Hippius is a distributed cloud storage platform backed by Arion distributed storage and a custom Substrate blockchain.
SN 75. Rank 20 of 32 by emission
Hippius
Emission1.6%of the block reward · rank 20 of 32
Participants80 miners · 12 validators
Registration1 TAO
Verified2026-09-09links checked and scores merged
The programstorage · github.com@3187525 · read 2026-09-19
The work
Bytes held and bytes served. A miner runs a storage node with at least 2 TB behind a static public IP, keeps erasure-coded shards of customer files, answers cryptographic challenges that it still holds them, and serves reads. What is paid for is bandwidth delivered in the reporting window and shard data stored, as reported by validators on the Hippius chain.
own docs · docs.hippius.com
Miners participate in the Arion network by storing shards of encrypted user data and proving their storage continuously to the blockchain.
How it is scored
Per node: log2(bandwidth bytes + 1) weighted 70 percent plus log2(stored bytes + 1) weighted 30 percent, times uptime, minus 50 points per validator strike and 100 per integrity failure, capped at 50,000. Nodes roll up into families, one owner with many nodes: the top 10 count, each rank worth 80 percent of the one above, smoothed 30/70 against the previous value and clamped to a 100-point move per bucket.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · runtime/mainnet/src/lib.rs
NodeBandwidthWeightPermille: u32 = 700; NodeStorageWeightPermille: u32 = 300; StrikePenalty: u16 = 50; IntegrityFailPenalty: u16 = 100
How the pay splits
Proportional, of a sliver. The weight budget of 65,535 is split at a fixed ratio: 1 percent to storage miners, each family taking its weight over all families' weight, and 99 percent to UID 238, the Hippius validator account. A node offline past its buffer gets 0. A family seen for the first time is floored at weight 10 for 24 buckets.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · pallets/execution-unit/src/weight_calculation.rs
let miners_pool = max_score * 0.01; // 1% to miners; let uid_238_pool = max_score - miners_pool; // 99% to uid 238
Sources disagree The docs page learn/weights fetched 2026-09-19, and the summary at the top of readme_weights.md, say the miner pool grows with how much data the network stores relative to emissions; the code at the pinned commit and Layer 3 of the same readme fix it at 1 percent to miners and 99 percent to UID 238.
Who judges
Twelve validators were active on the 2026-09-09 chain snapshot. Commit-reveal is off. The judging happens on Hippius's own Substrate chain: its validators submit each node's quality metrics on chain, miners cannot self-report, and pallets compute family weights and a ranked list. A Bittensor validator runs a submitter script that reads that ranked list from the Hippius chain and sets it as weights. It relays; it does not re-run the work.
chain · hyperparams-2026-09-19.json
commit_reveal_weights_enabled False, weights_rate_limit 100, max_validators 64; chain-2026-09-09.json active_validators 12
How often it turns
Emission settles every 360 blocks, about 72 minutes. The program's own clock runs on the Hippius chain at 6-second blocks: node quality is bucketed every 300 blocks, family weights and rewards recalculate every 3,600 blocks, about 6 hours, and a storage miner silent for 3,000 blocks is zeroed. A new registration is immune from deregistration for 5,000 blocks, about 16 hours.
chain · hyperparams-2026-09-19.json
tempo 360, immunity_period 5000; readme_weights.md: Every BlocksPerEra (3,600 blocks = 6 hours at 6-second block time)
Who buys
Anyone with a credit card or TAO. S3-compatible storage costs $6.00 per TB per month pay as you go, billed hourly, down to $4.65 per TB on a 100 TB plan, egress included. Credits are minted on the Hippius chain at one dollar each; sign-up is Google or GitHub with no wallet. No customer is named and no revenue figure is given.
own docs · hippius.com
All services are billed per use with credits (1 credit = $1), minted on our blockchain for full visibility.
What has been gamed
Splitting one operation into many nodes: the family aggregation counts only an owner's top 10 nodes with 80 percent decay per rank, and the code names the reason, log2 of parts exceeding log2 of the whole. Claiming storage not held: validator challenges issue strikes and integrity failures that subtract directly. Going dark: a node past its heartbeat buffer is zeroed. Sudden jumps: a moving average and a 100-point clamp.
code · raw.githubusercontent.com · pallets/arion-pallet/src/lib.rs
the same bytes across more children: log2(a) + log2(b) > log2(a+b)
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. All 14 quotes in the map.
