SUBMIT A PR SUBMIT AN ISSUElast edit: Aug 12, 2025

Create a Subnet (Locally)

This page covers creating a subnet on a locally deployed Subtensor blockchain, which is useful for local Bittensor development.

For creating a subnet on Bittensor test and main network, see Create a Subnet.

Prerequisites:

Create subnet

btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-first-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Trouble shoot

Insufficient funds

If you are following this tutorial for the first time, the subnet create command will faill with an insufficient balance error.

The coldkey signing the subnet create transaction must have a sufficient $\tau$ balance to cover the burn cost of subnet creation, so called because the funds cannot be recovered.

Subnet burn cost: τ 1,000.0000
Your balance of: τ 0.0000 is not enough to burn τ 1,000.0000 to register a subnet.

Transfer funds from the Alice account to cover it and try again. Consult btcli w list and carefully check the ss58 address of the destination coldkey (in this case, the one with the name sn-creator).

btcli wallet transfer \
--amount 1001 \
--wallet.name alice \
--destination "5C9xw4..." \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Network Rate Limit Error

If you see a network rate limit error, you may need to adjust the SubtensorInitialNetworkRateLimit chain state parameter.

See Clone and tweak the Subtensor source

Subnet creation cost

The cost for subnet creation is dynamic; it lowers gradually and doubles every time a subnet is created.

info

Note that this is labeled "burn cost", even though technically the cost of subnet creation is recycled, rather than burned.

See: Glossary: Recycling and Burning

try it live

Check the burn cost to create a subnet on Bittensor main network and test network:

btcli subnet burn-cost --network finney

btcli subnet burn-cost --network test

Fund your subnet

To remedy your liquidity shortfall, transfer $\tau$ from the Alice account and try again.

First, get the ss58 address for the destination wallet for the transfer:

btcli w list

...
── Coldkey sn-creator  ss58_address 5C9xw4gDyu11ocdpWrmhT1sbi4xEHCpzEMsyMA4jGfAZQofQ
└── Hotkey default  ss58_address 5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR

Execute the transfer from alice to the sn-creator wallet

btcli wallet transfer \
--amount 1001 \
--wallet.name alice \
--destination "5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR" \
--subtensor.chain_endpoint ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Do you want to transfer:
amount: τ 1,001.0000
from: alice : 5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY
to: 5GVsCAY6RuSuoAA1E77xsHJ9PjdZJjJrRkNFDxVtRKPnw7TR
for fee: τ 0.0001 [y/n]: y
🌏  📡 Transferring...

Success

Create some subnets.

For example:

btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-first-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Subnet burn cost: τ 1,000.0000
Your balance is: τ 1,001.0000
Do you want to burn τ 1,000.0000 to register a subnet? [y/n]:y
Enter your password:
Decrypting...
🌏  📡 Registering subnet..

 btcli subnet create \
--subnet-name awesome-second-subnet \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Subnet burn cost: τ 1,999.9405
▰▱▱▱▱▱▱ 📡Retrieving lock cost from custom...
Your balance is: τ 2,003.0000
Do you want to burn τ 1,999.9405 to register a subnet? [y/n]: Please enter Y or N
Do you want to burn τ 1,999.9405 to register a subnet? [y/n]: y
Enter your password:
Decrypting...
✅ Registered subnetwork with netuid: 3

List your subnets

btcli subnet list \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

                                                         Subnets
                                                     Network: custom
        ┃             ┃ Price       ┃ Market Cap  ┃              ┃ P (τ_in,    ┃ Stake        ┃             ┃
 Netuid ┃ Name        ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ (α * Price) ┃ Emission (τ) ┃ α_in)       ┃ (α_out)      ┃ Supply (α)  ┃ Tempo (k/n)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   0    │ τ root      │ 1.0000 τ/Τ  │ τ 0.00      │ τ 0.0000     │ -, -        │ Τ 0.00       │ 0.00 Τ /21M │ -/-
   2    │ β           │ 1.0000 τ/β  │ τ 1.00k     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 1.00k,    │ 0.00 β       │ 1.00k β     │ 29/360
        │ awesome-fi… │             │             │              │ 1.00k β     │              │ /21M        │
   3    │ γ           │ 1.0000 τ/γ  │ τ 1.00k     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 1.00k,    │ 0.00 γ       │ 1.00k γ     │ 29/360
        │ awesome-se… │             │             │              │ 1.00k γ     │              │ /21M        │
   1    │ α apex      │ 1.0000 τ/α  │ τ 11.00     │ τ 0.0000     │ τ 10.00,    │ 1.00 α       │ 11.00 α     │ 29/100
        │             │             │             │              │ 10.00 α     │              │ /21M        │
────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
   4    │             │ τ 3.0       │             │ τ 0.0        │ τ           │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ 2.01k/29.00 │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ (6931.03%)  │              │             │

Start emissions on your subnet

To activate your subnet, beginning emissions and allowing staking, run:

btcli subnet start --netuid 2 \
--wallet.name sn-creator \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945 

Create subnet​

Trouble shoot​

Insufficient funds​

Network Rate Limit Error​

Subnet creation cost​

Fund your subnet​

Success​

Start emissions on your subnet​