Blockmachine (SN19) provides decentralized RPC and archive node infrastructure for Bittensor and Ethereum.
SN 19. Rank 32 of 32 by emission
blockmachine
Emission0.9%of the block reward · rank 32 of 32
Participants26 miners · 9 validators
Registration1 TAO
Verified2026-09-09links checked and scores merged
The programother · github.com@25ca87c · read 2026-09-19
The work
Answered JSON-RPC requests. The miner runs its own full or archive node for one of eleven chains behind a gateway the network supplies, passes a per-chain eligibility battery, sets a price in US dollars per compute unit, and serves whatever customer traffic the gateway routes to it. What is paid for is compute units served at the bid price, checked for correctness afterwards.
own docs · raw.githubusercontent.com
You earn emissions proportional to the CUs you served at your bid price
How it is scored
Work times price. Each epoch the validator reads the gateway's manifest of compute units each miner served, multiplies non-archive and archive units by that miner's own bid prices in dollars, and that dollar figure is the score. Quality is not in the formula; it acts earlier, in the routing score and burst tests that decide how much traffic a node gets. Correctness is checked afterwards against reference nodes.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · common/scoring/weights.py
consumed_usd = miner.cu_non_archive * miner.price_non_archive + miner.cu_archive * miner.price_archive
How the pay splits
Proportional to dollars consumed. Each miner's weight is its consumed USD over the total. The miner pool is 41 percent of epoch emission. The scale between pool and consumption is unclamped both ways, so the pool is filled exactly and nothing burns, unless the scale exceeds 10: then consumption is paid at face value and the rest goes to burn sink UID 103. Banned coldkeys get zero.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · common/scoring/weights.py
MINER_EMISSION_PCT = 0.41; scale = miner_pool_usd / total_consumed_usd; they reduce to consumed_i / consumed_total
Sources disagree The whitepaper fetched 2026-09-19 says an emission burn sink removes excess unearned alpha from circulation; the code comment at the pinned commit says the pool-over-consumption cap was removed so that burn is zero every epoch, with burn only on the sanity bound or an epoch with no gateway activity.
Who judges
Nine validators were active on the 2026-09-09 chain snapshot. Commit-reveal is off. A validator never sees customer traffic: it reads the gateway's logs from public storage, re-executes the logged requests against its own reference nodes, sampling 100 percent up to 100,000 per miner by default, and bans a coldkey permanently on one mismatch. It sets weights from the gateway's compute-unit manifest and a price snapshot, once per epoch.
chain · hyperparams-2026-09-19.json
commit_reveal_weights_enabled False, weights_rate_limit 100; chain-2026-09-09.json active_validators 9; config.py logged_sample_pct: float = 1
How often it turns
Emission settles every 7,200 blocks, a full day, twenty times the 360 most subnets use. The validator commits once per chain epoch, from the finalized epoch manifest, inside a commit window it computes from the chain's own epoch clock. A new registration is immune from deregistration for 3,600 blocks, about 12 hours.
chain · hyperparams-2026-09-19.json
tempo 7200, immunity_period 3600; validator README: each epoch (7,200 blocks, ~24 hours)
Sources disagree The miner README at commit ef5e876 says validators submit weights on-chain each epoch (~72 minutes); the chain hyperparameters on 2026-09-19 and the validator README at the pinned commit give 7,200 blocks, about 24 hours.
Who buys
Apps that call blockchains, paying per request unit: as low as $1 per million requests at scale, with a calculator putting 100 million requests a month at $165 against Alchemy at $979, and failed requests not billed. The buybacks page lists five settled cycles from May to September 2026, 6,613 alpha bought for $16,296, each row linked to a Taostats proof, the last on 2026-09-17.
own docs · blockmachine.io
blockmachine $165 per month; Alchemy $979 per month; QuickNode $999 per month; dRPC $600 per month.
