Bittensor creator Const on Affine, dTAO, "mining reasoning," and more | E2326
August 17, 2026 · 1 h 25 min
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Today's show:
We've been going deep on Bittensor and how it works all year on TWiST, meeting with the creators of some of our favorite subnets, and exploring how the system decentralizes inference, compute, and storage. Now, on this very special episode, Jason and Lon welcome Bittensor co-founder Jason Steeves (aka "Const") to the show.
He gives us a quick tour of the project's first principles, before diving into how subnets incentivize miners to contribute, how dTAO turned the creation of subnets into its own competition, how Const says he employs "the internal machinery of capitalism" to rank subnects, and his latest project, Subnet 120 (aka Affine).
Find out what the OpenTensor Foundation actually does, go inside the Templar controversy, and learn why Const is trying to make himself increasingly irrelevant.
Guest
Jacob Steeves on X: https://x.com/const_reborn
Bittensor: https://www.bittensor.com/
Affine: https://affine.io/
Relevant Links
Original Bittensor whitepaper: https://bittensor.com/whitepaper
Bittensor governance and documentation: https://www.bittensor.com/docs
Beginner's Guide to Dynamic TAO: https://www.tao.media/the-complete-beginners-guide-to-dynamic-tao-dtao/
Prime Intellect: TOPLOC: https://www.primeintellect.ai/blog/toploc
Engy (SN53): https://engy.ai/
Lium (SN51): https://www.lium.io
Targon (SN4): https://targon.com/
Templar (SN3): https://www.tplr.ai/
Hippius (SN75): https://hippius.com/
MakerDAO: https://makerdao.com/
Stillcore Capital: https://stillcorecapital.com/
Timestamps: The origin of Bittensor (and the name Const)
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What is a subnet?
Forcing honest inference from bad actors
Building a subnet is harder than it looks
Understanding dTAO
Where the registration TAO actually goes
All about the Conviction "rug pull"
How Const is making himself irrelevant
The "Buy One TAO" philosophy