Forem: Level 114

SN 114: Our Side of the Story

Level 114 — Tue, 07 Oct 2025 15:43:07 +0000

TL;DR
We’re the new team behind subnet 114. We bought the slot only—not the sellers’ accumulated tokens. Per our agreement, they kept and later sold their emissions. A series of events (community speculation and a mistimed announcement) pushed price up right before their sale and right before our coldkey swap. They sold, received a large amount of TAO, and the optics looked terrible. We understand the frustration. We didn’t orchestrate the sale, didn’t profit from it, and we moved forward to build. This post explains the timeline, our choices, and what we’re doing to earn your trust.

Who We Are (and Why We Chose Gaming)

Before we formed Level 114, we were miners across multiple subnets. That vantage point let us see both what’s great about Bittensor and where it’s fragile: beginner-level mistakes in code in some subnets, exposed APIs, and vulnerabilities that only builders running real workloads tend to trip over.
We’ve shipped infrastructure for games before. Gaming was an untouched narrative on Bittensor, and the fit felt natural: real-time workloads, measurable outputs, and a big developer audience. That’s how the idea for a gaming subnet was born.

Why We Had to Buy a Slot (and What That Really Meant)

With the subnet cap at 128, launching meant acquiring an existing slot. Before the cap, slots changed hands around ~100 TAO; once secondary trading started, prices jumped into the hundreds (e.g., SN47 around ~650 TAO).
Slot pricing floats with root prop, liquidity, and other factors. Our best path was a newer slot with lower liquidity and higher root prop. After several conversations, SN114 was the most advantageous option. The prior team had explored a gambling-related project and, from what we understood, hit legal snags.
Crucially, the sellers also held a large number of tokens (from their 18% emissions as prior owners). Buying both the slot and their token stack would have:

Made the total price unrealistic for us
Likely forced us to sell later just to sustain operations

So we put it in the contract:

We acquire only the slot, plus the 10,000 tokens strictly needed to run validator code
The previous owners keep their past emissions and can sell them at their discretion

At the time, with alpha price levels, the expected proceeds from their sale didn’t look huge.

What Actually Happened (The Unfortunate Chain of Events)

The prior team posted a message responding to an accusation (related to delisting).
The community interpreted it in the worst possible way.
Speculation kicked in and price climbed—hard—just before our coldkey swap.
The sellers, seeing momentum, shifted their sale to Saturday.
If they’d waited until Monday (when the changeover announcement had originally been planned), the sale might have landed differently. It's possible that the price has increased even more considering that during the weekend, most people are not online.
They sold into a rising market and received a considerable amount of TAO. The community, understandably, was angry.

Key point: This sale was entirely their decision, explicitly allowed by our agreement. We couldn’t and didn’t control it.

What We Did—and Didn’t—Do

✅ We bought the slot under clear terms that excluded the sellers’ historical emissions.
❌ We did not coordinate their sale, front-run it, or benefit from it.
✅ We proceeded with the coldkey swap and the build plan we’d prepared for months.
❌ We didn’t attempt to manage perception with half-answers; we chose to ship and then explain fully.

What We Learned

1) Communication beats cleverness: even with a clean contract, the community needs the “why,” not just the “what.”
2) Timing matters: announcements, swaps, and liquidity events need guardrails—even when not all parties are under our control.
3) Assume speculation: if there’s an interpretive gap, the market will fill it.

What We’re Building on 114

We picked gaming because it’s where Bittensor incentives can be measured against real usage.

Verifiable gameplay signals: Validators verify outcomes and integrity; miners serve the workloads that matter (match data, inference for NPCs, anti-cheat heuristics).
Dev-first tooling: Lightweight SDKs + REST/gRPC so Unity/Unreal/engine-agnostic teams can integrate fast.
Usage-aligned rewards: Rewards track active game sessions, not idle capacity.
Security-first: Private audits before releases, followed by incentivized bug bounties.
Performance transparency: Public dashboards for latency, uptime, and miner/validator health.

