Subnet Directory

With the amount of new subnets being added it can be hard to get up to date information across all subnets, so data may be slightly out of date from time to time

Subnet 75

Hippius

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ABOUT

What exactly does it do?

Hippius (Subnet 75) is a decentralized cloud storage subnet within the Bittensor ecosystem​. It was introduced in March 2025 as the “missing piece” to provide persistent memory/storage for Bittensor’s decentralized AI network. In essence, Hippius offers blockchain-backed distributed storage services (and in the future, compute) that complement Bittensor’s machine-learning focused subnets​. By delivering transparent, decentralized, and anonymous cloud storage, Hippius enables Bittensor to retain data, models, and other assets in a trustless manner, filling a role similar to the “memory” of Bittensor’s “decentralized mind.”

Within the Bittensor ecosystem, each subnet produces a specific digital commodity​. Hippius’s commodity is cloud storage: it allows users and dApps to store files and data across a distributed network of nodes, with all usage and payments recorded on-chain for transparency​. This subnet’s purpose is to provide reliable and censorship-resistant storage for AI applications and beyond, tightly integrated with Bittensor’s incentive and reward mechanisms. As the official documentation states, “Hippius is the solution to storage on Bittensor,” delivering decentralized file hosting (via IPFS) and an S3-compatible object storage service, all underpinned by blockchain trust​.

Hippius (Subnet 75) is a decentralized cloud storage subnet within the Bittensor ecosystem​. It was introduced in March 2025 as the “missing piece” to provide persistent memory/storage for Bittensor’s decentralized AI network. In essence, Hippius offers blockchain-backed distributed storage services (and in the future, compute) that complement Bittensor’s machine-learning focused subnets​. By delivering transparent, decentralized, and anonymous cloud storage, Hippius enables Bittensor to retain data, models, and other assets in a trustless manner, filling a role similar to the “memory” of Bittensor’s “decentralized mind.”

Within the Bittensor ecosystem, each subnet produces a specific digital commodity​. Hippius’s commodity is cloud storage: it allows users and dApps to store files and data across a distributed network of nodes, with all usage and payments recorded on-chain for transparency​. This subnet’s purpose is to provide reliable and censorship-resistant storage for AI applications and beyond, tightly integrated with Bittensor’s incentive and reward mechanisms. As the official documentation states, “Hippius is the solution to storage on Bittensor,” delivering decentralized file hosting (via IPFS) and an S3-compatible object storage service, all underpinned by blockchain trust​.

PURPOSE

What exactly is the 'product/build'?

Hippius extends Bittensor by offering:

Decentralized data storage: A network of storage nodes (miners) store and serve data, ensuring no single point of failure​. This benefits Bittensor by giving AI models and services a place to persist datasets, model checkpoints, or outputs in a distributed way.

On-chain transparency and incentives: Usage of Hippius is metered and logged on its Substrate blockchain, with a crypto-economic model rewarding those who provide storage resources​. This aligns with Bittensor’s broader tokenomics, using blockchain incentives (in $TAO and subnet-specific tokens) to sustain the service.

Integration with Bittensor’s network: Hippius is not a standalone Layer-1 but a Bittensor subnet (network ID 75) that connects to the Bittensor metagraph (main chain)​. Its validators report performance metrics (so-called “weights”) back to the main Bittensor chain, allowing Hippius to participate in Bittensor’s consensus-based reward distribution (Dynamic TAO)​. This means a portion of Bittensor’s TAO token emissions is allocated to Hippius’s contributors based on the quality and usage of the storage service they provide​.

By fulfilling these roles, Hippius aims to become the decentralized storage layer for all Bittensor applications, and eventually a general-purpose decentralized cloud (including computation). Community members have emphasized that Hippius brings “true decentralized storage with a bulletproof economic model” to the $TAO ecosystem​, akin to how Filecoin or Arweave provide decentralized storage but with the key difference of being natively integrated into Bittensor’s AI-driven network.

 

Technical Architecture and Functioning

Hippius is built on a custom Substrate blockchain (a standalone chain) that operates as Subnet 75 within Bittensor​. This design gives Hippius its own ledger, consensus, and token, while still linking it to Bittensor’s main chain through a bridge and shared incentive model. Below are key technical aspects of how the subnet functions:

Consensus and NPoS: Hippius uses the Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension (BABE) consensus algorithm for block production​, and Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) for security​. This means a set of validators produce blocks and finalize the Hippius chain, and token holders (nominators) can stake to elect/secure these validators. The validator set in Hippius maintains the chain and also coordinates storage tasks. Validators earn rewards for block production and for faithfully reporting storage performance to Bittensor’s main chain​.

