In our latest qBitTensor Labs Live session on January 22nd, we covered the evolving phases of both Subnet 48 and Subnet 63, along with community engagement updates and future plans.
Subnet 48: Transitioning from Launch to Market Adoption
We've successfully built and launched the quantum compute subnet, and our focus is now shifting from heavy technical development to market adoption. The phase we're leaving was defined by big technical milestones -- scalability, stability, infrastructure, and performance. Success was measured by whether we could actually build and launch it.
We're now entering a phase centered on driving user engagement and growth -- getting users signed up, using the platform, and talking about it. The technical work in this phase leans toward smaller but essential improvements: bug fixes, minor UI tweaks, and performance testing. These may not be flashy, but they're critical for user satisfaction. Our attention is turning to onboarding, support, and go-to-market investment.
Ryan walked us through two recent milestones. First, we issued linked wallet Spark credit dividends on January 9th, with the next distribution scheduled for February 6th. Recipients receive an email with details on yield amounts, applicable subnets, staked amounts, and credit totals. Second, we launched referral links -- available on your account overview page under the Referral tab. When someone signs up using your link, we run a daily credit issuance process that awards you credits per referral, with email notifications included.
The referral program ties directly into our adoption strategy. Right now, new users get their first $50 in free QPU credits upon sign-up. Referral links give them a clear path to earn additional free credits by sharing the platform with others. We'll be promoting this on socials and measuring its impact on user growth.
Subnet 63: Design and Validation Challenges
While Subnet 48 is moving into the adopt-and-scale phase, Subnet 63 sits in a very different place -- the design and validation stage. We're not cleanly in one phase; we're moving back and forth between design and build. Developers are writing code against designs, but we're continually receiving new feedback from validators that shapes direction.
After our latest meeting with validators, we decided to charge ahead with what we know. Anytime we ask for specific validation on an approach, the validators provide helpful advice that tends to further complicate the design and create dependencies on work product that isn't available yet. So we're moving forward, acknowledging that we've transitioned into the build-and-launch phase. Expect future episodes of qBitTensor Labs Live to start looking more like the content leading up to a subnet launch.
The team also shared a hilarious Simpsons-inspired video illustrating the gauntlet of validator gates that Subnet 63 (and 48) have to pass through -- a lighthearted take on the challenges of protecting Bittensor.
Prize Pools and Validator Progress
We've now contributed over $160,000 from owner emission into the prize pools, and we shared specific progress made with the validators.
White Paper
The Open Quantum white paper is now available in the footer of our website. Written in scientific paper format, it covers the capabilities of Open Quantum and how it's made available. We submitted it to arXiv and are working through some pushback related to the nature of the paper. We'll continue working on getting it posted for an official DOI reference number.
Key Updates and Future Directions
We're adding new team members focused on marketing rather than technical development -- a shift that reflects where we are in the product lifecycle. Upcoming episodes will center more on user growth, engagement, feedback, and market validation. We're also being deliberate about our media strategy, looking to build sustained attention through continuous engagement rather than one-off events. Expect fewer date commitments and more focus on progress updates and roadmap discussions.
Ryan (ShorShot) [00:05]you
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [00:06]Hello everybody and welcome to qBitTensor Labs Live. Today is January 22nd and we're thrilled to have you all with us. I know last time we ran qBitTensor Labs Live, we had some internet hiccups and so fingers crossed we're not gonna have those again this time. But without further ado, why don't we jump into it? So as always, legal disclaimer, this just says that these are ideas and not promises. that this is not any kind of investment or legal advice. We really appreciate you guys using this material for good and not for evil. As long as you keep doing that, we'll keep doing it. And if you are still here, you agree. So let's get into it. Today, we're going to stick with a fairly standard format. We're going to spend a little bit of time talking about subnet 48, spend a little bit of time talking about subnet 63. Both of those are in really different kind of like phases of the product development lifecycle. We'll also talk about some upcoming events and then we'll recap how things are going with the community. And so we'll get started with 48. you know the other thing. So Shore Shot, Ryan, thrilled to have you here with us too. I know you tried to join last time, but the giant kerfuffle and all the AV sort of limited that. Everything coming through okay on your side?
Ryan (ShorShot) [01:28]Yeah, it works great today.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [01:30]Sounds good. And I noticed, I know you are in your usual dungeon slash hacker lab, but you've changed your background. I know people are picking on you about the dark background. So looks like a beautiful forest. Is that one of your own photos?
Ryan (ShorShot) [01:40]Yeah.
