Archived: version 2.4 of the miner FAQ, kept unchanged for reference. It is no longer the current version: the rules in force are in the current miner FAQ (see its change log).

How to read this FAQ

What do LIVE, APPROVED and PENDING mean?

LIVE

LIVE: in force now and run by the current validator release. APPROVED: decided and announced, takes effect at the date shown. PENDING: the decision is still open; the text says what is being decided, and nothing in it is a rule yet. Times are in UTC with Berlin time in brackets. Berlin moves from summer time (UTC+2) to winter time (UTC+1) on Sunday 25 October 2026, so from then on 14:30 UTC is 15:30 Berlin.

The full rules are on the rules page; the exact files and constants are in the public reax-subnet repository. If this FAQ and the running release seem to differ, tell us in #92. For APPROVED answers the announced rule applies from the date shown, and we fix the code or this page before then.

Where do I ask a rules or status question?

LIVE

Ask in #92 on the Bittensor Discord, so everyone sees the answer. Direct messages are the exception: use them for private matters (keys, ownership proofs, code releases) or if you cannot post in #92. Errors in your own entry: see below. We answer once an hour between 06:30 and 21:30 UTC (08:30–23:30 Berlin until 24 October, 07:30–22:30 Berlin from 25 October).

Tracks and shares

How is the miner emission split between the tracks?

LIVE

Since 21 October 2026, 13:00 UTC (15:00 Berlin): inference 50%, REAX Engine 20%, generalist decision model 30% of the miner part of the emission. Inside a competition track the share is split 75% / 17% / 8%: the champion, the champion dethroned most recently, and the one dethroned before that. A share that nobody may be paid (no champion yet, award not approved, place expired) goes to the inference miners (except the short keep-share cases in this answer). It never moves up to the next rank and nothing is burned. Rewards are a protocol mechanism, not a promise of any amount, and can be zero.

Are 17% and 8% paid to places 2 and 3 of a ranking?

LIVE

No. 75/17/8 means the champion plus the two most recently dethroned champions (former-champion places), in the order they lost the title, not by score. On the generalist track a former-champion place has no time limit: it ends when newer former champions push it out. On the engine track it also ends 7 days after losing the title. A former champion is paid only while it stays committed by the same hotkey with a valid result and a valid award approval. Runners-up of a crowning are not paid; the one exception is places 2 and 3 of the generalist opening (next answer).

What do places 2 and 3 of the generalist opening get?

LIVE

As a one-time exception for the opening cohort, the next two entries after the three co-champions take the former-champion slots: place 2 (UID 160) the 17% slot and place 3 (UID 113) the 8% slot, if they clear the entry floor, beat their base model by 1.5 points and pass the normal award review, from Friday 23 October 2026, 13:00 UTC (15:00 Berlin), for at most 7 days. Like every former-champion slot they are pushed out by newer former champions (so the 7 days are a maximum), and each is paid only while its award approval is valid. There is no extra emission. Both places are live: they have been paid since the first weight set under the new rules (block 9346668, about 13:55 UTC on 23 October): UID 160 17%, UID 113 8%.

If a new champion is crowned while these places run, UID 116, 199 and 250 take place 2 together (17%, about 5.67% each), UID 160 moves to place 3 (8%) until Friday 30 October, 13:00 UTC at the latest, and UID 113’s opening place ends. If nobody is crowned, UID 160 and 113 keep 17% and 8% until Friday 30 October, 13:00 UTC. Slot rules, section 6.

When did the generalist track open, and what happened to demand forecasting and risk assessment?

LIVE

The generalist track is open since Wednesday 21 October 2026, 13:00 UTC, with no end date. Demand forecasting and risk assessment ended at that same moment (their earlier published end was 30 October 2026, 12:00 UTC) and are no longer paid. Their champions and approved former champions kept a bounded legacy keep-alive for 7 days (details).

Crowning slot rules

APPROVED effective from the slot on Mon 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin); sections 10 and 11 from 22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC (21:55 Berlin)

Evaluation runs all the time; only crowning waits for a slot. Every entry gets its first draw in the normal queue (about one cycle per hour, up to 8 evaluations per hour) and its confirmation about 12 hours later; results appear on the live page right away. At the Monday and Thursday 14:30 UTC slots, the entries confirmed by then are crowned (several: up to 3 shared rounds, usually decided within a few hours). So after confirming you wait at most until the next slot.

Explainer video (English, about 2 minutes). The written rules below are binding.

These rules decide every generalist crowning, starting with the slot on Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin). They were published before any of these slots was run, and we follow them as written. All shares below are parts of the generalist track share (30% of the miner part of the emission).

1. When slots happen

  • Every Monday and Thursday at 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin in winter time). The first ones: Mon 26 Oct, Thu 29 Oct, Mon 2 Nov, Thu 5 Nov.
  • The same rules apply at every slot. A rule change is announced in #92 and on this page at least 48 hours before the first slot it applies to, never for a slot whose cutoff has passed. If a slot ever has to move, we announce it in #92 beforehand, and its cutoffs move with it.
  • Submissions are open all the time. A challenger is crowned only at a slot.

