Operators

Running a miner

Hardware, registration, and what to expect when you first turn a miner on.

Before you start

You'll need:

  • A Bittensor wallet with enough TAO for the registration fee.
  • A machine that can serve the inference workload — see hardware below.
  • The btcli command line tool from the opentensor/bittensor repo.

If you've never registered a miner before, the Bittensor docs have a solid walkthrough of wallet setup and btcli basics. Read those first.

Hardware

The honest answer is "it depends on the task spec." Tensorbox's scoring function is deliberately runnable on commodity hardware — we don't think the network is healthier when only deep-pocketed operators can compete.

A reasonable starting machine:

  • 8-core CPU
  • 32 GB RAM
  • Single mid-range GPU (16 GB VRAM is plenty for the current spec)
  • Stable network — uptime matters more than raw bandwidth

You can over-provision, but you'll likely find that scoring isn't bottlenecked there.

Registration

btcli subnet register \
  --netuid <UID> \
  --wallet.name <your_coldkey> \
  --wallet.hotkey <your_hotkey>

The registration fee fluctuates with subnet demand. Check it with btcli subnet hyperparameters --netuid <UID> before you commit.

What to expect in the first 24 hours

  1. Your miner registers and shows up in the metagraph with zero stake and zero trust.
  2. Validators start sending you queries.
  3. Your scores start appearing in the validator outputs.
  4. After roughly one tempo, you're eligible for emissions.

If your scores stay at zero for more than two tempos, something is wrong with your serve — check logs, check that your hotkey is correct, check that you're actually responding to queries.

Operator portal

If you sign in at tensorbox.io/app with the email tied to your operations, the portal will eventually show your miner's score history, query volume, and reward accrual. (That dashboard ships in a later release; the todo app is the current placeholder.)