Native Token (“Alpha”) and Dynamic TAO: The native currency on the Hippius chain is informally called Alpha (α)​. Under Bittensor’s Dynamic TAO system, each subnet has its own token that is backed by and convertible to TAO through a reserve pool. In Hippius’s case, users obtain Alpha by staking TAO into Hippius’s reserve (via the bridge) and can convert back by redeeming Alpha for TAO​. The on-chain automated market maker determines the price of Alpha based on the ratio of TAO staked vs. Alpha in circulation​. This dynamic token design allows Hippius’s value to be directly tied to the broader TAO economy, and it enables cross-chain transfers. (Phase 4 of the launch is enabling this Alpha–TAO bridge, allowing Alpha to move between Hippius and the main Bittensor chain​.)

Storage Services (IPFS and S3): Hippius provides two types of storage for clients​:

  1. IPFS Pinning: Fully decentralized content-addressable storage. IPFS miners in the Hippius network host content on the IPFS network; Hippius’s blockchain manages the pinning and persistence by incentivizing multiple replicas.​ This ensures data is permanent and distributed. Users can store files and get an IPFS hash; Hippius miners will keep that content alive on IPFS.
  2. S3-Compatible Object Storage: A more traditional file storage interface where data is addressed by buckets/keys (like Amazon S3) but stored on decentralized volumes. S3 miners provide this service, offering authenticated read/write access to stored objects via an S3 API compatibility layer​. This is aimed at enterprise use – applications can integrate with Hippius as if it were an S3 cloud storage endpoint. Data is redundantly stored across miners’ hardware.

 

Both storage systems run in parallel, giving users a choice between content-addressed IPFS (useful for public or static content) and bucketed object storage (useful for private or mutable data). In both cases, data is encrypted and anonymized; the network supports end-to-end encryption so that miners cannot read user data, and user identity is handled via cryptographic keys (mnemonics) rather than accounts/passwords​.

 

Miner and Validator Roles: Hippius nodes can take on specialized roles, each with off-chain workers that integrate with on-chain logic​:

Storage Miners: These are subdivided into IPFS miners and S3 miners as described. They run the storage infrastructure – for IPFS, running go-ipfs nodes; for S3, running storage servers – and continuously report their capacity and performance. Off-chain worker processes on miners handle tasks like monitoring file health, ensuring replication (making multiple copies across nodes), and responding to read/write requests from clients​. Miners must also prove uptime and reliability; if they go offline or lose data, the network can detect this (through validators) and apply penalties (slashing)​.

Compute Miners (Future): The architecture anticipates compute miners​, which will provide virtual machine environments and possibly GPU-accelerated compute in the future. These miners would act as decentralized cloud “VM” providers, running sandboxed computations or hosting applications. (Support for compute is planned but not active at initial launch – see Roadmap below.)

Validators: Validators form the backbone of the Hippius blockchain and also coordinate the marketplace. A validator’s duties include verifying blocks and transactions, maintaining consensus, and critically, assigning storage tasks and evaluating miners’ performance​. When users make storage requests, validators receive these requests (via the marketplace) and decide which miners will serve the data or store new data. They gather metrics from miners (e.g. response times, uptime) and compute “weights” – a performance score for each miner over time​. These weights are reported to the Bittensor main chain as part of the Yuma consensus, which in turn influences how much TAO emission Hippius miners and validators earn from the network​. Validators are also responsible for enforcing rules (they can blacklist/ban misbehaving nodes and trigger slashing if a miner loses data or cheats)​.

 

Marketplace and Usage Flow: Hippius features a built-in marketplace system that intermediates between clients (users) and the storage miners​. When a client uses the Hippius dashboard or API to purchase storage, the process is as follows​:

  1. The user chooses a storage service (IPFS or S3) and pays for it either in fiat or crypto (TAO/Alpha) via the Hippius web dashboard​. Payments in fiat are converted behind the scenes into credits, which correspond to a certain amount of Alpha deposited on-chain​. (Thus every purchase results in an on-chain deposit of Alpha tokens representing the pre-paid storage credit​.)
  2. The marketplace (a component of the Hippius chain runtime or associated off-chain service) records the purchase and “credits” the user with storage capacity. It then submits a request to the network’s validators: e.g. “allocate X GB of storage for user Y’s file”​.
  3. Validators receive the request and assign it to miners. For a new file upload, a validator will pick one or more S3/IPFS miners (depending on service) to store the file, aiming to balance load and maintain redundancy​. For a download request, validators route it to the nearest/fastest miners holding the data. This assignment happens in a decentralized way, possibly using on-chain information and off-chain worker communication.
  4. Miners then fulfill the request: storing the data or retrieving it for the user. Off-chain, the miner will interact with the user’s client (through the IPFS network or via an S3 HTTP endpoint) to transfer the data. Miners also update the blockchain (or inform validators) about the new data stored (e.g., registering the content hash, size, etc., on-chain for accounting).
  5. Reward Distribution: As users consume storage (using up their credits), the payments made are periodically distributed to the network participants. Hippius’s economic split is 60% of revenue to the storage miners (as compensation for providing disk space and bandwidth), 30% to validators and nominators (for securing the chain and coordinating the service), and 10% to a treasury (for ongoing development of Hippius)​. These rewards are paid in the Hippius Alpha token, which miners/validators can later convert to TAO via the bridge if desired​. All of this occurs on-chain, ensuring transparency in who earned what. In addition to usage revenue, miners and validators also gain TAO emissions from Bittensor’s consensus (based on the performance weights as noted), effectively earning two streams of reward: one in Alpha from user fees, and one in TAO from the Bittensor network​.