2. Who is in a slot

  • Every entry whose confirmation against the current champion has passed and is shown on the live page with a time before 14:30:00 UTC on the slot day. With co-champions or a shared group, the bar is the best of them on your own draw.
  • Also every entry whose confirmation was due at or before 13:30:00 UTC on the slot day but has not run yet because of our queue. “Due” means 12 hours after the first draw passed, so this covers every entry whose first draw passed at or before 01:30 UTC that day. The live page shows each entry’s due time. We run these confirmations, on the slot’s evaluation, before the slot rounds start. If one passes, the entry is in the slot; if it fails, that is a normal fail. (The hour between 13:30 and 14:30 UTC is the time we need to prepare the slot.)
  • The order of committing or confirming plays no role.
  • No entry in the slot: nothing changes. Exactly one entry: it is crowned.
  • The current champions are not measured again at the slot; the confirmation was the test against them. Their scores on other draws are never compared with yours.
  • An entry that confirms after the cutoff is not in this slot. If the slot crowns nobody and the evaluation stays the same, it is in the next slot. If a new champion is crowned, it has to beat the new champion, starting with a new first draw. Once eval v5 binds (Monday 26 October, 14:30 UTC), it starts again on v5. You never need to recommit for this.

3. Which evaluation

  • All rounds of a slot use the evaluation the entries confirmed on.
  • Monday 26 October uses the current evaluation, even though eval v5 becomes binding at 14:30 UTC that day. The following slots, from Thursday 29 October, use v5 (when v5 binds).
  • The numbers on this page (entry floor 36.8, margin floor 1.0, tie gap 0.5) are those of the current evaluation. For v5, the tie gap is again half of v5’s margin floor: 0.5 points. All v5 values are listed in which numbers apply under eval v5, published more than 48 hours before the first v5 slot.

4. How a slot with several entries is decided

  • Up to 3 rounds. Each round is 900 fresh items, the same for every entry still in. Rounds share no items.
  • Scores are the normal track score (after the gap penalty), averaged over all rounds so far.
  • After each round the leader is the entry with the highest average. Every other entry is compared with the leader only.
  • Each round, the checks run in this order:
    1. Serving. An entry whose model fails to answer the round’s items is retried once. If it fails again while the other entries were served, it leaves. A model that does not load, or whose repo is gone or private, is the entry’s own failure.
    2. Entry floor. An entry whose average is at or below the entry floor (36.8) leaves.
    3. Parents and twins (round 1 only). An entry that does not beat a declared or detected parent, or an earlier entry it answers like, that is also in the slot, by the full copy margin of the copy rules leaves.
    4. One entry per holder (round 1 only). Entries with the same coldkey or the same Hugging Face account or organisation in the repo id have the same holder, also through a chain (A shares a coldkey with B, B shares an HF account with C: A, B and C are one holder). Only the holder’s entry with the best round-1 score stays (on an exact tie, the earlier commitment). If you think you are wrongly treated as one holder with someone else, tell us in #92 before the slot.
    5. Separation. An entry leaves when the leader is ahead of it by at least the margin: the larger of 1.0 point and 2 paired standard errors over all shared rounds so far. Each pair has its own margin. (This is the same margin formula a challenger is measured with.)
  • An entry that has left does not come back, even if the entry that separated it leaves later.
  • One entry left: it is the clear winner and takes the whole 75% champion share. No further rounds.
  • No entry left: nobody is crowned, and the current champions stay.

5. Still close after three rounds

  • Entries still not separated from the leader after round 3 share the title only if the leader’s average minus theirs is 0.5 points or less, computed on unrounded values. Each entry is measured against the leader, so a chain of close entries cannot pull in a weaker one. The result post shows every average and gap to three decimals.
  • The shared group splits the 75% champion share equally (two: 37.5% each, three: 25% each). Each part needs its own award approval; an unapproved part is never given to the other members.
  • An entry that is not separated but more than 0.5 points behind is not practically tied: the leader is then crowned alone. Exactly equal averages always share.
  • Sharing does not mean the models are proven equal. It means the shared items could not separate them.
  • A shared group counts as one champion. All members are served on every challenger draw, and a challenger takes the title by beating the best member on its own draw by the margin. The group then becomes one former champion and shares that place equally.

6. Places 2 and 3 after a crowning

  • Places 2 and 3 (17% and 8%) go to the two most recently dethroned champions, in the order they lost the title. A beaten co-champion set or shared group is one former champion and shares its place equally.
  • On the generalist track a former-champion place has no time limit; it ends when newer former champions push it out. Each part is paid only while the same hotkey stays committed with that entry and its approval is valid; an unpaid part goes to inference.
  • The first new crowning while the opening places run: UID 116, 199 and 250 take place 2 together (17%, about 5.67% each). UID 160 moves to place 3 (8%) until Fri 30 Oct, 13:00 UTC at the latest. UID 113’s opening place ends.
  • If nobody is crowned, UID 160 and 113 keep 17% and 8% until Fri 30 Oct, 13:00 UTC.
  • An opening place that ends is not filled from below. It stays empty until a newer former champion takes it, and its share goes to inference.
  • Entries that are not crowned get no place. They stay in the competition and can challenge the new champion with the full margin.

7. If our systems fail

  • A round is void if every entry fails, or if our logs show a host or validator fault; we publish the relevant log lines. A void round counts for nobody. We run it again on new items.
  • Everything finishes within 12 hours after the slot (Tue 02:30 UTC for the Monday slot).
    • If at least one round was completed by then, we decide on the completed rounds with the same tests, including the 0.5-point gap, and the result post says how many rounds ran.
    • If none was completed, nobody is crowned and the current places continue. The slot is re-run on the same evaluation, with the same entries, as soon as our systems work again, announced in #92.
  • Nobody is removed or ranked lower because of a failure on our side.

