Bittensor Subnet Hackathon — Round 2 (Testnet)
Welcome to Round 2 of the Bittensor Subnet Ideathon—the Testnet Hackathon!
Register Countdown

≈ 23,000 USD
Available in Prizes
Description
Watch the introductory video by Jacob Robert Steeves, co-founder of Bittensor, to quickly learn more about Bittensor.
Watch the following video to learn what makes a great subnet.
Round II — Subnet Hackathon(Testnet) (Mar 9,2026 - Mar 30,2026)
In Round 1, we saw incredible potential in your subnet designs. Now, it's time to turn those exceptional mechanism designs and incentive logic into reality. The core objective of Round 2 is to validate that your subnet ideas can be successfully deployed and operate meaningfully on the Bittensor testnet.
Who is Eligible?
Round 1 Advanced Teams: Only the 7 teams selected from Round 1 are eligible to compete for the Grand Prize ($10,000 Hackathon Winner).
Open Participants (Permissionless): All other rewards (Runner-UP, Discretionary Investment, and Compute Credits) are open to everyone. Even if you didn't participate in Round 1, as long as you deploy a functional Subnet or Miner on the Bittensor Testnet, you are welcome to submit and compete!
Execution & Submission Requirements
Selected teams must implement their proposed subnet or miner design from Round 1 on the Bittensor testnet.
Your submission must include and demonstrate the following:
1. Proof of Testnet Deployment
Provide links to the relevant code repositories (e.g., GitHub).
2. Functional Demonstration
Please submit a detailed README or Notion doc that clearly explains how to run your subnet and reproduce the results. Your documentation must explicitly demonstrate:
Functional miner and/or subnet logic.
A working validator evaluation flow.
Evidence that incentive mechanisms behave as intended.
3. Demo Video
Record a video clearly demonstrating your code running on the testnet, the actual interactions between miners and validators, and the final performance metrics.
💡 Tip: Extreme polish is not necessary at this stage, but functional correctness and conceptual integrity are strictly required.
Community Support & Events
To ensure you have the resources and guidance needed during the testnet phase, we have prepared the following support:
Weekly Workshops: Throughout Round 2, we will be hosting weekly online workshops. These sessions are designed to provide ongoing technical guidance, answer your questions, and help you navigate the testnet deployment process smoothly. (Specific schedules and meeting links will be shared in our community channels.)
Judging Criteria
In Round 2, judges will evaluate your subnet's testnet performance and mechanism design across the following key dimensions:
Functional Implementation: We look for an end-to-end operational subnet on the testnet. This includes successful deployment, functional miner and validator logic, complete flow integrity (from task assignment to reward), and overall network stability.
Incentive Mechanism Integrity: The reward logic must behave exactly as designed. High-quality miners should earn more, adversarial or low-quality "spam" behavior must be penalized, and validators must be incentivized for honest evaluation.
Proof of Intelligence / Proof of Effort: Your subnet must produce meaningful, non-trivial work. Judges will look for objective evaluation metrics, reproducibility of scoring, and clear signals that the output reflects measurable competence.
Validator & Scoring Robustness: A strong evaluation mechanism is crucial. We expect transparent scoring logic, strong resistance to manipulation or collusion, and effective mitigation of systematic bias.
Conceptual Integrity & Architecture: Your testnet implementation should align strongly with your approved Round I proposal, featuring a clean structure and a logical, understandable architectural flow.
Market & Ecosystem Potential: Beyond the code, your subnet should solve a meaningful real-world problem and clearly add long-term value to the broader Bittensor network.
Timeline
Round 2 Hackathon Starts: March9, 2026
Submission Ends: March 30, 2026
Demo Day (Tentative): March 31, 2026
Winner Announcement: April 7, 2026
Good luck building on the testnet! We look forward to seeing you turn your "Proof of Intelligence" into actual, running code.
FAQs
Hackathon Winner
10,000 USD
Hackathon Winner
Awarded to the team whose subnet demonstrates the strongest overall design and execution on testnet.(1 winner)
Bonus Non-Cash Rewards:
Direct entry into the Bitstarter Accelerator
Exclusive pitch session with Jacob Robert Steeves (Co-Founder of Bittensor) or Etienne (President, Opentensor Foundation)
Hackathon Winner
Judging Criteria
Functional correctness and stability of the subnet or miner implementation
Reliability of miner–validator interactions and evaluation flow
Engineering quality, architecture choices, and implementation judgment
Performance, robustness, and operational soundness on testnet
Hackathon Runner-UP
3,000 USD
Hackathon Runner-UP
Awarded to teams showing strong technical execution, stability, or performance on testnet.(1 winner)
Bonus Non-Cash Rewards:
Interview opportunity with Bitstarter
Hackathon Runner-UP
Judging Criteria
Quality and robustness of incentive and mechanism design
Clear definition of miner and validator roles, tasks, and evaluation logic
Relevance and credibility of the subnet use case within the Bittensor ecosystem
Consistency between proposed design and observed testnet behavior
Overall coherence of idea, execution, and outcomes
Subnet Ideathon Award * 5
1,000 USD
Subnet Ideathon Award * 5
Awarded for exceptional subnet design(5 Winners/1000 USD/Each)
Bonus Non-Cash Rewards:
Interview opportunity with Bitstarter
Subnet Ideathon Award * 5
Judging Criteria
Novelty and originality of incentive, scoring, or coordination design
Clarity and soundness of the underlying mechanism logic
Evidence from testnet execution that the mechanism works as intended
Insightfulness and potential impact on future subnet design
Discretionary Investment
1000 TAO( ≈260,000 USD)
Discretionary Investment
Unsupervised Capital is on the lookout for standout teams building on the Bittensor network. If an exceptional project emerges from this hackathon, UC may explore a discretionary investment of up to 1,000 TAO, along with strategic guidance from one of the most trusted funds in the ecosystem.
Discretionary Investment
Judging Criteria
Judging Mode
Voting Mode
Basilica Compute Credit Award
Compute Credits( ≈5,000 USD)
Basilica Compute Credit Award
Awarded to teams demonstrating strong technical execution and real compute demand for decentralized AI workloads on Bittensor.
This prize is sponsored by Basilica (Bittensor Subnet 39) and is designed to support teams actively building, testing, and scaling their subnet or miner implementations with real-world compute usage.
Prize Breakdown
Round II Qualifiers: 7x $500 compute credits
7 winners
$500 in Basilica compute credits per team
Awarded to teams advancing to Round II — Subnet Hackathon
Overall Winner: 1x $1,500 compute credits
1 winner
$1,500 in Basilica compute credits
Awarded to the 1st place team of the hackathon
Basilica Compute Credit Award
Judging Criteria
Judging Mode
Voting Mode
Schedule
Resource
Bittensor Documentation
Bittensor is an open source platform where participants produce best-in-class digital commodities, including compute power, storage space, artificial intelligence (AI) inference and training, protein folding, financial markets prediction, and many more.
Bittensor is composed of distinct subnets. Each subnet is an independent community of miners (who produce the commodity), and validators (who evaluate the miners' work).
The Bittensor network constantly emits liquidity, in the form of its token, TAO (ττ), to participants in proportion to the value of their contributions. Participants include:
Miners—Work to produce digital commodities. See mining in Bittensor. https://docs.learnbittensor.org/miners
Validators—Evaluate the quality of miners' work. See validating in Bittensor.
Subnet Creators—Manage the incentive mechanisms that specify the work miners and validate must perform and evaluate, respectively. See Create a Subnet
Stakers—TAO holders can support specific validators by staking TAO to them. See Staking.
https://docs.learnbittensor.org/staking-and-delegation/delegation