Free mini-course
Check a Bittensor subnet before you spend a single TAO
Three short lessons: what changed on the network in 2026, the five mistakes that cost new miners the most, and your first read-only subnet check.
Why it's worth it
Bittensor rewards the miners who get it right
Each subnet is an open competition around useful AI work, and the network pays for it. Every subnet reserves 41% of its emissions for its miners, pays them out every epoch, about every 72 minutes by default, and splits them according to how validators score each miner's work.
The reward is real, and it goes to the miners whose work scores best. It is never guaranteed, though, and it is easy to lose TAO to avoidable mistakes before your miner is ever scored. These three lessons help you avoid them from day one.
What you get
Three lessons you can finish tonight
The network changed in 2026. What a miner is today, the July 2026 changes that broke most tutorials, and a ten-second test to spot an outdated guide.
Five mistakes that cost new miners their TAO. Registering too early, choosing a subnet in the tail, publishing an endpoint nobody can reach, putting the coldkey on the server, and trusting scripts that ask for a seed phrase.
Your first read-only subnet check. Install btcli, read a real subnet's ranking, runway and reward distribution, and answer four questions that rule out bad bets before you pay anything.
No wallet and no TAO needed: everything in the mini-course is read-only.
Why now
Most mining guides are out of date since July 2026
Bittensor merged its SDK and btcli into a new version with new commands, removed the networking layer most tutorials build on, made registration burn-only at a floating price, let subnets lock collateral, and introduced an emission gate that leaves the bottom of the subnet list with very little. Instructions written before that can cost you real TAO. The mini-course is built from the current official documentation.
Is it for you?
You are curious about mining on Bittensor, or you have tried and got stuck.
You are comfortable trying a few commands in a terminal on Linux, macOS or Windows with WSL.
You want to understand the rules before you spend anything.
Free educational content by Raizora, independent from Bittensor and its foundations. Not financial or investment advice. You can unsubscribe from our emails at any time.