TensorUSD
SN113A stablecoin pegged to the US Dollar, built natively for the Bittensor ecosystem
Bittensor has its first native stablecoin: lock TAO as collateral, mint a dollar-pegged token called TUSDT, and let subnet miners handle the liquidations and price feeds that keep it honest.
// TAO-backed dollar for a non-EVM world
TensorUSD (TUSDT) is a stablecoin designed to hold a 1:1 peg to the US dollar, built natively for the Bittensor network. Users deposit TAO as collateral to mint TUSDT. The subnet's miners keep the system solvent by bidding on undercollateralized vaults and feeding live price data on-chain.
The simple version: It's like MakerDAO's DAI, but for Bittensor. Lock TAO, get a stable dollar token. When collateral ratios slip, miners compete in auctions to liquidate the position.
Centralized equivalent: No direct Bittensor equivalent. On other chains this is MakerDAO on Ethereum, or Liquity, or Raft Finance. Those run on EVM; TensorUSD is built for Bittensor's non-EVM architecture.
How it works:
- Miners participate in two mechanisms: bidding on liquidation auctions for undercollateralized vaults (Mechanism 0), or submitting live TAO/USD price feeds from CoinMarketCap every five minutes (Mechanism 1)
- Validators monitor on-chain auction events and oracle rounds, score miner performance against results and median price, and distribute rewards based on accuracy and participation
- The problem it solves: Bittensor has no native stable unit of account. Every service, contract, and payment is priced in volatile TAO. A 30% weekly swing makes it hard to price AI compute, write multi-month agreements, or build lending products inside the ecosystem.
- The opportunity: A native stablecoin opens the door to within-ecosystem lending, predictable AI service pricing, and cross-subnet accounting without needing to bridge to Ethereum or route through a centralized exchange.
- The Bittensor advantage: By running liquidation and price oracle logic through subnet miners, TensorUSD avoids dependence on centralized oracle providers or off-chain keeper bots. Bittensor's incentive layer economically aligns miners with keeping the system solvent: accurate oracles earn more, successful liquidations earn more.
- Traction signals: TUSDT is listed on CoinGecko and Bybit. The alpha token (SN113) gained 24.7% in seven days and 43.9% over the past 30 days. A public interview with the team aired on X in late April 2026, generating visible community discussion. The subnet is still early: 3 contributors, 28 total commits, and TaoSwap's most recent snapshot reports zero active miners.
Category: Other (DeFi / Stablecoin Infrastructure) | Centralized Competitor: No direct equivalent; comparable to MakerDAO or Liquity on Ethereum
Bittensor has accumulated significant TAO value but lacks a stable layer. Every participant who wants dollar stability must leave the ecosystem: sell TAO for USDT, route through an exchange, or bridge to another chain. TensorUSD targets that gap by keeping value inside Bittensor while providing a dollar-pegged instrument.
Mechanism:
According to the subnet's GitHub README and on-chain contract references, the subnet runs two concurrent mechanisms. Mechanism 0 handles liquidation auctions: when a vault's collateral value falls below the required threshold (the system is described as 1.5x overcollateralized in available documentation), the vault becomes liquidatable. Miners monitor the auction contract, calculate expected profit as the difference between collateral value and bid plus outstanding debt, and submit competitive bids. Validators listen for AuctionFinalized events, extract the winning miner's hotkey from bid metadata, and calculate rewards. Bids above the debt balance earn a bonus up to a cap of 20% overpay, incentivizing miners to compete aggressively for profitable auctions.
Mechanism 1 handles the price oracle: miners fetch TAO/USD data from CoinMarketCap every five minutes, encode it as a u128 ratio, and submit to the oracle contract. Validators pull completed oracle rounds and score each submission against the consensus median. Submissions within 0.1% of median earn full reward; submissions beyond 5% deviation earn nothing. The subnet splits emissions 20% to liquidation (Mechanism 0) and 80% to the oracle (Mechanism 1), reflecting the oracle's centrality to system integrity.
The pool currently holds 2,243 TAO. Net 7-day inflows of 228.9 TAO show growing staker interest. Root proportion sits at 41.8%, meaning more than half the pool depth comes from organic alpha staking rather than protocol subsidy. The alpha token 60-day ATH is 0.00805 TAO; the ATL is 0.00433 TAO.
One significant data point worth flagging: TaoSwap's most recent snapshot reports zero active miners. If no miners are running the liquidation or oracle bots, undercollateralized vaults cannot be cleared and the price feed goes unmaintained. The subnet team has not publicly addressed this discrepancy. It may reflect how TaoSwap defines "active" (e.g., only miners scoring in a recent epoch), or it may indicate a real gap in early-stage participation. Either way, it is worth monitoring. The subnet had its last GitHub commit on April 20, 2026, and TAO.app's dev activity score is 2 out of 10.
- Active miner gap: TaoSwap reports 0 active miners. If confirmed, neither the liquidation auctions nor the price oracle are being maintained. This directly threatens peg stability and is the most critical open question for this subnet.
- Execution: An overcollateralized stablecoin on a non-EVM chain is technically ambitious. The codebase has 28 total commits from 3 contributors. Complex financial logic at this stage carries elevated smart-contract risk.
- Development concentration: Three contributors on a live financial protocol is a small team. Any single departure creates meaningful key-person risk.
- Liquidity: The AMM pool holds 2,243 TAO. Large stake entries or exits carry slippage at this pool depth.
- Competition: As the ecosystem matures, other stablecoin approaches may emerge on Bittensor. First-mover advantage matters, but execution quality matters more.
Into the next one.