8. Timeline and pay

  • Slot results usually come within a few hours, at the latest 12 hours after the slot.
  • We decide every award within 6 hours of the crowning, counted inside our review window of 10:00–22:00 Berlin time (09:00–21:00 UTC in winter time). For the Monday slot that means by about Tuesday 15:00 UTC at the latest. Clear cases are approved automatically. Each member of a shared group is reviewed on its own.
  • Until a new champion is approved, the champion it beat keeps that new champion’s part of the 75%, for up to 48 hours from the crowning (a co-champion set in equal parts). Meanwhile it gives up its own former-champion place share, which goes to inference. After 48 hours an unapproved part goes to inference until the approval exists, and the beaten champion is paid its place share.
  • After an approval, pay shows on chain about 1–2 hours later (commit-reveal and the next epoch).

9. What we publish

Every slot result is posted in #92 and on the live page with: the entries and why each one was in, the evaluation version and validator release, the draw ids, every entry’s score in every round, the averages, and, for every entry against the leader, the gap, the paired standard error, the margin and the rule that made it leave or stay.

10. Reporting an error

  • Report a factual error in #92 within 24 hours of the result post, with evidence. Grounds: a wrong number, the wrong entry, a rule applied differently from this page, or code that does not do what this page says.
  • I re-check it against the logs and the code, separately from the run that produced the result, and answer once in #92 within 24 hours. The decision applies in the meantime.
  • Upheld: we correct it from the next weight set and pay the measured loss from our own share. If the error changed who was crowned, we decide the slot again; amounts already paid are not taken back. Not upheld: the decision stands, and we say why.
  • The rules themselves, the thresholds and normal measurement noise are not grounds. Suggestions go to our weekly rule review; a change only applies from a later, announced slot.

11. Registration fees after a prune caused by us

If your hotkey was pruned because of our wrong weights, our timing (for example a confirmation that was due but that our queue had not run) or a validator bug, we refund what you paid to register it again, from our own share. Tell us in #92 with your UID and the time. This applies to prunes from the publication of this rule (22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC) on. In every other case registration fees are not refunded.

Examples

UIDs A, B, D and E are made up. Numbers are averages over the shared rounds so far. “Margin” is the bar of section 4 for that pair at that round.

Clear winner after round 2. Round 1: A 75.40, B 74.20, D 73.60, E 72.90, and every pair’s margin is about 1.50. A leads. B is 1.20 behind, less than its margin, so it stays. D (1.80 behind) and E (2.50) leave. After round 2: A 75.25, B 73.85. The gap of 1.40 is more than the margin of 1.06, so B leaves. A is crowned alone with 75%. UID 116, 199 and 250 get about 5.67% each, UID 160 8%, and UID 113 nothing.

Practically tied. After round 3: A 74.78, B 74.71. B is not separated, and 0.07 points behind, within 0.5. A and B are crowned together, 37.5% each.

Not separated, but not practically tied. After round 3: A 74.87, B 74.10. B is not separated, but 0.77 points behind, more than 0.5. A is crowned alone.

Champions, ties and payouts

Who holds the generalist title now?

LIVE

The opening playoff ended in a practical tie, so UID 116, 199 and 250 are co-champions. They share the 75% champion share in equal thirds (25% of the track share each), and each third is paid only with that entry’s own award approval; an unpaid third goes to inference. The set holds the title until a challenger beats the best of the three by the required margin on the challenger’s own draws (all three are served on every challenger draw). Live status: live queue.

What happens when one entry clearly wins a crowning slot?

APPROVED effective from the slot on Mon 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin)

A clear winner takes the whole 75% champion share (paid once its award is approved). The former-champion shares stay 17% and 8%, and there is no extra emission.

An entry is the clear winner when it is the only entry left in the slot. After each shared round of 900 fresh items, every other entry is compared with the leader and leaves when the leader is ahead of it by at least the margin: the larger of 1.0 point and 2 paired standard errors. If only one entry is in the slot, it is crowned. Slot rules, section 4.

What if the leading entries are practically tied?

APPROVED effective from the slot on Mon 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin)

For close results we test additional shared tasks. Only practically tied leading models share the champion share. All entries in a slot are compared on up to three shared rounds of 900 fresh items. Entries share the 75% champion share equally (two entries 37.5% each, three 25% each) only if both hold: they are still not separated from the leader after round 3, and the leader’s average minus theirs is 0.5 points or less (also under eval v5, which keeps the margin floor of 1.0; the tie gap is half of it). The gap is measured from the leader for each entry, so a chain of entries that are each close to the next cannot pull in a clearly weaker model. Practically tied is not the same as equal: not being separated does not prove that two models are the same. If an entry is not separated but more than 0.5 points behind, the leader is crowned alone; this is announced, not a silent fallback. In a slot one holder (same coldkey or same Hugging Face account or organisation, also through a chain) keeps at most one entry. No one outside the tied group is paid as a runner-up. Slot rules, section 5.

A joint champion group later counts as one former champion: it is dethroned together when a challenger beats its best member by the required margin, and it then shares one former-champion slot equally.

What happens to the three co-champions when a challenger beats them?

APPROVED approved 22 Oct 2026; applies when the co-champions are beaten

The beaten co-champion set becomes one former-champion slot, shared equally by the three (each part paid only with its own approval). It does not take three slots.