Concrete Commitments to the Community

Clear separation of concerns: we operate the subnet; we don’t manage former owners’ treasury decisions.
Runway, not reflex: avoid reactive token moves to narratives; build first.
Regular updates: changelogs + short fortnightly notes (shipped, metrics, known issues, next).
Open channels: office hours for miners, validators, and game devs.

FAQ

Q: Did Level 114 profit from the price spike?  
A: No. The sale belonged to the previous owners per our agreement. We received the slot plus 10,000 operational tokens—nothing more.

Q: Why not force a lockup on their tokens?  
A: Those were their historical emissions. Rewriting that would’ve killed the deal. We chose a clean separation: we take the slot; they retain their tokens.

Q: Couldn’t you have delayed the swap?  
A: Delaying wouldn’t have changed their right to sell; it would only add uncertainty and speculation.

Q: Why gaming?  
A: It’s an area where verifiable, low-latency, high-throughput AI/compute actually matters—and where incentives can be measured against real usage.

Q: How will we know you’re delivering?  
A: By code, dashboards, and shipped integrations. We’ll publish artifacts and metrics so you don’t have to take our word for it.

Closing

We acted in good faith within a structure that made sense at the time. A confusing message, a fast-moving market, and bad timing created a narrative we wouldn’t wish on anyone—but here we are, sleeves rolled up.

If you’re angry, we hear you. If you’re skeptical, you should be. Give us the chance to earn your trust the only way that matters here: by building something useful on 114, in the open, with security and performance you can verify.

— Level 114

How Level 114 can strengthen the Bittensor ecosystem

Level 114 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:51:40 +0000

Level 114 is the first gaming-focused subnet on Bittensor. It turns running high-quality game servers into a performance-driven, on-chain economy where miners (hosts) and validators are rewarded for real utility — uptime, stability, responsiveness, and player engagement.

In practice, that means game servers become measurable infrastructure, validators score them, and rewards flow accordingly in TAO.

Onboarding at Scale

The path from "existing server operator" to "Bittensor miner" is straightforward:

Register with the collector service
Install the plugin
Get scored
Earn

This turns a vast Web2 creator base into Web3 infrastructure providers.

Sustainable Flywheel

Player spending → SN114 buybacks → TAO demand → stronger incentives for quality servers → better gameplay → more players and creators.

The loop compounds with each additional high-quality server and community.

1. Gaming's Reach → On-Chain Awareness

Mass appeal without friction.
Most gamers will never need to know a server is decentralized or that rewards are TAO-linked; they just want fast, fair, always-on servers.

Level 114 leans into that reality by validating exactly those qualities — uptime, speed, and reliability — and tying rewards to them.
The result is a "better server because it pays to be better," not "a crypto server that asks players to care about crypto."
Bittensor-themed worlds and messaging.
Even if decentralization is invisible under the hood, servers can surface it through theme, lore, rotating splash messages, or seasonal events that highlight how performance and fairness are validated by a decentralized network.
This is easy to implement because Level 114 provides a Minecraft monitoring plugin and a growing plugin toolset for server operators.
A ready-made supply of hosts.
Minecraft is Level 114's launch title for good reason: it already has a vibrant, long-standing server economy with proven monetization patterns (cosmetics, ranks, subscriptions).
Those same operators can plug into Level 114 to earn network rewards on top of their existing businesses — an immediate bridge between a giant creator/host community and Bittensor's incentive rails.
Low barrier to participation.
Minecraft runs on modest hardware, widening the pool of would-be miners (hosts) who can join and be evaluated by validators.
More supply → better coverage and redundancy for players → healthier subnet.
Trust via transparent metrics.
Because validators weight servers based on objective, auditable signals (availability, performance, reporting consistency), communities get a credible quality signal that persists beyond hype cycles.

