SUBMIT A PRSUBMIT AN ISSUElast edit: Aug 21, 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

Before continuing with the rest of this tutorial, make sure you've completed the following:

• Deploy a Subtensor chain locally
• Provision wallets for the subnet creator, miner, and validator users for this tutorial.
• Sufficient amount of TAO in your subnet creator wallet to cover the burn cost.

Create a subnet

Now, let us create a new subnet on the local chain. To create a new subnet, run the following command in your terminal:

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

You will then be prompted to provide the wallet hotkey as well as configure the subnet as shown:

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..

To check on your newly created subnets, run the following command in your terminal:

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

A list of all subnets in your local subtensor instance is returned:

                                                         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           │ 0.0000 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        │
   1    │ α apex      │ 0.0000 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 1.0       │             │ τ 0.0        │ τ           │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ 2.01k/29.00 │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ (6931.03%)  │              │             │

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

Start emissions on the subnet

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

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

Replace NETUID with the netuid of the subnet you want to enable emissions on.

After a while, you can confirm that the subnet's emissions have started by inspecting your subnet's token economy. You'll see a non-zero amount in the Emission column, indicating the subnet creator key accumulates emissions.

You can confirm the emissions by running the btcli subnets list command:

                                                         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 1.81k     │ τ 1.0000     │ τ 1.00k,    │ 414.00 β     │ 1.81k β     │ 29/360
        │ awesome-fi… │             │             │              │ 1.00k β     │              │ /21M        │
   1    │ α apex      │ 0.0000 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 1.0       │             │ τ 1.0        │ τ           │              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ 1.41k/562.00│              │             │
        │             │             │             │              │ (6931.03%)  │              │             │

Troubleshooting

Insufficient funds

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.

To fix this, transfer TAO from the Alice account to cover this transaction and try again. For more information, see Transfer TAO to wallets.

Next steps

With emissions now active on your subnet, you can begin registering and running miners and validators to participate in the network.