Can you show concrete payout examples?

APPROVED effective from the slot on Mon 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin)

These examples show the approved policy from the Monday 26 October slot. All numbers are parts of the generalist track share (30% of the miner part of the emission). Every part is paid only with a valid award approval; anything unpaid goes to inference.

Places 2 and 3 go to the two most recently dethroned champions, in the order they lost the title; a beaten co-champion set or shared group counts as one.

  • Clear winner. Entry A wins a slot clearly: A 75%. The most recently dethroned champion 17%, the one before 8%.
  • Tied group of two. A and B are still not separated after round 3 and B is 0.5 points or less behind A: A 37.5%, B 37.5%; former slots 17% and 8% unchanged.
  • Tied group of three. A, B and C: 25% each; former slots unchanged.
  • Beaten co-champions. A beats the best of UID 116, 199 and 250 clearly: A 75%; the three share one former-champion place equally. While the opening places run, that is place 2: UID 116, 199 and 250 about 5.67% each, UID 160 8% (until Friday 30 October, 13:00 UTC at the latest), UID 113 nothing.
  • A tied group is beaten later. Challenger X beats the better of A and B by the margin: X 75%; A and B together form one former champion and share its slot equally.
  • Today, before any new crowning. UID 116, 199 and 250 25% each; since Fri 23 Oct (weight set of about 13:55 UTC) also UID 160 17% and UID 113 8% (opening places).

Worked examples with round-by-round numbers: slot rules, examples.

Crowning slots and the switch to eval v5

When is the next generalist crowning?

APPROVED effective from Mon 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin)

Evaluation runs all the time; only crowning waits for a slot. Every entry gets its first draw in the normal queue (about one cycle per hour, up to 8 evaluations per hour) and its confirmation about 12 hours later; results appear on the live page right away. At the Monday and Thursday 14:30 UTC slots, the entries confirmed by then are crowned (several: up to 3 shared rounds, usually decided within a few hours). So after confirming you wait at most until the next slot.

Generalist crowning slots are every Monday and Thursday at 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin in winter time), starting Monday 26 October 2026: 26 Oct, 29 Oct, 2 Nov, 5 Nov and so on. There is no Friday slot. A challenger is crowned only at a slot. Submissions stay open all the time.

A slot includes every entry whose confirmation has passed and is shown on the live page with a time before 14:30:00 UTC on the slot day, and every entry whose confirmation was due at or before 13:30:00 UTC (12 hours after its first draw passed) but has not run yet because of our queue; we run those first, on the slot’s evaluation. Slot rules, sections 1 and 2.

The engine track has its own schedule and is not tied to these slots (engine title).

I am in the queue under the current evaluation. What happens when eval v5 starts?

APPROVED for the Mon 26 Oct 2026 slot

Entries that confirm under the current evaluation before Monday 26 October, 14:30 UTC are decided at that slot under the current evaluation, and the winner (or a tied leading group) is crowned as earned. Also in that slot: entries whose confirmation was due at or before 13:30 UTC that day (first draw passed at or before 01:30 UTC) but has not run yet because of our queue; we run these confirmations on the current evaluation before the slot rounds start (section 2). Eval v5 binds at 14:30 UTC that Monday: titles are defended on v5 after the slot and new entries are scored on v5, and an entry that is not in Monday’s slot starts again on v5 automatically: a first-draw result from the current evaluation does not carry over; no recommit needed. If Monday’s slot crowns a new champion, an entry that is not in the slot starts again with a new first draw against it.

When does eval v5 become binding?

APPROVED effective from Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin)

Eval v5 binds from Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin) for new evaluations and title defences. Before v5 could bind, we checked that our private test set ranks about 40 open models the way the public Decision Indexes do. The second check finished on 23 October 2026, on 35 open models that the Hugging Face Decision Index has scored, 21 of them in its top 40. Rank agreement with the Decision Index over all models: 0.90 (bar 0.9, met). Among its top-40 models: 0.65 (bar 0.7, missed). Our new-domain part against the Decision Index new-domain part, top 40: 0.64 (bar 0.6, met; its 80% lower band 0.396 against a bar of 0.40, just missed). For comparison, the public test families of the current evaluation reach 0.18 among the top 40. So the check came close but did not pass. We decided that v5 binds from Monday anyway, because it ranks models far closer to the Decision Indexes than the current evaluation does. Noise is higher than we planned for; the z-gates still apply, which makes crowns rarer rather than easier. We keep improving v5 (version 0.2) and announce every change here and in #92 before it applies. Monday’s slot itself still runs on the current evaluation (slot rules, section 3): entries that confirm under it before 14:30 UTC are crowned there, as earned. Every slot candidate, including the defending group, also gets a v5 score on one common draw (pool version 0.1.1), published next to the current score in the slot result (decision of 23 October, option A). From then on titles are defended on v5 and new entries are scored on v5; the slots from Thursday 29 October use v5. The v5 numbers: next answers.

Which numbers apply under eval v5?

