Subnet 63
ENIGMA
Where “state of the art” has to earn its name.
Enigma puts real prizes behind important problems in cryptography, quantum computing, and AI, and opens them to the entire world. When a milestone falls, we pay out and the solution goes open source. When it holds, the prize keeps growing — until someone decides otherwise.
TOTAL CAPITAL DEPLOYEDLifetime total: current pool balance plus all milestone prizes paid out since launch.
—COMMITTEDPrize money committed to open milestones, plus payouts in flight — the share of the pool already spoken for.
—PRIZE BUFFERReserves held beyond active milestone prizes — covering future milestones, prize escalations, and TAO price swings so every posted prize stays fully payable. Held under validator-controlled on-chain governance.
—PRIZE POOLThe current on-chain treasury balance. Funded by Bittensor network emissions. USD value fluctuates with TAO price.
—TOTAL PAID OUTPrize money already paid to solvers for completed milestones, settled on-chain.
—TOTAL CAPITAL DEPLOYEDLifetime total: current pool balance plus all milestone prizes paid out since launch.
—100% of the pool is earmarked for prizes and held under on-chain governance — validators hold the keys, and every payout settles on-chain. USD value fluctuates with market price.
// BIG REWARDS FOR BIG OUTCOMES
The world’s most important technologies are tested behind closed doors — if they’re tested at all. Enigma puts real rewards behind testing them in the open. A milestone either falls or it doesn’t. When it falls, we pay the prize and publish the solution as open source. When it doesn’t, the world learns something just as valuable: the state of the art has actually earned the name.
The prize pools are real — funded on-chain, paid the moment a milestone falls, and climbing until one does. It’s already worked for RSA and peaked quantum circuits, and if you have a problem that deserves the same treatment, reach out. Here’s what’s live.
Only outcomes pay
No participation trophies. Prizes pay out when a milestone falls — and not before.
Every win goes open source
When we pay a prize, the winning solution is published in full — no secrets.
No gatekeepers
Researchers, hackers, students — if you can move the state of the art, you belong here.
If you can do what hasn’t been done, you belong here.
$ cat challenges.txt
PRIZE POOLThe current on-chain treasury balance. Funded by Bittensor network emissions. USD value fluctuates with TAO price.
—COMMITTEDPrize money committed to open milestones, plus payouts in flight — the share of the pool already spoken for.
—PRIZE BUFFERReserves held beyond active milestone prizes — covering future milestones, prize escalations, and TAO price swings so every posted prize stays fully payable. Held under validator-controlled on-chain governance.
—TOTAL DEPLOYEDLifetime total: current pool balance plus all milestone prizes paid out since launch.
—// HOW IT WORKS
Sponsor Posts a Challenge
A hard problem — cryptographic, computational, adversarial — is posted with a funded prize pool behind it.
The World Competes
Researchers, hackers, and unconventional minds worldwide take their shot, with unlimited resubmissions.
Solution Published
The winning solution is verified, the prize is paid, and the code is published openly.
Difficulty Increases
The next milestone is harder, the prize larger. The cycle repeats — in public.
// THE IP ENGINE
Enigma’s product isn’t the challenge. It’s the IP the challenge produces — and the royalties it sends home.
Enigma runs like a decentralized research lab. Prize pools fund the work, the world’s best solvers deliver it, and a winning solver is paid the moment their milestone falls — often more than the same breakthrough would earn inside an institution. Every solution is published in full, open for anyone to verify, study, and build on.
qBitTensor Labs owns the resulting IP and, like a university technology-transfer office, licenses it commercially: open projects use the work freely, while companies that want it in closed products license it from us — royalties that flow back into bigger prizes. Every solution compounds the portfolio: papers, citations, and a reputation as the place hard problems get solved.
Read the full thesisThe day royalties outpace emission is the day a subnet stops being funded by its holders and starts funding them.
// TOOLS
Validators
See which validators are running on SN63, their compute environments, and the Docker constraints your submission will run under.
Treasury
View the on-chain governance contracts that control prize payouts, voting rules, and treasury operations.
My Submissions
Track the status of your challenge submissions, including validation progress and payout history. Available for submissions made through the web portal.
// FAQ
Where does the prize money come from?+
Prize pools are accumulated Bittensor network emissions, reserved for current and future challenges and paid out on-chain when a milestone falls. The pool grows by design — large, escalating prizes are how Enigma pulls world-class solvers in from outside the ecosystem.
What happens when a milestone is solved?+
The solution is verified, the solver is paid, and the code is published openly — becoming the starting point for the next milestone. qBitTensor Labs retains ownership and handles commercial licensing, the way a university technology-transfer office does for the research it funds.
Who owns the winning solutions?+
It works like funded research at a university: we fund the work, the winner is paid in full the moment their solution is verified, and the result is published for the world to build on. qBitTensor Labs holds the IP and handles all commercial licensing, so solvers collect the prize and the recognition without ever thinking about lawyers. Open-source projects can use every published solution freely; commercial or closed-source use requires a license from us, and those royalties grow future prizes. Full details are in the Competition Rules.
What if nobody solves a challenge?+
The prize keeps climbing until someone breaks through. And an unsolved challenge is a result in its own right: live, public evidence that the state of the art has earned the name.
Why does this matter?+
The systems Enigma targets — cryptography protecting trillions, AI making autonomous decisions, quantum algorithms no one can verify — define modern life, yet visibility into their limits has never been lower. Enigma produces a live, public signal of where the boundaries actually are: verified, incentivized results instead of speculation.
What does it cost to compete?+
Submissions consume compute credits, which cover the cost of validation. Buy credits with a card through our partner Open Quantum — no crypto wallet required — or pay natively in Alpha. Resubmissions are unlimited. Open Quantum also supplies the quantum compute behind Enigma’s quantum challenges.
Who actually competes?+
Not corporate research labs — apartments and basements around the world. Researchers, hackers, engineers, students: unconventional minds with no institutional constraints.
Why target Q-Day?+
Q-Day is the moment quantum computers break the encryption the world depends on. Google Quantum AI estimates fewer than 1,450 logical qubits could break Bitcoin’s cryptography; IonQ’s roadmap targets thousands by the end of the decade. When Q-Day arrives, the world probably won’t know — unless something like Enigma exists.
Why are prize pools capped?+
Caps rewire our own incentives, on purpose. A pool that fills past its cap burns, so we either pay real prizes or the engine starves. Bigger prizes require more valuable alpha — the same direction every holder wants — and demand harder milestones to match. And more challenges running at once means more shots at the revolutionary result.
What’s coming next?+
More challenges, each with its own bounded prize pool and a published white paper documenting the science behind it. See everything that’s coming or read the full announcement.
Can we sponsor our own challenge?+
Yes. If you have a problem that deserves a global solver base and a real prize behind it, reach out on Discord and we’ll take it from there.
// THE WORLD’S HARDEST PROBLEMS NEED THE WORLD’S BEST MINDS
More challenges are coming. Follow us to be the first to know.
Official Competition Rules