Skip to main content
SUBMIT A PRSUBMIT AN ISSUElast edit: Apr 25, 2025

Create a Subnet (Locally)

This page covers creating a subnet on a locally deployed Subtensor blockchain, which is useful for local Bittensor development.

For creating a subnet on Bittensor test and main network, see Create a Subnet.

Prerequisites:

Create subnet​

To access the handy pre-provisioned development "Alice" account on your local chain, use:

btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-first-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Trouble shoot​

Insufficient funds​

If you are following this tutorial for the first time, the subnet create command will faill with an insufficient balance error.

The coldkey signing the subnet create transaction must have a sufficient τ\tau balance to cover the burn cost of subnet creation, so called because the funds cannot be recovered.

Subnet burn cost: τ 1,000.0000
Your balance of: τ 0.0000 is not enough to burn τ 1,000.0000 to register a subnet.

Transfer funds from the Alice account to cover it and try again. Consult btcli w list and carefully check the ss58 address of the destination coldkey (in this case, the one with the name sn-creator).

btcli wallet transfer \
--amount 1001 \
--wallet.name alice \
--destination "5C9xw4..." \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Network Rate Limit Error​

If you see a network rate limit error, you may need to adjust the SubtensorInitialNetworkRateLimit chain state parameter.

See Clone and tweak the Subtensor source

Burn cost​

The burn cost for subnet creation is dynamic; it lowers gradually and doubles every time a subnet is created.

try it live

Check the burn cost to create a subnet on Bittensor main network and test network:

btcli subnet burn-cost --network finney
btcli subnet burn-cost --network test

Fund your subnet​

To remedy your liquidity shortfall, transfer τ\tau from the Alice account and try again.

  1. First, get the ss58 address for the destination wallet for the transfer:

    btcli w list
    ...
    ── Coldkey sn-creator  ss58_address 5C9xw4gDyu11ocdpWrmhT1sbi4xEHCpzEMsyMA4jGfAZQofQ
    └── Hotkey default  ss58_address 5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR

  2. Execute the transfer from alice to the sn-creator wallet

    btcli wallet transfer \
    --amount 1001 \
    --wallet.name alice \
    --destination "5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR" \
    --subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945
    Do you want to transfer:
    amount: τ 1,001.0000
    from: alice : 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY
    to: 5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR
    for fee: τ 0.0001 [y/n]: y
    🌏  📡 Transferring...

Success​

Create some subnets.

For example:

btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-first-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945
Subnet burn cost: τ 1,000.0000
Your balance is: τ 1,001.0000
Do you want to burn τ 1,000.0000 to register a subnet? [y/n]:y
Enter your password:
Decrypting...
🌏  📡 Registering subnet..
 btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-second-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945
Subnet burn cost: τ 1,999.9405
▰▱▱▱▱▱▱ 📡Retrieving lock cost from custom...
Your balance is: τ 2,003.0000
Do you want to burn τ 1,999.9405 to register a subnet? [y/n]: Please enter Y or N
Do you want to burn τ 1,999.9405 to register a subnet? [y/n]: y
Enter your password:
Decrypting...
✅ Registered subnetwork with netuid: 3
  1. List your subnets
btcli subnet list \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945
                                                         Subnets
                                                     Network: custom
        ┃             ┃ Price       ┃ Market Cap  ┃              ┃ P (τ_in,    ┃ Stake        ┃             ┃
 Netuid ┃ Name        ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ (α * Price) ┃ Emission (τ) ┃ α_in)       ┃ (α_out)      ┃ Supply (α)  ┃ Tempo (k/n)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   0    │ τ root      │ 1.0000 τ/Τ  │ τ 0.00      │ τ 0.0000     │ -, -        │ Τ 0.00       │ 0.00 Τ /21M │ -/-
   2    │ β           │ 1.0000 τ/β  │ τ 1.00k     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 1.00k,    │ 0.00 β       │ 1.00k β     │ 29/360
        │ awesome-fi… │             │             │              │ 1.00k β     │              │ /21M        │
   3    │ γ           │ 1.0000 τ/γ  │ τ 1.00k     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 1.00k,    │ 0.00 γ       │ 1.00k γ     │ 29/360
        │ awesome-se… │             │             │              │ 1.00k γ     │              │ /21M        │
   1    │ α apex      │ 1.0000 τ/α  │ τ 11.00     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 10.00,    │ 1.00 α       │ 11.00 α     │ 29/100
        │             │             │             │              │ 10.00 α     │              │ /21M        │
────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
   4    │             │ τ 3.0       │             │ τ 0.0        │ τ           │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ 2.01k/29.00 │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ (6931.03%)  │              │             │