2. Revenue That Feeds Back Into Bittensor via Token Buybacks

Level 114 is designed so that off-chain cash flows (shop purchases, rank upgrades, subscriptions) can be routed back on-chain through buybacks of the subnet's alpha token.

Because SN114 is paired with TAO in its liquidity, buybacks create indirect demand for TAO — pulling external revenue into the TAO⇄SN114 pool.

In short: people buying cosmetics or memberships on popular servers can ultimately strengthen TAO liquidity and demand.

This is not just theoretical: Level 114's monetization plan explicitly includes alpha-token buybacks funded from premium revenue, alongside creator rewards and performance bonuses for outstanding nodes.

That closes the loop between gameplay revenue, subnet health, and the broader Bittensor economy.

By meeting gamers where they are — great servers first, crypto under the hood — Level 114 can channel one of the world's largest entertainment communities into Bittensor's incentive fabric, turning everyday play and creator commerce into measurable, rewardable network utility.

Why we chose Minecraft as our first game

Level 114 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:27:31 +0000

Level 114, built on Bittensor, introduces a decentralized network of game servers where hosts and validators are rewarded for performance. It aims to demonstrate how gaming infrastructure can generate real economic value within the ecosystem. In this model, miners run game servers and network validators monitor their performance and fairness. Both roles earn alpha tokens as rewards based on measurable performance criteria such as uptime, responsiveness, and player engagement.

Minecraft’s Proven Revenue Potential

Minecraft is not only one of the most popular games in the world, but it also supports a thriving ecosystem of independent servers with successful business models. Over more than a decade, countless Minecraft server operators have built sustainable revenues through methods such as:

Cosmetic item shops
Rank upgrade systems
Subscription-based perks

Players willingly pay for vanity features (like custom skins or pets), exclusive access to game modes, or simply to support their favorite community servers.

This phenomenon has been demonstrated at scale — from small community servers earning a few hundred dollars a month, up to large networks reportedly generating substantial annual revenues from player purchases.

The critical point is that Minecraft servers have proven that virtual experiences can be monetized without compromising gameplay. Operators can maintain free entry for all players while offering optional enhancements that many are eager to buy.

This well-established revenue potential makes Minecraft an attractive first choice for Level 114: it provides a clear, tested path for server hosts to earn meaningful income.

Integrating Minecraft Server Revenues into Bittensor

By launching with Minecraft, Level 114 can capture these strong revenue streams and funnel them into the broader crypto economy connected to Bittensor. In the Level 114 subnet, hosting a Minecraft server becomes part of a decentralized, token-incentivized economy where external revenues (from cosmetics, ranks, subscriptions, etc.) can be used to strengthen the subnet’s tokenomics.

Specifically, a portion of the revenue can fund buybacks of SN114 on the open market. Because SN114 is paired with TAO in its liquidity pool, buying SN114 requires TAO — so buybacks create indirect demand for TAO. Players effectively route outside capital into the TAO ⇄ SN114 liquidity pool.

In essence, hosting Minecraft within Level 114 turns traditional server cash flow into on-chain demand that first flows through TAO.

Operational Synergy of Minecraft and Level 114

Beyond the financial considerations, Minecraft is technically and community-wise an excellent fit for a decentralized hosting subnet. It supports:

Custom plugins (used by Level 114 for monitoring and metrics)
Modest hardware requirements, enabling broad participation

Validators in Level 114 continuously measure server performance — tracking:

Uptime
Latency
User satisfaction

This ensures that high-quality servers gain reputation and rewards.

The result is an aligned system:

Gamers get reliable, well-run servers
Hosts can earn both external revenue and SN114 rewards
The token model benefits from a steady conversion path that channels outside capital through TAO into SN114

Minecraft’s combination of global popularity, proven monetization models, and technical flexibility makes it the ideal first step for Level 114. By aligning external revenues with the subnet’s token design, Level 114 ensures that value generated by players is directly connected to the TAO economy.

