Provision Wallets for Local Deploy

SUBMIT A PRSUBMIT AN ISSUElast edit: Jul 29, 2025

This page continues the previous tutorial for local Bittensor development.

Now that your local Subtensor chain is deployed, you can provision wallets to serve the roles of subnet creator, miner and validator, to populate your local Bittensor ecosystem.

Every local blockchain is pre-provisioned with an "Alice" account, which is loaded with one million $\tau$.

Prerequisites

To follow along with the rest of this tutorial, ensure that you have a local chain running. To set up a local chain, see Create a local blockchain instance.

Access the Alice account

To access the handy pre-provisioned development "Alice" account on your local chain, use:

btcli wallet create --uri alice

Next, you will be prompted to configure the wallet by setting a name for the wallet's coldkey and hotkey.

tip

To access the 'Alice' wallet, you must use the assigned coldkey name and include the local subtensor chail URL as shown

btcli wallet balance --wallet.name alice --network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

The following should be returned in the console:

                                                                       Wallet Coldkey Balance
                                                                          Network: custom

    Wallet Name     Coldkey Address                                     Free Balance      Staked Value              Total Balance
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
    alice           5GrwvaEF5zXb26Fz9rcQpDWS57CtERHpNehXCPcNoHGKutQY   1,000,000.0000 τ       0.0000 τ              1,000,000.0000 τ


    Total Balance                                                      1,000,000.0000 τ       0.0000 τ              1,000,000.0000 τ
    ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Provision wallets

To proceed with this tutorial, you’ll need to create separate wallets for each role on the Bittensor blockchain. Specifically, create three wallets: one each for the subnet owner, validator, and miner.

• The subnet owner wallet creates and controls the subnet—sn-creator.
• The validator and miner wallets will be registered on the created subnet—test-validator and test-miner.

Using separate wallets for each role ensures they can independently run their respective processes and scripts.

To create a wallet, run the following command in your terminal:

btcli wallet create \
--wallet.name WALLET_NAME \
--hotkey WALLET_HOTKEY \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Replace WALLET_NAME and WALLET_HOTKEY with the appropriate identifiers for each role—subnet creator, miner, or validator.

Transfer TAO to wallets

After creating your wallets, transfer some TAO from the Alice account to them to cover the transaction fees required for onchain operations. To transfer TAO, run the following command in your terminal:

btcli wallet transfer \
--wallet.name alice \
--destination DESTINATION_ADDRESS \
--network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Replace DESTINATION_ADDRESS with the wallet address you want to send the TAO to.

info

Run the btcli wallets list command and carefully check the ss58 address of the destination coldkey that you want to fund.

To confirm your wallet balances, run the following command in your terminal:

btcli wallet balance --wallet.name WALLET_NAME --network ws://127.0.0.1:9945

Next steps

Now that you have created the necessary wallets and funded them with TAO, you can proceed to create a subnet on the local chain. This will enable you to register validators and miners, configure subnet parameters, and begin participating in the network’s consensus and emissions processes.

To begin, see Create a subnet locally.