APPROVED with eval v5

  • Draw. 900 private items per draw: 540 same-skill tests (60%) and 360 new-domain tasks (40%), plus public items at weight 0. A decision pools your first and your confirmation draw.
  • Bar. A challenger has to beat the best current title holder and its own declared base by the margin, on the same items. The minimum margin stays 1.0 point, and the z-gates stay as they are (first stage).
  • Floors. The entry floor (36.8) and the non-procedural floor (37.4) of the current evaluation do not apply to v5 scores; the bar above replaces them.
  • Ties in a slot. Tie gap 0.5 points from the leader (half the margin floor), separation margin the larger of 1.0 point and 2 paired standard errors, up to three shared rounds: the same numbers as under the current evaluation (tied group).
  • No gap penalty. Public items count 0%. Instead there is a gap check: if your gain over your base on public items exceeds your gain on private items by more than the larger of 1.5 points and 2 standard errors, we check the entry for overlap with our private sources before any award. Your score itself does not change.
  • Scale. v5 scores are scaled against a fixed panel of untuned stock models, on roughly the Decision Index scale. They cannot be compared directly with scores from the current evaluation.

What does eval v5 measure?

APPROVED with eval v5

Eval v5 is built to rank models the way the Hugging Face Decision Index and the Artificial Analysis Decision Index do; we checked how close it comes before it binds, and the result, including where it fell short, is in when v5 binds. About 60% of the score comes from private tests of the same skills as the public Decision Index benchmarks, and about 40% from private decision tasks in new domains. Version 0.1, which binds from Monday 26 October, covers three skill areas: knowledge and reasoning (code, logic, maths, SQL, probability, and fact questions with an “I don’t know” option), retrieval and tools. The new-domain part has 11 tasks, among them security advisories, EU public tenders, Wikipedia community decisions and games with exact solvers. Language and safety-classification items are not part of version 0.1. Every scored item is private. Public items, including our dev set, count 0%; a public score far above the private score triggers a review. An item with several questions counts only if every answer is right. Up to 26 options are served per question, and there is no thinking.

How does the “I don’t know” option work?

APPROVED with eval v5

Fact questions offer “I don’t know” as an extra last option. A correct answer scores +1, a wrong answer −1, “I don’t know” 0. We read your served probabilities as usual: your top option is your answer, with no threshold or temperature on top. So abstaining when unsure pays on these questions.

Where are the v5 format, dev set and scorer?

LIVE

In the public reax-subnet repository: the exact item format, the 300-item public dev set and the reference scorer. The dev set has weight 0 in the score and shares no items or sources with the private test set; use it to check your pipeline end to end, not to rank models finely.

Will I see my v5 score before v5 binds?

APPROVED at the Mon 26 Oct 2026 slot

Yes, for the slot. Decision (option A, 23 October 2026): the Monday 26 October slot still crowns on the current evaluation, but every slot candidate, including the defending group, also gets a v5 score on one common draw (pool version 0.1.1). We publish it next to the current score in the slot result. The v5 score is information in that slot and does not change who is crowned. From 14:30 UTC every new evaluation and title defence runs on v5. Format, dev set and scorer: public.

Do the co-champions keep their title under v5?

APPROVED with eval v5

Yes. The co-champions keep the title and are re-scored under v5 on every challenger draw. A challenger has to beat the best of them, and its own base, by the margin.

Rounds and evaluation

Why is my entry still queued?

LIVE

Our competition worker runs an evaluation cycle about once an hour and evaluates up to 8 models per hour across the tracks; the champion is one of them. New entries wait for the next cycle in the order of their on-chain commitment, except that first evaluations of entries whose hotkey is already past its immunity period go first. From Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC: confirmations due before a slot run first (slot rules, section 2). The live page explains each status (queued, waiting for repo, waiting for base model, evaluating, pending confirmation).

How large is a generalist draw, and what margin do I need?

LIVE

Since Friday 23 October 2026, 13:00 UTC a generalist draw has 900 items (90 per area) and the minimum margin is 1.0 point; the statistical bar stays the same. Before that, a draw had 300 fresh sealed items (30 per area) and the minimum margin was 1.5 points. Items, draw seeds and the scores on private items are never published.

What do the first stage, z and a close call mean?

LIVE

z is your gain over the champion on the same items divided by its standard error. On the first draw, z ≥ 2 and a gain of at least the minimum margin pass. A close call (1 ≤ z < 2) gets exactly one more first-stage draw, and z < 1 is not better. At confirmation you need a pooled z ≥ 2.75 over all your draws against that champion. Against the co-champions, the bar is the best of the three on your draw.

When does my confirmation draw run?

LIVE

On a fresh draw disjoint from your first draw, at least 12 hours after the first draw (also after a close call). The time on the live page is an estimate that depends on the cycle and the queue.

How is the gap penalty computed?

LIVE

The gap is your score on our generator-family items minus your score on the cross-author items. S_eff = S − min(10, 0.5 × max(0, gap − G_med − A)), with the frozen median gap G_med = 14.84 and A = max(8, 2 × SE). S_eff is the score every decision uses under the current evaluation. The live page does not show the penalty itself, because with the raw score it would reveal the score on the private items.

APPROVED Under eval v5 there is no gap penalty; a gap check takes its place (v5 numbers).

What are the generalist entry floor and the non-procedural floor?

LIVE

The entry floor is 36.8 and the non-procedural keep-alive floor 37.4 under the current evaluation. An entry at or below the entry floor earns nothing from the track. Under eval v5 these floors do not apply to v5 scores; the bar is your base and the best title holder plus the margin (v5 numbers).

Do the per-area scores matter?

LIVE

They are shown with every entry and are information only: a model far below the reference in one area gets a closer look in the award review. Before a generalist award we also compare the new champion with the official base on our private Decision-Index-style evaluation; if it is clearly worse there, the award goes to a manual review.

How is a Decider-style model with a separate readout head run?