 

Security and Reliability: Hippius is designed with multiple security measures. Identities are secured by Bittensor’s mnemonic authentication (wallet seed-phrases serve as both identity and encryption keys for users)​, meaning users do not rely on passwords or third-party accounts – losing your secret key means losing access, enforcing self-custody of credentials. All data can be encrypted client-side using those keys, providing end-to-end security​. On the network side, communication between validators and miners is secured (they likely use encrypted channels and handshakes to prevent tampering)​. The chain implements slashing of misbehaving nodes – for example, if a validator detects that a miner who was supposed to store a file is unreachable or has lost the file, that miner’s stake can be slashed as a penalty​. There are also reputational mechanisms: validators can ban or blacklist miners that repeatedly fail or provide poor service​, ensuring the storage remains reliable for users. By having multiple miners replicate the same data, Hippius provides redundancy: even if some nodes go offline, data is not lost. This distributed design naturally protects against censorship and server outages, as no single miner controls the availability of content.

In practical terms, the Hippius network has quickly grown to significant capacity. Within a couple of weeks of launch, it reached its initial limit of 256 registered miner seats (UIDs) and achieved nearly 900 TB of aggregate storage provided by the community’s miners​. This demonstrates a high supply of storage ready to be utilized. All operations (storage deals, node performance, etc.) can be monitored via Bittensor’s block explorer and the Hippius dashboard, giving a clear view into the subnet’s functioning. Overall, the technical architecture of Hippius combines a blockchain (for consensus, accounting, and coordination) with off-chain storage tech (IPFS, S3 servers) and clever incentive alignment to create a decentralized storage cloud that is both useful and economically sustainable.

Hippius extends Bittensor by offering:

Decentralized data storage: A network of storage nodes (miners) store and serve data, ensuring no single point of failure​. This benefits Bittensor by giving AI models and services a place to persist datasets, model checkpoints, or outputs in a distributed way.

On-chain transparency and incentives: Usage of Hippius is metered and logged on its Substrate blockchain, with a crypto-economic model rewarding those who provide storage resources​. This aligns with Bittensor’s broader tokenomics, using blockchain incentives (in $TAO and subnet-specific tokens) to sustain the service.

Integration with Bittensor’s network: Hippius is not a standalone Layer-1 but a Bittensor subnet (network ID 75) that connects to the Bittensor metagraph (main chain)​. Its validators report performance metrics (so-called “weights”) back to the main Bittensor chain, allowing Hippius to participate in Bittensor’s consensus-based reward distribution (Dynamic TAO)​. This means a portion of Bittensor’s TAO token emissions is allocated to Hippius’s contributors based on the quality and usage of the storage service they provide​.

By fulfilling these roles, Hippius aims to become the decentralized storage layer for all Bittensor applications, and eventually a general-purpose decentralized cloud (including computation). Community members have emphasized that Hippius brings “true decentralized storage with a bulletproof economic model” to the $TAO ecosystem​, akin to how Filecoin or Arweave provide decentralized storage but with the key difference of being natively integrated into Bittensor’s AI-driven network.

 

Technical Architecture and Functioning

Hippius is built on a custom Substrate blockchain (a standalone chain) that operates as Subnet 75 within Bittensor​. This design gives Hippius its own ledger, consensus, and token, while still linking it to Bittensor’s main chain through a bridge and shared incentive model. Below are key technical aspects of how the subnet functions:

Consensus and NPoS: Hippius uses the Blind Assignment for Blockchain Extension (BABE) consensus algorithm for block production​, and Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) for security​. This means a set of validators produce blocks and finalize the Hippius chain, and token holders (nominators) can stake to elect/secure these validators. The validator set in Hippius maintains the chain and also coordinates storage tasks. Validators earn rewards for block production and for faithfully reporting storage performance to Bittensor’s main chain​.

