Bittensor community roiled by 'decentralized theatre' accusations

TAO tumbled after Covenant AI founder Sam Dare accused Bittensor of "decentralization theatre" and exited the network, dumping his subnet tokens.

ByBrad Keoun
PublishedApril 10, 2026 at 5:23 PM
1 min read

Bittensor, a network of decentralized AI projects, saw the price of its popular cryptocurrency, TAO, tumble in digital-asset markets after a top contributor departed.

According to reports in Unchained and elsewhere, Covenant AI founder Sam Dare, who managed what he described as "the largest decentralized LLM pre-training run in history," apparently left the project and dumped his subnet tokens.

In a post on X, Dare wrote: "Bittensor operates a triumvirate structure, three individuals who manage the multisig for network upgrades, presented to the community as distributed governance. It is not. It is decentralization theatre."

In a response to the post, Jacob Steeves, who goes by Const, wrote: "I don't have any privilege beyond what normal TAO holders have."

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