Subnet developer Covenant AI announced its exit from Bittensor due to decentralization concerns and alleged punitive actions by the AI-focused network ecosystem co-founder, Jacob Steeves.
Covenant AI Slams Bittensor’s Decentralization“We cannot in good conscience continue to build on a network where the foundational claim we make to our investors, that this infrastructure is decentralized and permissionless, is contradicted by the reality of how the network is actually governed,” Dare wrote, calling Bittensor a “decentralized theater.”
In the statement, Covenant AI’s founder argued that Bittensor’s alleged decentralization problem “runs deeper than any single incident,” affirming that the network actually has “centralized control with decentralized branding.”
He claimed that Bittensor’s founder, Jacob Steeves, also known as Const, maintains effective control over the triumvirate structure the network operates on, “resists any meaningful transfer of authority, and deploys changes unilaterally whenever he chooses, without process and without consensus.”
Bittensor Founder, Community Push Back“This changed the emission in the same way all buys and sells on Bittensor do. I don’t have any privilege beyond what normal TAO holders have,” he stated.
Regarding the deprecation and removal of moderation rights, Steeves argued that Dare “specifically deprecated his own channels,” particularly the Discord channel, and repeatedly deleted posts of “genuine, honest criticism.”
As a result, he claims to have “removed that ability temporarily and then reinstated it later,” but did not remove his moderator role. “I simply stopped him from deleting posts from others in his channels.”
“The deleted posts were critiques about sn39 redoing exactly what another compute subnet is doing while they had shilled about innovating and doing better than others. (…) What this proves is that Sam Dare couldn’t handle a simple question without deleting the messages,” DRocks continued.
Lastly, Steeves denied making “large visible token sales” to apply economic pressure, affirming that he has sold less than 1% of what he had invested in Covenant AI’s teams.
TAO Price Crashes After ‘Calculated Exit’“If you think that’s a coincidence, you don’t understand the game you’re playing. This was a calculated exit and execution,” he stated, explaining that larger wallets that knew beforehand “were unloading into the breakout attempt yesterday, using that strength to nuke millions in size well before the headline hit the market.”