Ryan (ShorShot) [01:44]This is my photo from Conifer,
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [01:48]Sweet cool super cool. All right. Well, we'll jump into it here subnet 48 so Just to kind of like recap where this is I know we have people watching who have been on this journey with us for a long time we have people on this stream that maybe are just joining us for the first time and so 48 the quantum compute subnet is essentially in this phase where we've built it we've launched it And we're getting ready to sort of go from the huge amount of work being on the shoulders of the technical team into sort of the next phase. The phase that we're leaving is kind of identified by having a heavy emphasis on big technical milestones. you know, talking about like major accomplishments leading up to the launch focuses on like scalability, stability, infrastructure, performance, all of those types of things. And success is really measured by like Can we actually build it? Can we actually launch it? We're now moving into this phase that's going from like we have launched it into trying to drive market adoption. Like users signed up for the platform, users using the platform, users talking about the platform, promoting the platform. Really this phase is about taking it from like a technical product that was being developed and launched into a product that can actually become a business that's generating substantial amounts of revenue, has substantial amounts of adoption.
Ryan (ShorShot) [02:45]Okay.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [03:13]And so this phase, unlike the first phase, is more focused on the technical effort anyway focuses in on smaller things. It's like bug fixes, minor UI improvements, performance testing. These things are boring. There's not as much to talk about with these things, but they're all critically important. But the bigger thing is that our attention turns to onboarding and support. And so this comes with fewer headline features.
Ryan (ShorShot) [03:31]Thank
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [03:42]But it does come with increased investment in marketing and go-to-market. And so a lot of the things that we'll start to talk about in upcoming episodes of qBitTensor Labs Live as we get into this phase will be a lot more centered around user growth, engagement. Are we getting feedback from users? What's that feedback look like? Validation, that it's actually being used and is useful for real purposes. And success here is really like a not going to be measured by big glitzy features, though we are going to have those periodically. But it's really going to be more focused on user adoption and getting things going. And so we are in this transition right now from this first type of phase into the second type of phase. And so you might notice that we'll slow down a little bit in terms of, or we have slowed down a little bit in terms of talking about feature updates and stuff like that. Instead, we'll be starting to focus more on market. And with this, are actually adding a couple team members that are less technical and more market focused, which is kind of a cool thing. OK, so with this, we talked about goals that we have for Q1. And there are a couple of things that we have hit since we shared this slide two weeks ago. And Ryan is going to take us through both of those. One is that.
Ryan (ShorShot) [04:49]you
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [05:07]Two weeks ago, we had said we had finished credit dividends. Well, we actually issued those credits. The second thing is referral links. So in that same vein of like driving adoption, we have an update on the referral links as kind of one of the many mechanisms to do that. And so Ryan, I will defer to you to talk us through linked wallet credits.
Ryan (ShorShot) [05:34]Yeah, so sorry, my remote control slide control went back a slide here, so go forward a couple. So yeah, we talked a little bit about this last time, or Bob did rather, because we were having some issues with Riverside, but know, linked wallet, Spark credit yields. We did do the distribution to the folks that qualified. that went out on January 9th. The next one will be coming out February 6th as well. And then, you know, when you're issued these credits, you'll get an email saying your Spark credits have been issued. You'll see the transaction within your account and the credit should be there. And then along with the email includes kind of the nitty-gritty details on what the yield is and which subnets apply, where you have the stakes amount, and then how many credits you'll get out of that. So pretty simple.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [06:45]Yeah, that was awesome. And I didn't, you know, so I did not get wind of any complaints. So I'm guessing you got all the maths right on that.
Ryan (ShorShot) [06:54]Yep, pretty sure. Yep. Yeah, we have a lot of testing around that. So around the whole system in general. So I think we're pretty confident about the numbers and everything. then kind of related to that is referral URLs in terms of like getting promotional credits into the system. Now on your account overview page, you could reach a referral tab, the referral gives you a referral link and then describes a little bit about the program itself. And then when someone signs up using that referral link, once a day we'll go through a credit issuance process that gives you credit per each referral that signs up. And then you'll actually go and receive an email for that during that time when it's been issued as well. and including the amounts and who signed up being referred by you.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [08:03]Yeah, awesome. And then I think, yeah, and the emails are going out. This is live now.
Ryan (ShorShot) [08:08]Right, exactly. Yep, we just launched it yesterday. So, yeah, you should be able to log in and see.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [08:15]Sweet, sounds great. yeah, think that's like one of the exciting things about it is, you know, the way that the free credits are made available today, people sign in, they can click a button to sign up for their first like $50 in free QPU credits. But then as of right now, we sort of haven't told them what the mechanism is gonna be for them to get follow-up free credits to run on QPUs. And so like people can reach out and we can issue more. but this is going to sort of, we're sort of holding on other mechanisms to create additional free credits because that's gonna drive people into like telling their friends about it in order to get 50 more free credits. So you'll see some stuff coming out on the socials to start to promote that functionality and we'll measure how that impacts user adoption.