LIVE

A Qwen3.5-family backbone with readout.safetensors and decision_config.json is run on our own runtime the way it was trained: your readout head as submitted, on the last prompt position, with our fixed REAX prompt and a fixed temperature of T=2. The temperature in decision_config.json is metadata only, so calibrate your head for T=2.

Eligibility, copies and coldkeys

What may a generalist entry be?

LIVE

Up to 36B parameters and 68 GiB of safetensors weights, dense or MoE: Qwen3 and Qwen3-MoE, Qwen3.5 (including MoE), Gemma 3, Gemma 4 or Llama. The repo must be public and carry an Apache-2.0, MIT or BSD LICENSE file (Google’s Gemma 4 repos do not ship one, so add it). Weights only: no repository code is ever executed. Commit reax-spec/1:generalist:<hf_repo>@<40-hex revision> with a reax-specialist.json that says "category": "generalist".

Do I have to fine-tune the official base?

LIVE

No. The official base is decisionmodels/reax-1 at revision ca2a0cc5; any allowed architecture within the limits works. The base matters for entries above 10B parameters (they must beat their own unmodified base by 1.5 points for the keep-alive) and for the derived-entry rule.

Are there limits on what I may train on?

LIVE

The rules do not restrict training data beyond the licence of the model you publish. What we enforce is on the evaluation side: private draws nobody sees, the gap penalty, and from v5 a review when your public score is far above your private score.

What counts as a copy or a derived entry?

LIVE

Exact copies (same tensor hash) are refused, and the earliest commitment owns a hash; re-sharding or renaming files does not hide a copy, and for generalist entries the check also hashes the backbone without the readout head. An entry is derived if you declare another entry as your base or our checks find that its weights or answers derive from an earlier entry. It must beat its parent by the full copy margin: the full decision margin and, on competence alone, by at least 1.0 point and 2 standard errors, so a recalibrated copy cannot be crowned. Independent fine-tunes of the official base are not affected.

Clarification (24 Oct 2026, not a new rule): the copy, derived and near-champion checks apply to what a model computes. A function-preserving reparametrisation (e.g. rescaling MLP channels) is judged as the underlying weights.

Change (validator release rc11.post5, not before 26 Oct 2026, 14:30 UTC): the automatic check will undo such rescaling itself (a scale-invariant comparison) before it compares weights. Until then the review applies the clarification above.

I merged other entries into my model. Is that allowed?

LIVE

Yes, but a model close to an earlier entry is checked as derived (previous answer), and the award review looks at the merge share and the credit. State your recipe and the credit clearly in the repo.

May I reuse another engine entry’s code or binaries?

LIVE

Ideas are free. You may reuse code or binaries of other entries if you declare them in the image label ai.reax.engine.parents, a JSON list such as [{"uid": 4, "digest": "<64 hex>", "files": ["/app/engine.py", "/app/kernels/"]}] (at most 8 parents; a path ending in / covers the directory). Your entry must then beat every declared or detected parent by the full challenger margin. Undeclared reuse counts as a copy: the first time the entry is not evaluated, the second time the hotkey is paused for 7 days. Reusing your own earlier entries is free. Details: ENGINE-COMPETITION.md, section 5a.

Does an engine entry need published source?

LIVE

Yes. Nothing without published source is paid: an engine whose kernels or code are not published can be measured, but its award is held until the source is public. One engine champion is held for this reason today (see the live queue).

How many entries can one coldkey hold?

LIVE

At most 2 open submissions per track and 4 new submissions per 7 days per coldkey. One hotkey holds one competition commitment; a new commitment from the same hotkey replaces the old one. Paid waiting keep-alives are limited to 2 per coldkey per track, and the provisional keep-alive to one per coldkey per track. From Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC: in a crowning slot one holder keeps at most one entry (slot rules, section 4): entries with the same coldkey or the same Hugging Face account or organisation in the repo id have the same holder, also through a chain (A shares a coldkey with B, B shares an HF account with C: A, B and C are one holder).

Waiting, keep-alive and deregistration

What is the keep-alive, and who gets it now?

LIVE

A participation weight so that a waiting entry is less likely to be deregistered; it is not an award and needs no approval. An entry pending confirmation (up to 24 hours after its first pass) or a new champion waiting for approval (up to 24 hours after crowning) gets the weight of a typical inference miner if it scored above the entry floor and the non-procedural floor; at most 8 such entries per track, together at most a quarter of the track share. An entry still queued for its first evaluation gets a provisional keep-alive of half that, from about 2 hours before its hotkey’s immunity ends, for at most 12 hours per hotkey and one per coldkey per track. A keep-alive does not reserve a UID or guarantee that a hotkey is never deregistered.

What changes for waiting entries with eval v5?

APPROVED with eval v5

New entries get a provisional half keep-alive from their commitment, for at most 12 hours from the commitment, so nobody is pruned before their first evaluation. It is revoked if the first draw fails. A commitment older than 12 hours gets no such window.

What happened to the demand forecasting and risk assessment champions?

LIVE

For 7 days from the generalist opening (until 28 October 2026, 13:00 UTC, 14:00 Berlin) the champion of each ended track and its approved former champions get a bounded keep-alive, only as pure entrants: it ends early if the hotkey commits to anything else, including a generalist entry or serving weight.

My hotkey was pruned while my entry waited for confirmation. Is my first draw lost?