Their subnet
A decentralised cloud storage platform on its own Substrate chain, with miners proven by stored data and uptime, IPFS and S3-compatible front ends, and erasure-coded Arion storage; sold as cloud without AWS.
A comprehensive Bittensor subnet providing distributed storage, compute, and blockchain management capabilities.
Hippius is a Bittensor subnet that enables decentralized file storage and computation across the network. It leverages Bittensor's incentive mechanism while using a network of miners and validators to ensure secure and reliable data management.
a groundbreaking decentralized cloud storage platform built on Bittensor. Subnet, launched on March 11, 2025
proof of stored data and miner uptime … fosters healthy competition, holding miners accountable beyond mere storage capacity
As a decentralized cloud storage solution provider, we use InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and S3-Compatible storage to deliver secure, transparent and scalable hosting.
Bittensor, in their words
Bittensor is the base the platform is built on and the incentive mechanism it leverages; it is also the network that lacked storage, and on the 2026 homepage a payment rail and audit trail. The 2026 docs barely name it.
Hippius is a Bittensor subnet that enables decentralized file storage and computation across the network. It leverages Bittensor's incentive mechanism while using a network of miners and validators to ensure secure and reliable data management.
Bittensor lacked robust decentralized storage and traceability mechanisms
Built on Bittensor and powered by our blockchain, we redefine data storage by combining decentralization, reliability and accessibility. … Built on Bittensor and our blockchain, we offer a reliable, transparent platform that empowers users to control their data.
Hippius is the solution to storage on Bittensor
Frames competition network platform boundaries future ledger self-healing
What is said about it
By other voices in the map, verbatim and dated.
This one is less interesting to me because storage is such a commodity. Why would you consider this one if storage is a commodity?
What it shows
Explained from zero by the index, from the subnet's own materials, for someone who has never heard of Bittensor.
SN75 Hippius sells cloud file storage by the terabyte, like a self-storage company whose units sit in strangers' garages, with every file cut into pieces and spread across many of them.
The commodity, explained from zero
The product is disk space, rented by the terabyte per month. It is sold through an S3-compatible interface, meaning the same commands and software libraries that talk to Amazon's storage service work here unchanged; the docs give copy-and-paste examples for the AWS command line, Python, JavaScript and rclone. On top of that sit a desktop app, a web console, a model registry and virtual machines in beta.
The price list is public: $6.00 per terabyte per month on pay-as-you-go, billed hourly, down to $4.65 per terabyte on a 100-terabyte enterprise plan, with downloads included. Customers pay in credits, one credit being one dollar, bought by card or with TAO. The site says it is "The reliable and preferred storage solutions for businesses" and offers migration pages for people leaving other providers. The materials give no customer names, no revenue and no dated usage figure; the Hipstats explorer that would show total storage renders empty without a browser.
Why it is on Bittensor at all
The front page states the difference as resilience: storage is "Powered by a decentralized network of hardware providers, not a single point of failure", and the why-hippius page says "Validators and miners face slashing for misbehavior", meaning they lose stake for downtime, poor performance or fraud. Here the self-storage comparison breaks. A storage company keeps your boxes in one unit; Hippius cuts each file into 30 pieces, 10 of data and 20 of redundancy, spreads them across different miners, and any 10 pieces rebuild the file, so no single garage holds anything readable or anything essential.
How the work gets done
Miners, the garage owners, run a storage node with at least 2 terabytes of space and a fixed public address, hold pieces of customer files and "continuously answer cryptographic challenges to prove they are storing the exact data they claim to hold". Validators, the inspectors, run those challenges, place new pieces, rebuild pieces lost when a miner goes offline, and score each miner 70% on bandwidth served and 30% on data stored, with diminishing returns so the first terabyte counts more than the hundredth. Scores are grouped into families, smoothed over time and recalculated every six hours, and the share of emission (the subnet's newly minted TAO) that goes to miners rather than the validator grows with how much data the network holds.