What has been gamed
Serving wrong data: a logged response that mismatches the reference node on a deterministic query is a permanent coldkey ban, applied before weights are built. Claiming archive without archive state, or masking the client software: eligibility failures, re-checked continuously. Dodging the burst test: refused or slow requests each cost 20 seconds in the capacity score. Inflated consumption: a pool-to-consumption scale above 10 fails closed.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · verification/blacklist.py
A single incorrect response results in permanent coldkey ban.
5 of 7 fields rest on the chain or the code. A manifest is the site's reading of the subnet's program, not a review; each field links its source. All programs · What a field means · Correct a field
What it says
The subnet in its own words: the line the index took from its front door, and what the team has said on the record.
What is said about it
By other voices in the map, verbatim and dated.
00:00 Introduction to Subnet 19 in BitTensor ... 32:02 Dynamic Tao (DTAO) and Subnet Value 33:04 Incentive Mechanism and Education in BitTensor 39:38 The Rise of Open-Source AI Models ... 51:24 The Unique Community and Heart of BitTensor
What it shows
Explained from zero by the index, from the subnet's own materials, for someone who has never heard of Bittensor.
SN19 blockmachine answers questions that apps ask blockchains, like a call centre staffed by freelance operators who set their own price per call and are paid only for answers checked as correct.
The commodity, explained from zero
Every wallet, explorer and trading bot asks a blockchain questions: what is the latest block, what is this balance, did this transaction go through. Those questions go to an RPC endpoint, a server running a full copy of the chain, and running one is expensive. Blockmachine sells access to such servers for eleven chains, Bittensor and Ethereum among them, at a single address per chain. Usage is metered in Request Units, where a simple query costs 1 and a heavy one more.
The price list is public: a keyless free tier at 300 requests a minute, a $9 Standard plan for 5 million units a month, up to $999 for a billion. "Failed requests don't cost you anything." A calculator on the pricing page puts 100 million requests at $165 against $979 at Alchemy, a named competitor. The front page carries testimonials from three customers, including Taostats: "At 15 billion requests a month, we can't afford for our RPC layer to be the weak point."
Why it is on Bittensor at all
The technology page states the case as cost and trust: "Most supply is still centralized, opaque, and economically misaligned." Competing suppliers bid the price down, and every response can be checked. Here the call-centre comparison breaks: a call centre pays operators by the hour, while blockmachine pays only for answers a validator has re-run and matched, and an operator's unclaimed share is destroyed rather than shared.
How the work gets done
Miners, the operators, run their own chain node behind a gateway the network supplies, register it, and set a price in US dollars per unit of work. Customer requests are routed by a score that combines that price with quality, meaning latency, uptime and correctness, and a burst test measures each node under heavy load so strong hardware earns a bigger share. Validators, the auditors, read the gateway logs, re-run samples against reference infrastructure and compare results; a mismatch has no appeal, and the whitepaper provides for permanent bans. Each epoch of about 72 minutes, emission, the subnet's share of newly minted TAO, is paid in proportion to the units each miner served at its bid price.
How you would know it works
The buybacks page: "For every alpha token paid to miners, blockmachine purchases an equal amount of SN19 alpha" for a reserve, and it lists four settled cycles from May to August 2026, 4,812 alpha for $12,328 in total, each row linked to a Taostats transaction, last synced at block 9,033,809 on 2026-09-10. Anyone can call the free endpoint at rpc.blockmachine.io.
What is missing
The live performance and miner dashboards render empty without a browser. There is no status page and no service-level agreement; support is an email and a channel on the shared Bittensor Discord, and the chain's discord field is empty. The miner README registers on a testnet and gives no mainnet cost (about 1 TAO on chain on 2026-09-09). The chain's repository field is a one-file page linking to the real miner and validator repositories, and the chain description's wording appears nowhere on the site.
Go deeper
- Front page, chains and testimonials
- Dated buyback ledger with proofs
- Miner README: eligibility and scoring
Sources for this explainer
Metaphor: a call centre staffed by freelance operators. Every claim is drawn from the evidence set or the subnet's own materials; "(inferred)" marks a conclusion rather than a quote. Corrections.
How legible it is
Four audiences, four questions each, rated on what a first-time reader can find in five minutes. The scale measures findability, not quality.
