Merit Subnet (Bittensor NetUID 73)

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Overview

Merit is a Bittensor subnet that rewards miners for their active participation across other Bittensor subnets.

Validators evaluate registered hotkeys based on their cross-subnet activity and uptime, assigning dynamic weights according to a calculated Bittensor Miner Participation Score (BMPS).

Merit is designed to promote real work, broad contribution, and fair validation.

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Key Features

• ✅ Hotkey-Based Rewards: Each hotkey registered on Merit is scored individually.
• ✅ Cross-Subnet Incentive Averaging: Miners must be active across many subnets to maximize rewards.
• ✅ Dynamic Global Refresh: Validator refreshes all miner incentives every epoch.
• ✅ TOTP-Secured Liveness Checks: Pings confirm miners are live and serving.
• ✅ Fair Scoring System: Ping rewards are minor compared to true network participation.
• ✅ Background Health Monitoring: Optional miner uptime history tracking.

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Incentive Mechanism

Step	Description
1	Validator fetches full Bittensor network info per epoch.
2	For each Merit hotkey, search all active subnets (excluding root/merit).
3	Sum found incentives and divide by the total active subnets - 2.
4	Compute: bmps = average_incentive × 100,000.
5	Apply ping adjustments: bmps == 0.0 for failure.
6	Normalize and submit weights each epoch.

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Getting Started

1. Install Dependencies

sudo apt -y install python3-venv python3-pip python-is-python3
sudo apt -y install ntpsec

2. Clone and Set Up Environment

git clone https://github.com/fx-integral/merit.git
cd merit
python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install uv
uv pip install -r requirements.txt

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Running a Miner

python -m merit.scripts.run_miner \
    --subtensor.network finney \
    --wallet.name {your_wallet_name} \
    --wallet.hotkey {your_hotkey_name} \
    --netuid 73 \
    --axon.port {port_number} \
    --logging.debug

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Running a Validator

python -m merit.scripts.run_validator \
    --subtensor.network finney \
    --wallet.name {your_wallet_name} \
    --wallet.hotkey {your_hotkey_name} \
    --netuid 73 \
    --logging.debug

Optional Arguments:

Argument	Description	Default
--ping_frequency	Seconds between background pings	120

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Important Notes

• Hotkey-Specific Scoring: Coldkeys are not aggregated — only hotkeys matter.
• Dynamic Subnet Participation: The more subnets a miner actively participates in, the higher the score.
• Liveness Matters: Online miners gain slight bonus; offline miners are lightly penalized.
• No Validator Restart Needed: Incentives refresh automatically each epoch.

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Documentation

• 📄 Whitepaper
• 📄 Validator Setup Guide
• 📄 Miner Setup Guide
• 📄 Roadmap

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License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.
See LICENSE for details.

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