Editor's Note: Covenant AI has issued a statement announcing its withdrawal from Bittensor, accusing its co-founder Jacob Steeves (Const) of centralizing power in network governance, including suspending its subnet emissions, revoking community management permissions, and applying pressure through token sales.
Previously, Covenant AI was responsible for operating several key subnets, covering pre-training, compute scheduling, and fine-tuning, and had completed a large-scale language model trained collaboratively by multiple parties on general-purpose hardware. This achievement had garnered industry attention and was mentioned by figures such as Jensen Huang and Jack Clark.
The controversy is not one-sided. Some critics have pointed the finger at Covenant AI founder Sam Dare, claiming he sold approximately 37,000 $TAO tokens; meanwhile, supporters believe this conflict may push the network towards a more community-oriented governance model.
On the market front, the price of $TAO fell from around $340 to $286 during the event, before recovering to $291, accompanied by a significant increase in trading volume.
Discussions surrounding governance structure, power boundaries, and incentive mechanisms are ongoing.
Below is the original text:
Covenant AI was founded on a simple, steadfast belief: the training of frontier AI models should not be controlled by any single entity.
For the past two years, our team has been putting this vision into practice. Covenant-72B—a model with 72 billion parameters, trained collaboratively by over 70 independent contributors on general-purpose hardware without requiring permission—has become the largest decentralized pre-training practice for a large model in history. It received recognition from NVIDIA's CEO, was cited by the co-founder of Anthropic, and contributed to a 90% surge in the ecosystem we helped build.
We never actively sought attention. We simply wanted to prove that decentralized training is feasible. And when the results speak for themselves, attention naturally follows.
We want to be perfectly clear about what all this means.
When a single actor can suspend a subnet's emissions, strip node owners of control over their community spaces, publicly "deprecate" projects without due process, and even apply economic pressure through token sales to force compliance—this is no longer decentralization, but centralized control disguised as decentralization.
Every participant in the ecosystem—miners, validators, and investors—should be aware that this power exists and has been exercised by Jacob Steeves (Const). These actions were not taken to safeguard the network's health, but to regain control over a team that had become too independent and difficult to manage. A subnet owner capable of autonomously building a community, making independent decisions, and operating without permission is, in itself, a threat to those whose power is built on the premise that "everyone must depend on them."
The problem with decentralization goes beyond individual incidents.
Bittensor effectively operates under a "triumvirate"—three individuals jointly manage the multi-signature permissions required for network upgrades, packaged as "distributed governance." But that is not the reality. It is more like a "decentralization performance." Jacob Steeves effectively controls this structure, refuses to implement any substantive decentralization of power, and, at his discretion, bypasses processes and consensus to unilaterally deploy changes. Other involved parties act more like legal "shields"—they bear responsibility and face litigation risks, while the true controller remains insulated.
This network constantly talks about governance and decentralization but has never truly implemented it. Power has never left the hands of one individual.
This is the core of the problem.
Bittensor's fundamental promise, the key premise that attracted developers, miners, validators, and investors into this ecosystem, is that it is not controlled by any single entity. But this promise is not true.
Given this reality, we can no longer continue building on this network responsibly. The fundamental representation we made to investors—that this infrastructure is decentralized and permissionless—contradicts the actual governance. We cannot raise funds, attract talent, or ask our community to invest resources on a foundation that can be shaken at any moment by a single will. We are unwilling to pass this risk on to those who have trusted us.
Therefore, with deep disappointment, we announce: Covenant AI will exit the Bittensor network.
Over the past few weeks, Jacob Steeves (aka Const) has taken a series of actions against Covenant AI's operations that are fundamentally incompatible with the principles the network proclaims. These include suspending our subnet's emissions, stripping our administrative rights to our own community channels, unilaterally declaring our subnet infrastructure "deprecated," and applying direct economic pressure through large-scale, public token sales at critical moments of operational conflict.
These were not governance decisions made through transparent, decentralized consensus. They were punitive actions imposed by someone who never truly relinquished control, while publicly claiming he no longer controls the network.
Covenant AI's mission remains unchanged. Decentralized, permissionless AI training is not a feature exclusive to Bittensor; it is a technical capability we will continue to advance. Our research, team, models, and vision will move forward together. We are already progressing on some very important new projects and will share updates with the public soon.
To our community, miners, and everyone who contributed compute, time, and belief to Covenant-72B: you have proven something once thought impossible. This achievement does not belong to a Discord server, nor is it dependent on a network's governance structure. It resides in the research itself, the model itself, and within this team. Wherever we go next, we will continue to earn your trust.
Decentralization is not a marketing narrative that can be overturned when inconvenient. It is a promise to every builder, miner, and investor—a promise that no one can do to others what we have experienced. Either be truly decentralized, or stop pretending.
—Sam Dare, Founder of Covenant AI