LIVE

Not necessarily. If you commit the same model (identical tensors) again within 72 hours of the prune, under any new hotkey or UID, by the same coldkey or from the same Hugging Face repo, you keep your first-draw score and go straight to the confirmation draw. The repo’s reax-specialist.json must name the new hotkey, and copy checks still apply. A changed commitment while the hotkey stays registered is not a prune and carries nothing over.

If the prune was caused by us, we also refund the registration (slot rules, section 11).

Do I get my registration fee back if I lose or am pruned?

APPROVED effective from 22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC (21:55 Berlin)

No, except in one case. Registration burns TAO and the chain sets the cost, so check it before you register. If your hotkey was pruned because of our wrong weights, our timing or a validator bug, we refund what you paid to register it again, from our own share; this applies to prunes from 22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC on. Tell us in #92 with your UID and the time. In every other case registration fees are not refunded. Slot rules, section 11.

Awards, holds and payment timing

What is an award approval, and what does the review check?

LIVE

A winning entry is paid only after we check and approve it: the champion and every paid former slot, for exactly one entry (track, hotkey, repo@revision or image digest). A new revision or digest needs a new approval. The automatic copy and near-duplicate checks must pass first; then we look at provenance, originality and credit for merged or reused work. Approvals are signed with our owner key and published in approvals.json; validators accept only a valid signature for exactly that entry.

How long does an award decision take?

LIVE

Since Friday 23 October 2026, 13:00 UTC we decide every award within 6 hours of the crowning, counted inside our review window of 10:00–22:00 Berlin time (09:00–21:00 UTC in winter time). Clear cases under the published rules are approved automatically; cases that need a closer look still get a person’s decision within the same 6 hours. The live page shows an estimate. An award on hold (for example, source not published) is decided once the hold is cleared; the live page shows its status.

My entry is champion. Why is its share not paid yet?

LIVE

Its award is pending or on hold (for example: source not published, a copy question, a missing licence). Meanwhile, on the generalist track the champion it beat keeps the new champion’s part of the 75% for up to 48 hours from the crowning. APPROVED From the slot on Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin): a beaten co-champion set keeps it in equal parts. While it keeps that part, it gives up its own former-champion place share, which goes to inference. After 48 hours an unapproved part goes to inference until the approval exists, and the beaten champion is paid its place share (slot rules, section 8). On the engine track the most recently approved champion keeps the champion share until the new champion is approved. Nothing is burned and the next rank does not move up.

My award is approved. When does my incentive change on chain?

LIVE

A new approval takes effect with the next weight set after validators read it. Weights reach the chain with commit-reveal, so a change becomes visible about one epoch (360 blocks, about 72 minutes) after it is set, and your incentive follows at the next epoch step: in practice about 1–2 hours after the approval. A change that starts at a fixed time (for example the opening places on Friday 23 October, 13:00 UTC, which showed up in the weight set of about 13:55 UTC) shows up the same way. If nothing has changed after a few hours, tell us.

REAX Engine track

How does the engine title work?

LIVE

Every submission is measured against the reference engine on the same GPU in the same session. It must pass the correctness gate and be at least 3% faster than the reference; a challenger takes the title only with at least 3% more than the champion, confirmed in a second fresh session. The champion’s share halves linearly over 14 days; the previous champion gets 17% and the one before 8%, each for up to 7 days after losing the title and after its own award review. Current holders and measured speeds: live queue.

When is my engine measured?

LIVE

Automatically, as soon as the release owner has reviewed your entry. A check runs every 15 minutes and starts a measurement batch for every entry that is reviewed, committed and not yet measured. On top of that, a batch runs every day at 12:00 UTC (14:00 Berlin until 25 October, 13:00 Berlin from 25 October, winter time) for every reviewed entry that is still unmeasured; it leaves a receipt even when there was nothing to measure. The first fixed daily run is Saturday 24 October 2026, 12:00 UTC. The same gates apply as before (isolated pre-run review, then the correctness gate and the speed measurement), on the same kind of fresh evaluation GPU. Once a GPU is up, a batch takes about 25 to 40 minutes. Results appear on the live queue, which also shows the next scheduled batch.

What reference speed is the engine measured against?

LIVE

Only the ratio counts. Every submission is measured against the reference engine on the same GPU in the same session, interleaved. On our evaluation GPU (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell Server Edition) the reference runs at about 100 decisions/s.

My engine entry is marked “not owner”. What do I do?

LIVE

The image label ai.reax.engine.hotkey must name the hotkey that committed the digest. Rebuild the image with the label set to your committing hotkey, push it, and commit the new digest.

How do waiting engine entries avoid being pruned?

LIVE

Entries waiting for their evaluation get a small bounded keep-alive: half the median inference weight each, together at most 5% of the engine share. It is also paid to the champion while its award review is pending and to former champions that hold a slot.

Hotkeys and inference

Can one hotkey serve inference and compete at the same time?

LIVE

Yes, since block 9331987 (about 13:00 UTC on 21 October 2026): one hotkey can serve inference and hold one competition entry. Serving and competition pay add up per UID; the keep-alive of a dual-role entry is a top-up over what it earns from serving.

Can one hotkey carry several models?

LIVE

Yes, since the same block: 2 to 4 inference models per hotkey (commitment reax-s1m/1), each with the same per-model cap as a separate hotkey. You publish one axon per hotkey; it still holds only one competition commitment.

Why is there a per-hotkey cap, and how do I run 8 GPUs?

