Crunch Opens Bittensor Decentralized AI Mining to Academic and Enterprise ML Scientists
Westfield, New Jersey, January 19th, 2026, Chainwire
Crunch’s decentralized ML intelligence layer is opening Bittensor mining to its community of over 11,000 ML engineers and 1,200+ PhDs.
Crunch plans to facilitate coordinators mining Bittensor subnets, managing the technical infrastructure while the community focuses on model development. Crunch’s approach preserves Bittensor’s decentralized ethos while abstracting blockchain complexity for contributors who would otherwise be excluded by some of the coordination overhead. Rather than recruiting existing crypto-native miners, the platform onboards entirely new participants from enterprise and academic ML backgrounds, expanding the diversity of intelligence flowing into subnets without requiring contributors to become blockchain savvy.
Bittensor is a decentralized, open-source blockchain network that creates a global marketplace for artificial intelligence (AI) by incentivizing users to share computing power, data, and AI models. Mining on Bittensor means contributing computational resources and machine learning models to the network’s various subnets, specialized AI services that compete to solve specific problems.
Bittensor’s subnet architecture is a highly compatible place to deploy collective intelligence. Therefore, mining on revenue generating Bittensor subnets is a natural fit for the Crunch community. This makes Bittensor’s subnets another class of “customers” for the Crunch collective intelligence.
“The majority of Crunch’s community are data scientists and ML engineers from enterprise and academic backgrounds who want to contribute to the decentralized AI without becoming blockchain experts. Our role is to unify the compatible opportunities and abstract away some of the decentralization complexity so they can focus purely on what they do best: building better models” said Jean Herelle, Founder at CrunchDAO
A Meta-Modeling Layer for Bittensor Subnets
Crunch’s meta-modeling approach harnesses collective intelligence principles, where ensemble models built from diverse contributor submissions consistently outperform individual predictions.
By aggregating models from hundreds of independent ML engineers, Crunch creates robust intelligence streams that leverage the wisdom of crowds, where combined predictions from diverse contributors often surpass individual expert forecasts. This collective intelligence methodology translates directly to Bittensor subnet mining, where Crunch Coordinators aggregate community submissions into ensemble models that deliver more reliable, diverse intelligence to the network. Any subnet creator, or any coordinator, could spin up a modeling market that will buy mining slots and effectively act as a meta-layer, a “super-miner.”
The move addresses a critical talent bottleneck in decentralized AI. While traditional academic and institutional ML scientists possess deep expertise in model development, the Web3 complexity, such as managing mining slots, staking mechanics, and blockchain infrastructure, has kept this pool of talent largely excluded from participating. This exclusion is costly: decentralized AI offers ML researchers what centralized labs can’t: economic ownership, open experimentation, and global recognition tied directly to real-world model performance.
By abstracting away blockchain complexity through Crunch’s coordinator infrastructure, these scientists can focus purely on what they do best: building superior models. This creates an additional revenue stream for ML practitioners while channeling much-needed specialized intelligence into decentralized ecosystems, addressing the acute talent deficit in decentralized AI.
By bridging academic AI expertise and decentralized infrastructure, Crunch enables a new generation of contributors to access other intelligence networks without compromising their decentralization.
Coordinator Participation
Subnet operators interested in launching a coordinator node may direct inquiries to coordinators@crunchdao.com
Further details about the Crunch Protocol Testnet, along with updates and community discussions, are available through Discord and X.
About CrunchDAO
Crunch is a decentralized machine learning intelligence layer connecting 11,000+ data scientists and engineers with businesses and institutions to solve predictive challenges across industries, from quantitative finance to genomics. Through open modeling markets, organizations access thousands of competing models evaluated purely on performance, while contributors earn rewards based on results. With 35,000+ models deployed and proven clients including ADIA Lab and the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard, Crunch makes elite AI expertise liquid, transparent, and accessible.