Native Token (“Alpha”) and Dynamic TAO: The native currency on the Hippius chain is informally called Alpha (α)​. Under Bittensor’s Dynamic TAO system, each subnet has its own token that is backed by and convertible to TAO through a reserve pool. In Hippius’s case, users obtain Alpha by staking TAO into Hippius’s reserve (via the bridge) and can convert back by redeeming Alpha for TAO​. The on-chain automated market maker determines the price of Alpha based on the ratio of TAO staked vs. Alpha in circulation​. This dynamic token design allows Hippius’s value to be directly tied to the broader TAO economy, and it enables cross-chain transfers. (Phase 4 of the launch is enabling this Alpha–TAO bridge, allowing Alpha to move between Hippius and the main Bittensor chain​.)

Storage Services (IPFS and S3): Hippius provides two types of storage for clients​:

  1. IPFS Pinning: Fully decentralized content-addressable storage. IPFS miners in the Hippius network host content on the IPFS network; Hippius’s blockchain manages the pinning and persistence by incentivizing multiple replicas.​ This ensures data is permanent and distributed. Users can store files and get an IPFS hash; Hippius miners will keep that content alive on IPFS.
  2. S3-Compatible Object Storage: A more traditional file storage interface where data is addressed by buckets/keys (like Amazon S3) but stored on decentralized volumes. S3 miners provide this service, offering authenticated read/write access to stored objects via an S3 API compatibility layer​. This is aimed at enterprise use – applications can integrate with Hippius as if it were an S3 cloud storage endpoint. Data is redundantly stored across miners’ hardware.

 

Both storage systems run in parallel, giving users a choice between content-addressed IPFS (useful for public or static content) and bucketed object storage (useful for private or mutable data). In both cases, data is encrypted and anonymized; the network supports end-to-end encryption so that miners cannot read user data, and user identity is handled via cryptographic keys (mnemonics) rather than accounts/passwords​.

 

Miner and Validator Roles: Hippius nodes can take on specialized roles, each with off-chain workers that integrate with on-chain logic​:

Storage Miners: These are subdivided into IPFS miners and S3 miners as described. They run the storage infrastructure – for IPFS, running go-ipfs nodes; for S3, running storage servers – and continuously report their capacity and performance. Off-chain worker processes on miners handle tasks like monitoring file health, ensuring replication (making multiple copies across nodes), and responding to read/write requests from clients​. Miners must also prove uptime and reliability; if they go offline or lose data, the network can detect this (through validators) and apply penalties (slashing)​.

Compute Miners (Future): The architecture anticipates compute miners​, which will provide virtual machine environments and possibly GPU-accelerated compute in the future. These miners would act as decentralized cloud “VM” providers, running sandboxed computations or hosting applications. (Support for compute is planned but not active at initial launch – see Roadmap below.)

Validators: Validators form the backbone of the Hippius blockchain and also coordinate the marketplace. A validator’s duties include verifying blocks and transactions, maintaining consensus, and critically, assigning storage tasks and evaluating miners’ performance​. When users make storage requests, validators receive these requests (via the marketplace) and decide which miners will serve the data or store new data. They gather metrics from miners (e.g. response times, uptime) and compute “weights” – a performance score for each miner over time​. These weights are reported to the Bittensor main chain as part of the Yuma consensus, which in turn influences how much TAO emission Hippius miners and validators earn from the network​. Validators are also responsible for enforcing rules (they can blacklist/ban misbehaving nodes and trigger slashing if a miner loses data or cheats)​.

 

Marketplace and Usage Flow: Hippius features a built-in marketplace system that intermediates between clients (users) and the storage miners​. When a client uses the Hippius dashboard or API to purchase storage, the process is as follows​:

