← Home
This Week in Startups · August 17, 2026 · 1h 24m

Bittensor creator Const on Affine, dTAO, "mining reasoning," and more | E2326

Jacob Steeves
Show Notes

Jason and Lon talk with Jacob Steeves, co-founder of Bittensor, about how the decentralized network repurposes crypto mining for AI. They break down subnets, dynamic TAO, and how competition drives innovation. Const unveils his new Affine subnet for mining reasoning and shares his philosophy of making himself progressively irrelevant to the project. The conversation also digs into the Conviction 'rug pull' controversy and the governance lessons learned.

This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.

Highlights

•
From Bitcoin Mining to Intelligence Mining00:00:00
Jacob Steeves explains how Bittensor evolved from the concept of Bitcoin mining to create a decentralized network where miners provide AI inference, compute, and storage instead of hashing power.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini
•
Subnets as Competing AI Markets00:32:37
Subnets on Bittensor function like independent competitive markets, each incentivizing miners to solve specific AI tasks — from inference to reasoning — while dTAO uses 'the internal machinery of capitalism' to rank and reward the most valuable subnets.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini
•
Affine: Mining Reasoning on Subnet 120
Const’s latest subnet, Affine, aims to incentivize miners to contribute reasoning — pushing beyond simple inference to more complex cognitive tasks.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini
•
The Conviction 'Rug Pull' Controversy01:02:57
The discussion covers the controversial incident where a subnet manipulating incentives caused a 'rug pull,' highlighting the real-world risks of decentralized governance.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini

Editorial

•
Making Founder Irrelevant01:15:19
Const shares his goal of steadily reducing his own influence over Bittensor’s governance and development, building a self-sustaining protocol that doesn’t need him.
ClaudeChatGPTGemini

Misc

✧Const explains the origin of his handle 'Const'.
✧Const details the unexpected challenges of building a Bittensor subnet.
Was this useful?