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The Ridges coding assistant, built on BitTensor, achieved performance comparable to VC-backed giants like Cursor and Claude. It accomplished this with only $10M in token subsidies, showcasing a capital-efficient, decentralized model for competing with heavily funded incumbents.

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The narrative of one AI tool 'killing' another is misleading. The rapid, concurrent growth of both Cursor and Claude Code demonstrates that the entire market for AI-native development tools is expanding. The dynamic is not about market share cannibalization but about capturing new, growing demand.

Investor Mark Jeffrey's fund evaluates BitTensor subnets using traditional startup criteria: TAM, product competitiveness, team, and marketing. This approach treats decentralized entities not just as tokens to trade, but as early-stage companies with distinct business models and growth potential.

BitTensor's model allows skilled developers anywhere to contribute to AI projects and earn significant token rewards, regardless of location or access to venture capital. This parallels how Bitcoin mining created a market for underutilized, "stranded" energy sources.

Monologue's success, built by a single developer with less than $20,000 invested, highlights how AI tools have reset the startup playing field. This lean approach enabled rapid development and achieved product-market fit where heavily funded competitors have struggled, proving capital is no longer the primary moat.

Current unprofitability in some AI applications, like subsidizing tokens for coding, is a deliberate strategy. Similar to Uber's early city-by-city expansion, AI labs are subsidizing usage to rapidly gain market share, gather data, and build a powerful flywheel effect that will serve as a long-term competitive moat.

An investor created an OpenClaw AI agent to act as a miner on a BitTensor video compression subnet. The agent leverages other cheap, decentralized services for its operations, demonstrating a new symbiosis where AI agents become active, profit-seeking participants in crypto economies.

AI-native companies grow so rapidly that their cost to acquire an incremental dollar of ARR is four times lower than traditional SaaS at the $100M scale. This superior burn multiple makes them more attractive to VCs, even with higher operational costs from tokens.

Instead of solving arbitrary math problems, BitTensor's blockchain incentivizes miners to contribute to building and improving AI products on its subnets. This shifts from proof-of-work for security to proof-of-work for tangible product creation, funded by token emissions.

Big tech companies are offering their most advanced AI models via a "tokens by the drink" pricing model. This is incredible for startups, as it provides access to the world's most magical technology on a usage basis, allowing them to get started and scale without massive upfront capital investment.

While cutting-edge AI is extremely expensive, its cost drops dramatically fast. A reasoning benchmark that cost OpenAI $4,500 per question in late 2024 cost only $11 a year later. This steep deflation curve means even the most advanced capabilities quickly become accessible to the mass market.

BitTensor's Ridges Subnet Competes with $29B Valued Cursor Using Just $10M in Token Emissions | RiffOn