker armed with a calibrated probability edge can quote tighter two way prices, hold less inventory and capture more volume without taking on the same adverse selection risk. As the base layer becomes commoditized, the intelligence layer becomes the moat. Synth may be an early example of what that future looks like.

Something interesting is happening with the Hyperliquid ecosystem. About a year ago, shortly after HYPE did its TGE, I had quite a few projects reaching out for funding building on Hyper. Almost all of them were just trying to chase the hype: lack of innovation, low-effort copycats with low-conviction founders. I didn’t take most of them seriously and, unsurprisingly, none of them are around anymore. That’s slowly but surely shifting. Recently a significant portion of our deal flow is actually decent founders coming up with genuinely interesting ideas on top of Hyperliquid, some even with existing products, real traction, and legitimate funding needs. The quality has completely changed. And it makes perfect sense. Hyperliquid did what every other chain tried and failed to do: they shipped a product so good that people actually wanted to use it. That attracted users. Users attracted liquidity. Liquidity attracted builders. Builders are now attracting capital. Meanwhile every other L1 and L2 is trying to buy their ecosystem into existence from the bottom up and wondering why nothing sticks. Hyperliquid built it top down. Product first. Ecosystem second. And it’s working. No grants program or desperate foundations throwing millions at mercenary devs. Just a great product and an organic flywheel doing the rest. Maybe more chains should try building something people actually want before spending billions convincing developers to pretend they care. Anyways, Hyperliquid, I guess.

Update: Subnet sorting now live. Spot top performers, highest APY, most capitalized. Sort your way. Build your basket.

This is why I say only 10-20 subnets on TAO are worth investing into Because 50% are doing nothing, shame!

Crypto is extremely good at incentivizing quantity. Crypto is extremely bad at incentivizing quality.

The Arbitrum Freeze: Decentralization Theater Meets Reality Two days after the $292M Kelp DAO exploit, the Arbitrum Security Council froze 30,766 ETH linked to the attacker. The funds now sit in an intermediary wallet, movable only by further governance action. Good outcome? Probably. Comfortable outcome? Not at all. 1. What the freeze actually is The Security Council used its emergency powers to execute a state-changing action against a specific address. No smart contract was broken. The code was overridden by humans with keys. This is not a secret or an abuse. It's a documented property of Arbitrum, and of every other major L2 today. By L2Beat's framework, Arbitrum is a Stage 1 rollup: a trusted multisig can upgrade the system and, in emergencies, alter state. Optimism, Base, zkSync, Starknet, Linea, all sit at Stage 0 or 1. No production rollup has reached Stage 2. Call the freeze what it is: a legitimate administrative intervention on an administered chain. 2. Decentralization theater is the default We built this space to give users sovereignty through self-custody, permissionless access, and credibly neutral rails. That ideal is still alive ,in a shrinking set of places: ETH on mainnet, BTC on Bitcoin, a handful of genuinely immutable contracts. Almost everything else is permissioned in some way: upgradable contracts, whitelisted oracles, pausable markets, admin-keyed bridges, multisig-governed rollups, freezable stablecoins. We kept the vocabulary of permissionlessness. We quietly built a governed financial stack underneath it. The Arbitrum freeze didn't create that reality. It made it visible. 3. Why does it persist Because a truly permissionless system at scale is brutal to defend. No pause. No rollback. No freeze. Every line of code public, every mistake final. Attackers iterate for free; defenders get one shot. Kelp is the canonical illustration: a 1-of-1 DVN against LayerZero's written guidance, two poisoned RPC nodes, a DDoS on the rest, and $292M minted out of a fabricated state. No zero-day. No smart contract exploit. An infrastructure-level attack on a verifier that was decentralized in name only. Meanwhile the adversary has scaled. DPRK-linked groups have more capital than most protocols have in treasury, dedicated research teams, timelines in quarters, and now AI that can diff every commit and grep every config at machine speed. Their only real constraint is self-imposed: don't kill the goose. With a 1-of-1 DVN they could have minted $292B as easily as $292M. They're calibrating, not restrained. 4. The honest tradeoff Both of these are true at once: The freeze likely saved real money from a state-sponsored attacker. The freeze confirms that Arbitrum, today, is a chain where sufficiently motivated humans can move your balance. These are not a contradiction. They are the explicit cost of the Stage 1 compromise. The open question is whether we treat that compromise as permanent and rebrand accordingly, or as scaffolding toward something stronger. 5. The only real exit: validity proofs Not better multisigs. Not faster incident response. A verifier that checks a succinct proof of another chain's state transition doesn't trust an RPC, a DVN, an oracle, or a committee. Either the math checks or it doesn't. That's how Ethereum L1 already settles rollups. It is the model every bridge should converge to, and the one Stage 2 rollups will need to reach. In that world, Kelp-style attacks become cryptographically impossible rather than operationally unlikely, and L2s stop needing emergency councils as load-bearing security. Every bridge and most rollups today are an IOU against that future. 6. Where this leaves us Maybe Bitcoin stays credibly neutral mostly because it refuses to do anything. Every system that tries to do more than move a scarce asset drifts toward human governance, because the alternative is getting drained by professionals with better tooling than the defenders. The uncomfortable part is admitting we are running on trust we told ourselves we had removed. The Arbitrum freeze didn't break a promise, it revealed a promise we had already stopped keeping. Until the proofs catch up, every "decentralized" protocol should carry its Stage label on the tin. Users should know which chain they're actually on when they click confirm. Stay safe. Stay honest about your trust assumptions

The real issue I see is that it complicates even more the ability for subnet owners to finance their subnets. The problem that happened with Sam can simply be seen as the largest holder dumping. Any asset with a larger holder owning too much of the supply should be a red flag. 5Gurl could do the same thing on Ridges. Why point the finger at subnet owners?

Everyone bullposts Bittensor even if it’s too hard to admit.