  1. The user chooses a storage service (IPFS or S3) and pays for it either in fiat or crypto (TAO/Alpha) via the Hippius web dashboard​. Payments in fiat are converted behind the scenes into credits, which correspond to a certain amount of Alpha deposited on-chain​. (Thus every purchase results in an on-chain deposit of Alpha tokens representing the pre-paid storage credit​.)
  2. The marketplace (a component of the Hippius chain runtime or associated off-chain service) records the purchase and “credits” the user with storage capacity. It then submits a request to the network’s validators: e.g. “allocate X GB of storage for user Y’s file”​.
  3. Validators receive the request and assign it to miners. For a new file upload, a validator will pick one or more S3/IPFS miners (depending on service) to store the file, aiming to balance load and maintain redundancy​. For a download request, validators route it to the nearest/fastest miners holding the data. This assignment happens in a decentralized way, possibly using on-chain information and off-chain worker communication.
  4. Miners then fulfill the request: storing the data or retrieving it for the user. Off-chain, the miner will interact with the user’s client (through the IPFS network or via an S3 HTTP endpoint) to transfer the data. Miners also update the blockchain (or inform validators) about the new data stored (e.g., registering the content hash, size, etc., on-chain for accounting).
  5. Reward Distribution: As users consume storage (using up their credits), the payments made are periodically distributed to the network participants. Hippius’s economic split is 60% of revenue to the storage miners (as compensation for providing disk space and bandwidth), 30% to validators and nominators (for securing the chain and coordinating the service), and 10% to a treasury (for ongoing development of Hippius)​. These rewards are paid in the Hippius Alpha token, which miners/validators can later convert to TAO via the bridge if desired​. All of this occurs on-chain, ensuring transparency in who earned what. In addition to usage revenue, miners and validators also gain TAO emissions from Bittensor’s consensus (based on the performance weights as noted), effectively earning two streams of reward: one in Alpha from user fees, and one in TAO from the Bittensor network​.

 

Security and Reliability: Hippius is designed with multiple security measures. Identities are secured by Bittensor’s mnemonic authentication (wallet seed-phrases serve as both identity and encryption keys for users)​, meaning users do not rely on passwords or third-party accounts – losing your secret key means losing access, enforcing self-custody of credentials. All data can be encrypted client-side using those keys, providing end-to-end security​. On the network side, communication between validators and miners is secured (they likely use encrypted channels and handshakes to prevent tampering)​. The chain implements slashing of misbehaving nodes – for example, if a validator detects that a miner who was supposed to store a file is unreachable or has lost the file, that miner’s stake can be slashed as a penalty​. There are also reputational mechanisms: validators can ban or blacklist miners that repeatedly fail or provide poor service​, ensuring the storage remains reliable for users. By having multiple miners replicate the same data, Hippius provides redundancy: even if some nodes go offline, data is not lost. This distributed design naturally protects against censorship and server outages, as no single miner controls the availability of content.

In practical terms, the Hippius network has quickly grown to significant capacity. Within a couple of weeks of launch, it reached its initial limit of 256 registered miner seats (UIDs) and achieved nearly 900 TB of aggregate storage provided by the community’s miners​. This demonstrates a high supply of storage ready to be utilized. All operations (storage deals, node performance, etc.) can be monitored via Bittensor’s block explorer and the Hippius dashboard, giving a clear view into the subnet’s functioning. Overall, the technical architecture of Hippius combines a blockchain (for consensus, accounting, and coordination) with off-chain storage tech (IPFS, S3 servers) and clever incentive alignment to create a decentralized storage cloud that is both useful and economically sustainable.

WHO

Team Info

Hippius was developed and launched by a team known as The Nerve Lab, which is responsible for the subnet’s codebase and deployment. The project was initially codenamed “The Brain” during development​ – an apt nickname given its role as the memory/storage component of Bittensor’s “brain.” The Nerve Lab has open-sourced the core components of Hippius on GitHub for transparency and community involvement. Key repositories include:

  • Hippius blockchain node (Rust Substrate code) – released as the repository “thenervelab/thebrain”, which contains the custom pallets (modules) for storage and compute marketplace​.
  • Miner software and setup – e.g. “hippius-storage-miner” (for storage node setup) and “hippius-validator” (for validator node configs)​. These provide scripts, Docker images, and guides for anyone to join the network as a miner or validator.
  • CLI tools – a Hippius command-line interface (hippius-cli) and other utilities for interacting with the chain and managing accounts​.
  • Documentation and website – the docs are built from the “hippius-doc” repo and the main website from the “hippius.com” code, all maintained by the team​.

The Nerve Lab appears to be a specialized development group within the Bittensor community focusing on infrastructure subnets. While individual team member names are not prominently listed on the public site, the project has been endorsed by Bittensor’s core community and was announced via official channels (e.g., by Bittensor contributors on Twitter/X and Discord). The lead developer or project manager (possibly the person behind the handle “Al” on Discord/Twitter) coordinated public updates about Hippius’s launch. We can infer the team has expertise in both blockchain engineering and distributed storage (given the integration of Substrate, IPFS, etc.).

Importantly, Hippius is a community-driven, open-source project. The code being GPL-3.0 licensed means that others can audit and contribute to it. Already, third-party analytics sites like Backprop Finance have integrated Hippius, and the Bittensor community (miners/validators) is running the network. This decentralized development and operation model aligns with Bittensor’s philosophy. Ongoing development (bug fixes, feature additions) is likely coordinated via the Hippius Discord and GitHub issues, where The Nerve Lab interacts with community developers. The 10% treasury from marketplace revenue provides funding for the team to continue improving the subnet​, ensuring a long-term development cycle.