Ryan (ShorShot) [09:02]Okay.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [09:03]The next thing is white paper. So I'll take this one. In the footer of the website, you can now find a link to the Open Quantum white paper. It's done in the form of a very scientific paper, but this is actually like, really it's kind of like a marketing paper where it just talks about the capabilities of Open Quantum and what it is and how it's all made available. We did actually submit this to Archive. that's fun. I blame Omar for. putting me on the on the background of this one, but But we did actually submit that to archive We had a little bit of pushback on it just due to like the nature of it So we're sort of working out where the right place to publish that is we tried to publish it to like the quantum physics Channel and we kind of hit some snags So right now we just have that hosted on our website, but we'll continue to work on getting that posted onto archive So we can get like an official doi reference number and track links to it and stuff like that, which will be really cool.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [09:57]Okay, so 63. So if we talked about where in the software product development lifecycle 48 was, 63 is in a pretty different place. And so if you imagine we had talked about we were just leaving that stage of build and launch on 48 and going into the kind of like adopt and scale phase, well, in 63, we're actually more in the pre-stage, which is the kind of design and validation. Now, in this case, we're not cleanly. in either of these stages, we're sort of like in this like, whoa, whoa, whoa, back and forth between the two. So we have developers developing on designs, but we have not, but we're continually getting like new feedback from the validators on this. And so the first phase that we're sort of like in and out of is, has this aim of green lighting the build. After our last meeting with the team, which we'll talk about in a little bit.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [11:06]more detail here with the validators, we sort of decided that, you know, we're going to charge ahead. It seems like they are amenable, but anytime you ask for specific validation that like one approach is okay on a thing, they're guaranteed to give you helpful advice that kind of further complicates the design and creates dependencies on work product that's not available yet and stuff like that. And so we're just moving ahead with what we know. And so I'm going to say that we are more of in this transition. Doesn't mean we haven't started writing code. We've written plenty of code on the implementation. But it's sort of acknowledging that because we've transitioned into this build and launch phase, subsequent versions of qBitTensor Labs live should start to look a lot more like the content leading up to the launch of a subnet than what we've been able to talk about 63 up until this point. Now. somebody on the team put this video together. I'm gonna play it because I think it is freaking hilarious. I don't know if there's any like eighties kids or nineties kids. If there is, you're gonna immediately know where this one's heading. But if not, enjoy this quick little reference to the Simpsons that us nineties kids loved.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [12:30]So validators are doing a good job protecting bit tensor.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [12:37]Lots of gates to pass through. 63 and 48 are having to go through all of these hoops, switches, you know, designed to protect bit tensor.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [12:51]All right. I don't know if you guys are going to get as much of a kick out of that as I did, but I've got a special place in my heart for this instance. Totally appreciate sharing that. Thank you for the humor. Okay. talking about the prize pools, and we'll talk about some of the specific progress that we've made with the validators too. You might have seen on the socials that we have now contributed over 160,000 US dollars. from owner emission into the prize pools. So we're holding u...
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Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [39:20]have their hands in lot of pots. Founders running subnets, validators financially supporting subnets. just, mean, that's always going to be the nature of it. And given that this is all like completely unregulated, that's just going to be, that's going to be the way. Let's see here, Black Turtle of the North. I actually don't, I'm not familiar with that name. I don't know if that someone renamed, picked a new pseudonym. Just watched the last latest podcast. Sorry about that. That was terrible quality. It looks like TauFlow is straight as. I don't disagree. Yeah, just commenting on how it sucks that you can pump and get a little bit of upside and then dump and then get a lot of it a downside is actually, yeah, really crazy. There's other really weird mathematical things that we've sort of shown on that. Like if you wanted to just manipulate that, it's ripe for manipulation. Like, I mean, people know about the obvious stuff where it's like, if I have a whole bunch of outside capital, I can just buy emission. There's also funny dumb things that you can do that I'm not going to say out loud here because other people might not have figured it out yet. like, I mean, it's just a very strange system that can be manipulated. So yeah, I'm with you. A reminder that Bob said to do Q &A, said that he doesn't want to do a Q &A with Subnet Summer. I think, I'm not saying we don't want to. I'm just saying we're sort of slow rolling podcast because of that like pump and dump. effective TauFlow. Even like we have some really big investors that also run some podcasts that we haven't been on and it's kind of for the same reason. The answer really needs to be that we need to find ways to find investors who want to stick with us. They want to build the garden with us. They don't just want to chase the quick opportunity, the quick win, but people who believe in the mission. And so what you'll probably see our strategy looking like that. looking like there will be trying to get sort of a lot more attention on a continuous stream as opposed to like big events like this but we will you know I feel like we can't say no to podcasts for too much longer gotta love yeah gotta love my quantum stablecoin okay yeah Bob maybe baffled that DTOW didn't stay invested in open quantum but I think he knows