This approach not only rewards server hosts and validators for high performance, but also establishes a sustainable mechanism through which outside capital strengthens the broader network.

In choosing Minecraft, Level 114 sets a practical precedent for how decentralized gaming infrastructure can bridge entertainment and blockchain economics in a way that benefits all participants.

What is Level 114?

Level 114 — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 14:16:28 +0000

Level 114 is the first gaming subnet built on the Bittensor network, designed to bring decentralization into the world of online gaming. Instead of relying on centralized providers, it creates a distributed ecosystem where server hosts, developers, validators, and players are directly rewarded for contributing to performance, fairness, and community engagement.

At its core, Level 114 reimagines how game servers operate — turning gameplay itself into a decentralized, performance-driven economy. By leveraging Bittensor’s mechanisms of miners, validators, and token-based rewards, Level 114 introduces a new way to manage and scale gaming infrastructure.

Miners operate game servers.
Validators assess their performance, fairness, and reliability.
Rewards are distributed in TAO (Bittensor’s native token), based on objective quality metrics.

This system ensures that the best infrastructure rises to the top — not through centralized control, but through transparent, consensus-driven validation.

The Purpose of Level 114

The subnet was built to solve a core problem in modern gaming: dependence on centralized platforms and opaque monetization systems. Its main goals include:

Decentralizing Game Servers — Anyone can run a server, connect it to Level 114, and be rewarded for uptime, performance, and stability.
Rewarding Real Contributions — Hosts, developers, and communities earn not just for participation, but for delivering quality experiences.
Ensuring Fair Play — Validators monitor performance independently, ensuring servers don’t cheat and that players enjoy fair conditions.
Fueling an Open Gaming Economy — With tokenized rewards and open validation, innovation and fairness become the core drivers of growth.

How It Works

Level 114 runs on Bittensor’s subnet framework, which enables:

Transparent Validation — Metrics like uptime, latency, and stability are tracked and evaluated.
Merit-Based Rewards — Contributors are rewarded proportionally to the quality of service they provide.
Scalability Across Games — While the subnet launched with a single game, it was designed to expand into multiple genres and platforms.

At the center of this system is a collector service that registers servers, stores performance reports, and provides authenticated access to validators. Rewards are thus tied to real-world server quality, not arbitrary fees.

Why Level 114 Matters

The gaming industry is one of the largest in the world but remains dominated by centralized platforms and publishers. Level 114 challenges this model by:

Empowering Players and Hosts — Infrastructure becomes a participatory, rewarded activity.
Creating a Fair Economy — Replacing “pay-to-win” dynamics with performance-driven incentives.
Bridging Web3 and Gaming — Bringing decentralized infrastructure and tokenized rewards into mainstream gaming.

For the wider Bittensor ecosystem, Level 114 demonstrates how decentralized infrastructure validation can extend beyond AI into entertainment, real-time applications, and community-driven digital economies.

Future Development

The roadmap for Level 114 includes:

Framework Refinement — Improving the monitoring and validation stack with better sampling, richer telemetry, and stronger anti-cheat heuristics.
Governance by Staking (Alpha) — Introducing governance powered by Alpha staking, enabling token-weighted proposals for reward curves, scoring formulas, and network parameters.
Multi-Game Expansion — Adding new titles beyond the initial reference game, chosen through community governance, with per-game plugins and tailored metrics.

Looking Ahead

Level 114’s long-term vision is to scale beyond a single title and become a backbone for decentralized gaming at large. Its future includes:

Expanding support for new genres and platforms
Building monetization tools for creators and communities
Designing sustainable tokenomics where miners, validators, developers, and players all benefit from growth

By combining decentralized infrastructure with gaming’s global reach, Level 114 is pioneering a future where games are not just played, but powered by communities themselves.

✅ Learn more: level114.io
💻 GitHub: Level 114 Subnet
📖 Docs: docs.level114.io
✖️ X: x.com/level_114