Validating in Bittensor
Choosing a subnet
All mining and validating in Bittensor occurs within a subnet. Each subnet independently produces the digital commodities that are its purpose, each subnet creator defining a different incentive mechanism for validators to use in judging miners' work. The validator's work is to apply this incentive mechanism to miners, using it to score their performance, and then to submit these weights to the Bittensor blockchain. It is validators scores of miners' performance that determines the proportion of the subnet's emissions allocated to each miner, according to the Yuma Consensus algorithm. See Emissions.
Browse the subnets and explore links to their code repositories on Taostats' subnets listings.
Each subnet may have distinct hardware requirements, but this minimum requirements template for subnet creators may give an idea of minimum memory, bandwidth and storage requirements for a typical subnet node.
Validating is not supported on Windows.
Requirements for active validation
To have a validator permit in a given subnet, allowing you to submit miner evaluations using the set_weights function, you must meet the following requirements:
- Your hotkey must be registered, granting you a UID on the subnet
- You must at least 1000 TAO staked to your hotkey
- You must be one of the top 64 validators in the subnet, ranked by stake.
Validator registration
To participate as a validator, you must first register your keys with the subnet in order to receive a UID on that subnet.
You do not have to create a subnet to validate on the Bittensor network. Most validators work on established subnets.
Registration has a cost in TAO. When you secure a UID slot in a subnet on the main chain, this TAO is sunk cost. Nevertheless, you can be a subnet miner in as many subnets as you can afford and expect to be successful.
A subnet can have a maximum of 64 subnet validator UIDs and 192 subnet miner UIDs (256 total) in subnets other than Subnet 1.
Upon registration, your hotkey, which is part of your wallet, becomes the holder of the UID slot. The terms "account" and "hotkey" are used synonymously.
When you delegate your TAO to a subnet validator, you attach your delegated TAO to that validator’s hotkey. See Delegation.
A hotkey can hold multiple UIDs across separate subnets. However, within one subnet, each UID must have a unique hotkey.
Run the following command on your terminal, replacing <your_preferred_netuid>, <my_coldkey>, <my_hotkey>.
<your_preferred_netuid> is the netuid of your preferred subnet.
btcli subnet register --netuid <your_preferred_netuid> --wallet.name <my_coldkey> --wallet.hotkey <my_hotkey>
For example, for subnet 1 (netuid of 1):
btcli subnet register --netuid 1 --wallet.name test-coldkey --wallet.hotkey test-hotkey
Acquiring stake
A validator's consensus weight and emissions depend on the stake attached to their hotkey.
Stake can be acquired in two ways:
Stake your own TAO
You can do this by staking your own TAO funds to your hotkey, which holds the UID in the subnet where you want to validate.
# Stake funds to your hotkey account within the subnet.
btcli stake add --wallet.name <my_coldkey> --wallet.hotkey <my_hotkey>
Example:
btcli stake add --wallet.name test-coldkey --wallet.hotkey test-hotkey
Attract delegated stake
You can also increase your stake by attracting delegated stake from nominators. For this, you must first nominate your hotkey as a delegate and then advertise this hotkey. The nominators can then delegate their TAO to your hotkey.
# Nominate your hotkey as a delegate
btcli root nominate --wallet.name <my_coldkey> --wallet.hotkey <my_hotkey>
Example:
btcli root nominate --wallet.name test-coldkey --wallet.hotkey test-hotkey
See Becoming a delegate for specific steps.
Calculate TAO required
The amount of TAO needed to acquire a validator permit depends on how the other largest 64 wallets distribute TAO across themselves. You can calculate the minimum using bt.metagraph:
import bittensor as bt
subnet = bt.metagraph(1)
top_64_stake = sorted(subnet.S)[-64:]
print (f'Current requirement for validator permits based on the top 64 stake stands at {min(top_64_stake)} tao')
Check the permit status
Replace the string values for the name (<my_coldkey>) and hotkey (<my_validator_hotkey>) with your own.