Hippius was developed and launched by a team known as The Nerve Lab, which is responsible for the subnet’s codebase and deployment. The project was initially codenamed “The Brain” during development​ – an apt nickname given its role as the memory/storage component of Bittensor’s “brain.” The Nerve Lab has open-sourced the core components of Hippius on GitHub for transparency and community involvement. Key repositories include:

  • Hippius blockchain node (Rust Substrate code) – released as the repository “thenervelab/thebrain”, which contains the custom pallets (modules) for storage and compute marketplace​.
  • Miner software and setup – e.g. “hippius-storage-miner” (for storage node setup) and “hippius-validator” (for validator node configs)​. These provide scripts, Docker images, and guides for anyone to join the network as a miner or validator.
  • CLI tools – a Hippius command-line interface (hippius-cli) and other utilities for interacting with the chain and managing accounts​.
  • Documentation and website – the docs are built from the “hippius-doc” repo and the main website from the “hippius.com” code, all maintained by the team​.

The Nerve Lab appears to be a specialized development group within the Bittensor community focusing on infrastructure subnets. While individual team member names are not prominently listed on the public site, the project has been endorsed by Bittensor’s core community and was announced via official channels (e.g., by Bittensor contributors on Twitter/X and Discord). The lead developer or project manager (possibly the person behind the handle “Al” on Discord/Twitter) coordinated public updates about Hippius’s launch. We can infer the team has expertise in both blockchain engineering and distributed storage (given the integration of Substrate, IPFS, etc.).

Importantly, Hippius is a community-driven, open-source project. The code being GPL-3.0 licensed means that others can audit and contribute to it. Already, third-party analytics sites like Backprop Finance have integrated Hippius, and the Bittensor community (miners/validators) is running the network. This decentralized development and operation model aligns with Bittensor’s philosophy. Ongoing development (bug fixes, feature additions) is likely coordinated via the Hippius Discord and GitHub issues, where The Nerve Lab interacts with community developers. The 10% treasury from marketplace revenue provides funding for the team to continue improving the subnet​, ensuring a long-term development cycle.

FUTURE

Roadmap

Hippius is in its early launch phase (Q1–Q2 2025) with a roadmap that was publicly shared as a series of phases. According to the official launch announcement, the rollout is staged as follows:

  • Phase 1: Initial Launch (March 19, 2025) – Hippius network went live with its genesis block and core functionality. On this date the team launched the official website, documentation, and open-sourced the code​. This marked the public unveiling of Subnet 75. The chain was running with a limited set of genesis validators and miners (likely run by the team and close community) to bootstrap the network.
  • Phase 2: Network Stabilization & Miner Onboarding (March 19–26, 2025) – In the week following launch, Hippius focused on stabilizing the network and gradually opening it to more community miners​. The “miner install” guides were published and early adopters began joining as storage providers​. The goal of this phase was to reach the subnet’s initial miner capacity and ensure the blockchain ran smoothly under load. Indeed, by the end of this phase, all 256 miner slots were filled and a large amount of storage capacity (hundreds of terabytes) was online​.
  • Phase 3: Dashboard Launch and Storage Products (March 26, 2025) – This phase introduced the Hippius Web Dashboard (console) and made the storage services available to end users​. The team announced the release of a user-friendly dashboard where anyone can register (using a Bittensor wallet mnemonic), obtain free testing credits, and start uploading/downloading files via the IPFS or S3 interfaces​. Essentially, this marked the beta launch of the storage product: real users could try hosting a website on Hippius’s IPFS or use the S3 API to store objects, without immediately paying (subsidized by test credits). This allowed testing the end-to-end pipeline from user request to miner fulfillment. The March 26 update also included a progress report, likely sharing metrics on how many files stored, uptime, etc., to demonstrate the subnet’s performance so far.
  • Phase 4: Bridge Enablement (Alpha–TAO Transfer) – Tentatively scheduled for April 2, 2025, this phase activates the Bittensor bridge for the Hippius Alpha token​. Once live, users and miners can seamlessly move value between Hippius and the main Bittensor chain. Practically, this means miners/validators can convert their earned Alpha into TAO (and trade or stake it externally), and conversely TAO holders can stake into Hippius to obtain Alpha (essential for new miners who want to join and stake in the subnet). The bridge is a critical milestone because it ushers in full economic interoperability: Hippius becomes a true extension of Bittensor’s economy rather than a closed system. After this, the Alpha token will have a market-driven price in terms of TAO (already, analytics showed a floating price as some initial conversion was allowed on testnets; e.g., around launch 1 α ≈ 0.044 TAO​).
  • Future Plans (Post-launch): After Phase 4, Hippius will move from “launch” into ongoing development. One major upcoming milestone is the introduction of decentralized compute on the network. As hinted by the website and documentation, Hippius intends to offer virtual machines and possibly GPU compute services in addition to storage​. This would involve activating the Compute Miners role: miners would run virtual machine instances or containerized environments that users can deploy code to. It’s also mentioned that Hippius could support smart contract execution​, implying future compatibility with on-chain compute tasks or WASM contracts running on the substrate. We can expect a roadmap update or Phase 5 detailing how and when compute/GPU services will roll out – possibly in late 2025 after the storage subsystem is stable and widely used. Additionally, the team will likely focus on optimizations and scaling: increasing the subnet’s capacity beyond 256 miners, refining the weight/validation algorithms for even better reliability, and integrating feedback from early users. Because the concept of Dynamic TAO is new (deployed in Feb 2025 on Bittensor​), Hippius may also adjust its tokenomics parameters (like adjusting reserve ratios, emission weights, etc.) through on-chain governance as more data comes in.