How you would know it works
The status page at status.hippius.com lists the S3 gateway, registry, RPC node, indexer and explorer, each marked operational with a dated last update (the S3 gateway on 2026-08-22), and no incidents. The S3 endpoint itself is live and anyone can open an account and upload.
What is missing
The weight formula lives in repository root files that the README never links. The repository's own miner setup still describes a testnet bootnode. The registration cost is not stated (about 1 TAO on chain on 2026-09-09). The chain contact hello@hippius.com was not found on any page fetched; support runs through Discord and a forum, and the discord identity field is empty. There is no service-level agreement and no stated response time.
Go deeper
Sources for this explainer
Metaphor: a self-storage company whose units are in strangers' garages. 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
- Hippius
- github_repo
- github.com
- subnet_contact
- hello@hippius.com
- subnet_url
- hippius.com
- discord
- not set
- description
- Blockchain-backed cloud: storage, VMs, and apps with unmatched transparency, trust, and power.
- additional
- not set
Stakers and validators●●●●● 3.8
Should I allocate here? · rank 6 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 5
Hippius is a distributed cloud storage platform backed by Arion distributed storage and a custom Substrate blockchain.
priced per GB per month one click from the front, chain description matches
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 3
Hippius Explorer
linked from the front page renders Total Storage and node counts empty to a fetcher, status page lists services with dates, no revenue or customer figure, revenue share coming soon
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 3
bandwidth 70% and storage 30% with diminishing returns, family decay and a demand-dependent pool, incentives.md covers placement, why-hippius says slackers get slashed, files the README never links
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 4
identity 5 of 7 (discord and additional not set), github and url resolve, docs carry a Substrate and Staking page and the site an Alphanomics page, contact hello@hippius.com not seen on pages fetched
Miners●●●●● 3.5
Can I compete, and what wins? · rank 15 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 4
A storage miner in the Hippius network is a node that provides distributed storage capacity.
stores erasure-coded shards and answers storage challenges, two clicks from the docs root, no schema
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 4
Miners must provide at least 2TB of storage and a static public IP
with CPU, RAM and SSD minimums, registration cost not stated (chain burn 1.0 TAO today), no competitiveness statement
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 3
bandwidth 70% and storage 30% with diminishing returns, 80% family decay over the top 10 members, recalculated every 6 hours, slashing named on why-hippius, no single miner example, no immunity
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 3
docs Earn section has node, Arion setup and registration pages (not all fetched), the repo minner-setup.md still describes a testnet bootnode and placeholder chain spec, pushed 2026-09-09, no release
Buyers and enterprises●●●●● 4.5
Can I use this today? · rank 2 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 5
S3-compatible API at s3.hippius.com. Store anything. Standard clients (boto3, AWS CLI, rclone) work without modification.
AWS CLI, boto3 and rclone examples, console at console.hippius.com
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 5
All services are billed per use with credits (1 credit = $1), minted on our blockchain for full visibility.
S3 from $6.00 per TB pay as you go to $4.65 per TB Enterprise, customer types on front
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 4
status page listing s3, arion, registry, rpc and indexer as Operational with dated updates, community forum and Discord as support paths, no SLA and no response expectation
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 4
Swagger API reference at api.hippius.com plus the S3 operations list in llms.txt and a docs chain API page, subnet_contact hello@hippius.com not found on the pages fetched so the match is unconfirmed
Newcomers●●●●● 4.3
What is this and why does it matter? · rank 3 of 32 for this audience
Q1What it is●●●●● 5
Transparent and Decentralized Cloud Storage
headline with a one sentence paragraph on storage, VMs and apps backed by a blockchain, consistent with the chain description, docs intro says it plainer
Q2Who it is for●●●●● 4
Powered by a decentralized network of hardware providers, not a single point of failure.
plus Affordable and Fair, Storj alternative and migrate pages, Google Drive comparison only third-party
Q3How it resists gaming or fails●●●●● 3
status page shows services operational with dates, Hipstats explorer and the value counters render empty to a fetcher, no dated benchmark or output sample on the site
Q4Identity and documentation●●●●● 5
subnet_name Hippius matches the site, description is a human sentence, url resolves, Why Hippius page and docs Learn section serve as about and learn pages
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: 41 live, 0 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.