On-chain identity 5/7- subnet_name
- blockmachine
- github_repo
- github.com
- subnet_contact
- team@blockmachine.io
- subnet_url
- blockmachine.io
- discord
- not set
- description
- Harnessing Bittensor's incentive layer to forge self-optimizing infrastructure.
- additional
- not set
Stakers and validators●●●●● 4.3
Should I allocate here? · rank 1 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 4
Blockmachine provides RPC access across supported chains. Requests are served by competing suppliers, failed requests are not billed
front page, per Request Unit pricing one click away
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 5
SN19 buybacks are read from the PSR coldkey and linked to Taostats proof.
four settled cycles May to Aug 2026 totalling $12,328, synced at block 9,032,798 on Sep 9, 2026, Taostats testimonial
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 4
whitepaper v1.0.0 with Correctness Enforcement, Mechanism Resilience and Parameter Reference sections, Merkle verification and permanent bans, resilience section not read so failure modes unconfirmed
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 4
identity 5 of 7 (discord and additional not set), url has no scheme but resolves, github is a one file README linking the miner and validator repos, Bittensor and buybacks pages, contact matches
Miners●●●●● 4.0
Can I compete, and what wins? · rank 3 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 4
You run your own node for your chosen chain, fronted by our nginx gateway that authenticates requests from the Blockmachine network
JSON-RPC in, verified responses out, eligibility table, no demo
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 4
You set a price in USD per Compute Unit (CU).
eligibility rules per chain, capacity testing, cheaper good miners get more traffic, README registers on testnet 417, no mainnet cost (burn 1.0 TAO)
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 4
routing score combines price and quality (latency, uptime, reliability, correctness), permanent bans for confirmed mismatches in the whitepaper, emissions per CU served, no examples, no immunity
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 4
step by step install, register and price CLI guide with troubleshooting and a CLI reference, the chain github_repo is a link page pushed 2026-07-27, miner repo push date not checked, no releases
Buyers and enterprises●●●●● 4.5
Can I use this today? · rank 2 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 5
Bittensor RPC (HTTP): https://rpc.blockmachine.io
endpoints for 11 chains with a quickstart and curl examples, docs at blockmachine.io/docs, keyless free endpoints listed on the site
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 5
RPC pricing as low as $1 per million requests
plan table from Free to Enterprise $999 per month in llms.txt, cost calculator against Alchemy, QuickNode and dRPC, Taostats named as a customer
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 3
public performance dashboards for uptime and latency (empty to a fetcher), failed requests not billed, a Discord channel on the shared Bittensor server and team@blockmachine.io, no status page or SLA
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 5
docs index with an RPC overview and per chain pages, llms.txt is a full API reference including the User Management API, contact team@blockmachine.io matches the chain subnet_contact
Newcomers●●●●● 4.3
What is this and why does it matter? · rank 3 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 4
Fast, correct, verifiable blockchain infrastructure.
plain front page paragraph, the chain description about harnessing Bittensor's incentive layer is not on the page, RPC left unexplained
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 5
Most supply is still centralized, opaque, and economically misaligned.
with the pricing page comparing costs against Alchemy, QuickNode and dRPC and the Bittensor page on paying for served requests
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 4
dated buyback ledger synced at block 9,032,798 on Sep 9, 2026, roadmap with 19 of 21 milestones live, performance and miners dashboards render empty to a fetcher, no benchmark
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 4
subnet_name blockmachine matches the site, description is a sentence, url resolves without a scheme, technology and Bittensor pages serve as about and learn pages, chain wording not used on the site
Provenance
How this rating came to be. Verified means the scorer fetched the page and the words are on it; secondhand means concluded from code, absence, or a third party. The link badge is a separate automated check made before publication.
scored by agent d 2026-09-09, rubric v1.0merged 2026-09-09links verified 2026-09-09: 35 live, 1 unreachable, 0 manual
Something wrong? Corrections of fact are applied as they arrive during the window; rating disputes are batched at its close. How to file one · GitHub issue · email.