Integration with Other Subnets: Another future consideration is how Hippius might integrate with other Bittensor subnets (besides just via TAO). For example, an AI-focused subnet (like those serving chat completions or vision tasks) could directly use Hippius to store large machine learning models or datasets and retrieve them on-demand. We might see tooling or protocols developed to facilitate this cross-subnet usage. Since validators on Hippius already report performance to the main chain, eventually Bittensor’s scheduler could use Hippius as an external memory for other subnets’ operations. Such deeper integration would solidify Hippius’s role as infrastructure for all dApps in the ecosystem.

Hippius is in its early launch phase (Q1–Q2 2025) with a roadmap that was publicly shared as a series of phases. According to the official launch announcement, the rollout is staged as follows:

  • Phase 1: Initial Launch (March 19, 2025) – Hippius network went live with its genesis block and core functionality. On this date the team launched the official website, documentation, and open-sourced the code​. This marked the public unveiling of Subnet 75. The chain was running with a limited set of genesis validators and miners (likely run by the team and close community) to bootstrap the network.
  • Phase 2: Network Stabilization & Miner Onboarding (March 19–26, 2025) – In the week following launch, Hippius focused on stabilizing the network and gradually opening it to more community miners​. The “miner install” guides were published and early adopters began joining as storage providers​. The goal of this phase was to reach the subnet’s initial miner capacity and ensure the blockchain ran smoothly under load. Indeed, by the end of this phase, all 256 miner slots were filled and a large amount of storage capacity (hundreds of terabytes) was online​.
  • Phase 3: Dashboard Launch and Storage Products (March 26, 2025) – This phase introduced the Hippius Web Dashboard (console) and made the storage services available to end users​. The team announced the release of a user-friendly dashboard where anyone can register (using a Bittensor wallet mnemonic), obtain free testing credits, and start uploading/downloading files via the IPFS or S3 interfaces​. Essentially, this marked the beta launch of the storage product: real users could try hosting a website on Hippius’s IPFS or use the S3 API to store objects, without immediately paying (subsidized by test credits). This allowed testing the end-to-end pipeline from user request to miner fulfillment. The March 26 update also included a progress report, likely sharing metrics on how many files stored, uptime, etc., to demonstrate the subnet’s performance so far.
  • Phase 4: Bridge Enablement (Alpha–TAO Transfer) – Tentatively scheduled for April 2, 2025, this phase activates the Bittensor bridge for the Hippius Alpha token​. Once live, users and miners can seamlessly move value between Hippius and the main Bittensor chain. Practically, this means miners/validators can convert their earned Alpha into TAO (and trade or stake it externally), and conversely TAO holders can stake into Hippius to obtain Alpha (essential for new miners who want to join and stake in the subnet). The bridge is a critical milestone because it ushers in full economic interoperability: Hippius becomes a true extension of Bittensor’s economy rather than a closed system. After this, the Alpha token will have a market-driven price in terms of TAO (already, analytics showed a floating price as some initial conversion was allowed on testnets; e.g., around launch 1 α ≈ 0.044 TAO​).
  • Future Plans (Post-launch): After Phase 4, Hippius will move from “launch” into ongoing development. One major upcoming milestone is the introduction of decentralized compute on the network. As hinted by the website and documentation, Hippius intends to offer virtual machines and possibly GPU compute services in addition to storage​. This would involve activating the Compute Miners role: miners would run virtual machine instances or containerized environments that users can deploy code to. It’s also mentioned that Hippius could support smart contract execution​, implying future compatibility with on-chain compute tasks or WASM contracts running on the substrate. We can expect a roadmap update or Phase 5 detailing how and when compute/GPU services will roll out – possibly in late 2025 after the storage subsystem is stable and widely used. Additionally, the team will likely focus on optimizations and scaling: increasing the subnet’s capacity beyond 256 miners, refining the weight/validation algorithms for even better reliability, and integrating feedback from early users. Because the concept of Dynamic TAO is new (deployed in Feb 2025 on Bittensor​), Hippius may also adjust its tokenomics parameters (like adjusting reserve ratios, emission weights, etc.) through on-chain governance as more data comes in.