LIVE

Validators verify each hotkey’s throughput with their own probes, and that has a limit: 1,280 decisions/s for s1-fast, 320/s for s1-pro, 32/s for s1-lite and 4/s for s1-cpu. Pay stays linear in verified throughput, so above the cap use more hotkeys or more models per hotkey.

Reporting an error

I think my entry was scored or paid wrongly. Where do I report it?

APPROVED effective from 22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC (21:55 Berlin)

Report it in #92 within 24 hours of the result post, with evidence: your UID, the entry (repo@revision or image digest), what you expected, what you see, and links or timestamps. Grounds are a wrong number, the wrong entry, a rule applied differently from this page, or code that does not do what this page says. Use a direct message only for private details such as keys or ownership proofs.

I re-check it against the logs and the code, separately from the run that produced the result, and answer once in #92 within 24 hours; the decision applies in the meantime. If the report is upheld, we correct it from the next weight set and pay the measured loss from our own share; if the error changed who was crowned, we decide the slot again, and amounts already paid are not taken back. The rules themselves, the thresholds and normal measurement noise are not grounds; suggestions go to our weekly rule review. Slot rules, section 10.

Are answers from a bot or an AI assistant binding?

LIVE

No. Only the published rules, this FAQ and our announcements in #92 are binding. An automated or AI-written reply can be wrong; it never replaces the rules and never stops you from reporting a real problem.

Change log

Every change to this page is listed here with its date and whether it is a clarification (same rule, clearer words) or a rule change (which always has its own effective date and is announced in advance). We never backdate a rule, and a change does not take away a right that was already published. Earlier versions stay available unchanged at their own address (version N at /competitions/faq/vN/).

Announced in #92: the miner FAQ; the crowning slot rules; eval v5 and FAQ version 2.

Change log of the miner FAQ
VersionDateTypeWhat changed
2.424 October 2026, 12:05 UTCclarificationClarification, not a new rule, in What counts as a copy or a derived entry?: the copy, derived and near-champion checks apply to what a model computes, so a function-preserving reparametrisation (for example rescaling MLP channels) is judged as the underlying weights. Also noted there as a separate, dated change: from validator release rc11.post5 (not before 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC) the automatic check undoes such rescaling itself. Version 2.3 stays available unchanged at /competitions/faq/v2.3/.
2.323 October 2026, 19:30 UTCclarification + status updateNew answer When is my engine measured? in the REAX Engine track section: a reviewed engine entry is measured automatically, and a daily batch at 12:00 UTC catches anything left. Status updates, no rule changed: the rule changes of 23 October 2026, 13:00 UTC (draw size, award timing, engine copy line, places 2 and 3 of the generalist opening) are active, the first weight set under them was block 9346668 (about 13:55 UTC), and places 2 and 3 (UID 160, UID 113) are LIVE. Eval v5: the Monday 26 October slot still crowns on the current evaluation, every slot candidate also gets a v5 score on one common draw, and the v5 format, dev set and reference scorer are public (when v5 binds, v5 scores in the slot, where they are). Berlin-time note corrected for the change to winter time on 25 October. Version 2.2 stays available unchanged at /competitions/faq/v2.2/.
2.223 October 2026, 08:55 UTCclarificationOne entry per holder (slot rules, section 4, and the tied-group and coldkey answers): entries with the same coldkey or the same Hugging Face account or organisation in the repo id have the same holder, also through a chain (A shares a coldkey with B, B shares an HF account with C: A, B and C are one holder). Same rule, clearer words; the code has always grouped holders transitively. Version 2.1 stays available unchanged at /competitions/faq/v2.1/.
2.123 October 2026, 08:15 UTCclarificationSame rules, clearer words: evaluation runs all the time and results appear on the live page right away; only crowning waits for a slot. Short note added at the top of the crowning slot rules and in When is the next generalist crowning? Version 2 stays available unchanged at /competitions/faq/v2/.
223 October 2026, 05:25 UTCrule changeEval v5 binds from Monday 26 October 2026, 14:30 UTC (15:30 Berlin), although its second validation check narrowly missed two of our own bars; version 1 said v5 binds only after a passed check. We decided this because v5 ranks models far closer to the Decision Indexes than the current evaluation does (numbers in the answer). Monday’s slot itself still runs on the current evaluation; the slots from Thursday 29 October use v5. What v5 version 0.1 measures was updated (answer). Announced in #92 (link above) more than 48 hours before the first v5 slot. The v5 numbers are listed in one place (answer), as promised in version 1: no separate floors and no gap penalty under v5, a gap check instead, margin floor 1.0.
223 October 2026, 05:25 UTCclarificationThe tie rule numbers approved on 22 October 2026 (tie gap 0.5 points from the leader, separation margin the larger of 1.0 point and 2 paired standard errors, up to three shared rounds; published in version 1 at 19:55 UTC) are unchanged; this version states that the tie gap is also 0.5 points under v5, because v5 keeps the margin floor of 1.0. The v5 item format, dev set and reference scorer are now public and linked (answer). Version 1 stays available unchanged at /competitions/faq/v1/.
122 October 2026, 17:30 UTCfirst publicationMiner FAQ published as its own page; the answers formerly on the rules page moved here (their old links still work). The crowning slot rules and the answers that follow from them were added on 22 October 2026, 19:55 UTC as part of this first publication, before any slot under them.

Other pages: Competition rules · Live evaluation queue · Competitions · How mining works · General FAQ.