This information can be obtained from the metagraph using your UID.
import bittensor as bt
subnet = bt.metagraph(1)
wallet = bt.wallet( name = 'my_coldkey', hotkey = 'my_validator_hotkey' )
my_uid = subnet.hotkeys.index( wallet.hotkey.ss58_address )
print(f'Validator permit: {subnet.validator_permit(my_uid)}')
Inspecting UIDs
After you obtain a UID slot, you can view the status of your registered wallet by running:
btcli wallet overview --netuid
After providing your wallet name at the prompt, you will see output like:
| Parameter | Value | Description |
|---|---|---|
| COLDKEY | my_coldkey | The name of the coldkey associated with your slot. |
| HOTKEY | my_first_hotkey | The name of the hotkey associated with your slot. |
| UID | 5 | The index of the uid out of available uids. |
| ACTIVE | True | Whether or not the uid is considered active. |
| STAKE(τ) | 71.296 | The amount of stake in this wallet. |
| RANK | 0.0629 | This miner's absolute ranking according to validators on the network. |
| TRUST | 0.2629 | This miner's trust as a proportion of validators on the network. |
| CONSENSUS | 0.89 | This validator's aggregate consensus score. |
| INCENTIVE | 0.029 | This miner's incentive, TAO emission, is attained via mining. |
| DIVIDENDS | 0.001 | This validator's dividends, TAO emission, are attained via validating. |
| EMISSION | 29_340_153 | This miner's total emission in RAO (10^(-9) TAO) per block. |
| VTRUST | 0.96936 | This validator's trust score as a validator. |
| VPERMIT | * | Whether this miner is considered active for validating on this subnetwork. |
| UPDATED | 43 | Blocks since this miner set weights on the chain. |
| AXON | 131.186.56.85:8091 | The entrypoint advertised by this miner on the bittensor blockchain. |
| HOTKEY_SS58 | 5F4tQyWr... | The ss58-encoded address of the miner's hotkey. |
Meaning of ACTIVE
In the above table, the ACTIVE row applies only to UIDs that are subnet validators. It shows whether the UID is actively setting weights within the activity_cutoff window. If the UID has not set weights on the blockchain for the activity_cutoff duration, then the Yuma Consensus will consider this subnet validator offline, i.e., turned off (False).
Checking the registration status
Use any of the Python code fragments below:
- Using Python interpreter: Type "python" or "python3" on your macOS or Linux terminal, then copy/paste one of these snippets.
- Using a Python file: Copy a code snippet into, for example,
check_reg.py, then runpython3 check_reg.py.
With SS58 hotkey
import bittensor as bt
# Replace below with your SS58 hotkey
hotkey = "5HEo565WAy4Dbq3Sv271SAi7syBSofyfhhwRNjFNSM2gP9M2"
network = "finney"
sub = bt.subtensor(network)
print(f"Registration status for hotkey {hotkey} is: {sub.is_hotkey_registered(hotkey)}")
With SS58 hotkey and netuid
import bittensor as bt
# Replace below with your SS58 hotkey
hotkey = "5HEo565WAy4Dbq3Sv271SAi7syBSofyfhhwRNjFNSM2gP9M2"
network = "finney"
netuid = 1 # subnet uid
sub = bt.subtensor(network)
mg = sub.metagraph(netuid)
if hotkey not in mg.hotkeys:
print(f"Hotkey {hotkey} deregistered")
else:
print(f"Hotkey {hotkey} is registered")
With UID and SS58 hotkey
import bittensor as bt
# Replace below with your SS58 hotkey
hotkey = "5HEo565WAy4Dbq3Sv271SAi7syBSofyfhhwRNjFNSM2gP9M2"
network = "finney"
netuid = 1 # subnet uid
sub = bt.subtensor(network)
mg = sub.metagraph(netuid)
uid = 2 # Your UID
registered = mg.hotkeys[uid] == hotkey
if not registered:
print(f"Miner at uid {uid} not registered")
else:
print(f"Miner at uid {uid} registered")