Integration with Other Subnets: Another future consideration is how Hippius might integrate with other Bittensor subnets (besides just via TAO). For example, an AI-focused subnet (like those serving chat completions or vision tasks) could directly use Hippius to store large machine learning models or datasets and retrieve them on-demand. We might see tooling or protocols developed to facilitate this cross-subnet usage. Since validators on Hippius already report performance to the main chain, eventually Bittensor’s scheduler could use Hippius as an external memory for other subnets’ operations. Such deeper integration would solidify Hippius’s role as infrastructure for all dApps in the ecosystem.

MEDIA

A big thank you to Tao Stats for producing these insightful videos in the Novelty Search series. We appreciate the opportunity to dive deep into the groundbreaking work being done by Subnets within Bittensor! Check out some of their other videos HERE.

This session from June 2025 dives into the development and launch of the Hippius subnet within the Bittensor ecosystem. The discussion revolves around the challenges and innovative solutions brought forward by the team to address decentralized storage, aiming to bridge the gap between decentralized AI computation and the critical need for distributed storage. Key topics include the technical aspects of integrating decentralized storage with blockchain technology, optimizing cost and speed of data transfer, and leveraging IPFS for reliability and transparency. The team explores how miners interact with the network, contributing to the storage infrastructure, and the ways Hippius incentivizes and rewards participants. The session also touches on future developments, including the use of virtual machines and further enhancing the network’s decentralization and autonomy. Through an in-depth demo, the team showcases how users and developers can easily interact with the network using the Hippius SDK and S3 integration. The focus is on creating a robust, scalable, and transparent decentralized storage solution that can support various applications across the Bittensor network.

Novelty Search is great, but for most investors trying to understand Bittensor, the technical depth is a wall, not a bridge. If we’re going to attract investment into this ecosystem then we need more people to understand it! That’s why Siam Kidd and Mark Creaser from DSV Fund have launched Revenue Search, where they ask the simple questions that investors want to know the answers to.

Recorded in September 2025, this Revenue Search episode dives deep into Subnet 75, Hippius, with guests Mog and Dubs. Hippius is pioneering decentralized cloud storage on Bittensor, aiming to compete with giants like AWS, Google Cloud, and Dropbox by offering scalable, transparent, and dramatically cheaper file storage. The discussion covers how Hippius leverages miners to provide reliable, redundant storage tracked on its own blockchain, the use of IPFS with built-in encryption, and innovative “alphanomics” that tie storage revenue, miner incentives, and dividends directly to Alpha without introducing a separate token. Mog and Dubs also reveal Hippius’ roadmap—including affiliate-driven app development, governance features, slashing mechanisms, and plans to expand into virtual machines—positioning Hippius not just as a storage solution, but as a foundation for a decentralized cloud compute ecosystem.

A special thanks to Mark Jeffrey for his amazing Hash Rate series! In this series, he provides valuable insights into Bittensor Subnets and the world of decentralized AI. Be sure to check out the full series on his YouTube channel for more expert analysis and deep dives.

Recorded September 2025: Mark Jeffrey sits down with Mog Machine of Hippius to unpack “alphanomics,” a token design that tightly couples a subnet’s alpha token to real product usage and revenue. Mog explains Hippius’s storage-focused subnet (an S3/Dropbox/R2 alternative) and its stake-to-mine model: miners must bridge Hippius alpha to the Hippius chain as hAlpha and lock it to scale nodes, forfeiting their dividends—those forfeited dividends, plus dividends from revenue-converted hAlpha that’s locked until consumption, flow into a shared pool for all hAlpha stakers. The result is direct alignment between business success and tokenholder rewards, with everything verifiable on-chain via Hipstats and a forthcoming native bridge/smart-contract pallet enabling slashing and nuanced governance. They cover dynamic node pricing, why burns alone are weak policy, referrals/affiliates, a WordPress integration for developers, dramatic cost advantages over centralized storage, and a roadmap that expands beyond storage to virtual machines and broader cloud hosting.

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Hippius: A blockchain powered subnet built on Bittensor. Cloud Storage, Virtual Machines and Apps. The future is Secure & Transparent.

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