Bittensor Community Update — July 4, 2024

Bittensor Community, Contributors, and TAO Holders,

As previously mentioned in yesterday’s update, we are committed to resuming normal operations of the Bittensor blockchain as swiftly as possible. Our top priority is to ensure the safety and integrity of the system, ensuring that no additional wallets are compromised and no further funds are put at risk.

Bittensor is currently running in safe-mode

First and foremost, the blockchain is secured and currently running in safe-mode and behind a firewall as well. Running the chain in this state means that no one, including a potential attacker, can run any transactions, including transfer attempts.

Question: Are subnets or miners at risk to be deregistered while the chain is operating in safe-mode and behind a firewall?

Answer: No. The chain is still running in safe-mode and behind a firewall, hence no one can submit new subnet/miner registration requests. As a consequence, no subnets or miners are at risk of being deregistered.

Question: Are miners, validators and subnet owners earning emissions while the chain is running in safe-mode and behind a firewall?

Answer: Yes. Although the chain state is not accessible for miners, validators or subnet owners to review, their emissions are still accruing. When the chain resumes normal operation miners, validators and subnet owners will be able to access their latest emissions status.

The risk to mitigate when coming out of safe-mode

The Opentensor Foundation (OTF) is working to mitigate a risk that may happen when we take the chain out of safe-mode and outside the firewall. The risk is that the attacker may still possess in their queue wallets affected by the May 22–29 breach, which they may attempt to drain of funds.

OTF is determined to aggressively mitigate this risk.

Are my TAO funds at risk?

Regardless of how you created your Bittensor wallet(s), your funds are safe as long as you have not interacted with your wallet(s) using the Bittensor cli version 6.12.2.

Your funds are at risk if both of the following conditions are true:

1. You previously installed Bittensor 6.12.2 from PyPi Package Manager — that is, you used the command, pip install bittensor==6.12.2, and
2. You performed any of the following operations using btcli version 6.12.2 on your wallet(s):

btcli stake add
btcli stake remove
btcli wallet transfer
btcli root delegate
btcli root undelegate
btcli root set_take
btcli subnet register

Our priority: Securing at-risk TAO funds before coming out of safe-mode

We recognize that salvaging funds from wallets at risk is a tedious process that will slow the opening up of the chain. However we strongly believe that it is the right thing to do for the community at large.

Protecting your funds is our #1 priority.

The OTF team is working diligently on developing a plan for securing the funds that are potentially at risk. More details to follow in tomorrow’s community update.

Thank you,
The Opentensor Foundation team.