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [41:44]what he needs to bring with phase two, best part of this team is that they learn and just appreciate that. I am baffled actually. I don't, I mean, you know, like I don't give financial advice, but like, I mean, there's a fricking enterprise grade platform that has distributed quantum compute. It's like becoming the Uber of quantum computers. Like with one library, you drop it into like your existing frameworks and you're running on any quantum compute. You're taking your wait times from like a day. down to like a minute and you can do it for free. Like it's the freaking coolest. it's, yeah, it's, it is baffling actually to me that, that that's not like completely to the moon. And especially, so I guess I don't even want to allude to it yet, but we'll have some like commentary once we finalize a deal that sort of makes the, the movement of minor alpha happen in a very like tokenomics efficient way and yeah and i'm guessing that will probably take you know a number of weeks before we finalize that deal but there's also cool things that just make that a no-brainer in my opinion okay hey guys seeing quantum fall this hard and losing a lot of tau is really difficult i'm feeling it too yeah we're feeling it too it sucks
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [43:20]But I it's important that we don't give up hope. I agree 100%. I truly believe Bob built something very special. Thanks, man. I appreciate it. Yeah, I mean, like I say, we also are not worried about it. think there's like, there are subnets that fall into like a state of disrepair and like atrophy and just sort of like work their way down. It's not where we're at. Like we are on the up and up. The fact that the alpha price is what it is. is probably more reflective, in my opinion, is more reflective of people that were large investors that maybe have lost a little bit of faith in the overall ecosystem and less to do with our subnet. And once EMA starts to fade on that, we'll definitely be looking to do everything we can to help inject additional investors. think we have a clear roadmap for Q1. Just doesn't want to put absolutes on the table. Yeah.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [44:06]Yeah, so we pretty much aren't gonna ever say a date. that's like, mean, this post alludes to the fact that there's the sell the news, that's true. It also just has to do with the fact that like, this is a pretty unpredictable place. And like every time we've done a major launch, it's been like right in the midst of some sort of massive change to the ecosystem. Like, and so yeah, just calling dates sucks. And so yeah, we're gonna try not to do that, but we're gonna try to keep you guys informed about all the progress that we are making. We're gonna continue to talk about roadmaps, but yeah, definitely don't expect advanced notice on specific days. Needs to be a big qBitTensor Labs. I don't know if it is. I like being here. I always love being here. You guys have to tell me if this was a big qBitTensor Labs live or not. We just need 63 to be active and working. 100%. Don't worry. We're on it. And then it sounds like the chat. I don't know if this was, let's see. That looks like a telegram. It says this chat is dead. I don't know. Take it up with Bob, wise man. I almost thought that was like one of those little like poop emojis. for wise men. don't know what that is. Is that a tooth? But yeah, I don't know. I yeah, I can totally understand if things have sort of like slowed down a little bit between the upside, like all the excitement leading up to the launch and sort of this like retooling into focusing on adoption and getting from validators sort of like providing blocking review comments and implementing. you know, I think we're working our way through that pretty quick and yeah, expect to see a little bit more stuff coming out. Ryan, I think this is our last slide. Did I miss anything, man?
Ryan (ShorShot) [45:58]No, I think we're good. you I'd love to chat more. I'm cooking most of the time. know, I, you know, if there's things people want to chat about, then feel free to hit me up. We could talk on the channels or either our qBitTensor Labs discord or bit tensor one as well. So.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [46:17]Yeah, so when you said I'm cooking, which by the way, love that slang, but I'm totally watching Breaking Bad with like my teenage kids, which they love it by the way. I don't even know if I finished. Yeah, it was funny too, because like, people are like, you're gonna glorify drugs to your kids. It's like, no way, man, this show does not glorify drugs. Like if anything, this would be the best.
Ryan (ShorShot) [46:29]So does mine. We're on like season three. So yeah.
Ryan (ShorShot) [46:43]Yeah, it's a pretty sad situation, even though there's a lot of cash on hand, you know.
Bob Wold (BeyondNISQ) [46:47]Yeah. But when you said you were cooking, my mind went right to, need to have Grok make a version of you in an RV. Yeah, cool. Awesome. OK, well, hey, this has been a lot of fun. As always, to everybody out there, thanks for the continued support. Ryan and team, thanks for the continued work that you guys are doing. And look for us on socials until next time. All right. Thank you, everybody. Talk soon.
Ryan (ShorShot) [46:54]Yeah.