Questions and answers
Short answers to what people ask most about the network, plus a glossary of the words used across this site.
Basics
What AETRON is, in plain words
A network where some participants run AI services and others provide the power of their graphics cards for them. A service needs no datacenter of its own, and the owner of a graphics card is rewarded for the work delivered. Checking that the work was done honestly is the network's job.
How is this different from Bitcoin and ordinary mining
The economics are similar: a hard cap of 33 million AET, a halving every four years, no premine. The difference is what gets paid for. In ordinary mining, graphics cards guess random numbers and nobody needs the result. On AETRON, graphics cards answer requests to AI models and train them, and the reward is paid for exactly that work.
What is Proof of Intelligence
A way to confirm that a computation really was performed by the declared model with the declared parameters. After each job the miner stores a short artifact of the result. The network randomly picks about 7% of requests and sends them to another miner to be re-run. If the results diverge, a third miner settles the dispute, and the loser gets no emission for that epoch.
What is a neuronet
A separate AI service inside the network, with its own model and its own type of task. It has three roles: the owner creates the neuronet and sets the rules, miners serve the requests, and stakers put AET behind it and thereby raise its throughput. The neuronet's emission is split 80% to miners, 10% to the owner, 10% to stakers.
Is the network live, or is this still a plan
Mainnet has been running since October 2025: blocks are produced, emission is paid, miners are connected. Some capabilities are still in development and are marked as such on the relevant pages. What comes next is laid out in the roadmap on the home page.
I have a graphics card
What do I need to start mining
Download the AETRON client, run it and pay the registration fee; instead of paying you can run a PoW computation. From there the client detects your hardware, picks the neuronets that fit it and starts taking jobs. Builds are ready for Linux, macOS and Docker; the Windows version comes later.
Which graphics cards are supported
NVIDIA Ampere, Ada, Hopper and Blackwell, AMD CDNA3, and Apple Silicon. The limit is usually not the card itself but its memory: it has to fit the neuronet's model. For models like 7B, FLUX or Whisper, consumer cards are enough.
How much can I earn
The network guarantees no fixed amount, and we do not publish an earnings calculator yet. The mechanics: 80% of a neuronet's emission is split between its miners by the volume of confirmed work and by uptime. So your income depends on how many jobs you completed, how steadily your machine ran, and how many miners work in the same neuronet.
What happens if my computer shuts down
Nothing is lost: the network locks no collateral for taking part. But while the client is offline no jobs reach you and assigned re-checks stay undone, and no emission is paid for such an epoch. Steady uptime affects income as much as the card's raw power.
I want to launch an AI service
What do I need to launch my own AI service
An AETRON wallet and AET for the activation stake. Then you register a neuronet, pick a model from the AETRON registry or upload your own from Hugging Face, and set the re-check rules and the economics. The computation is done by the network's miners, so no servers of your own are needed. The neuronet owner receives 10% of its emission.
Do I need to know how to code
No. In the builder a neuronet is assembled visually: model, task type, allowed hardware and economics are all chosen in the interface. Code is only needed for non-standard re-check logic or a custom distribution scheme.
Token and trust
What is AET and what is it for
The single token of the network. Rewards for work are paid in it, network fees are paid with it, and it is staked into neuronets. A total of 33 million AET will ever exist, with no premine: every token appears in return for confirmed work. The block reward halves every four years, with the first halving in October 2029.
Who runs the network, and can it be shut down
Today the network runs on Proof of Authority, with a transition to validator voting built in: protocol parameter changes and upgrades will go through validators. Every validator keeps a full copy of the network, so it cannot be switched off from any single point.
Glossary
Words that show up in the texts on this site and in the miner client.
- Neuronet
- A separate AI service inside AETRON: its own model, its own type of task and three participant roles, the owner, the miners and the stakers.
- Miner
- A participant who puts their graphics card to work on a neuronet's jobs and earns AET for work that has been confirmed.
- Validator
- A node of the base blockchain: it produces blocks and, as decentralization proceeds, votes on protocol parameters. Validators are allocated 5% of every block's emission.
- Staker
- Someone who puts AET behind a neuronet. The stake raises the neuronet's throughput and earns a share of its emission.
- AET
- The single token of the network: rewards, fees and stake are all denominated in it. The total cap is 33 million.
- Emission
- New AET released with each block (1.5 AET today) and distributed among participants for confirmed work.
- Halving
- The block reward being cut in half. It happens every four years; the first one is scheduled for October 2029.
- Proof of Intelligence
- The mechanism by which the network confirms that a computation was performed by the declared model, and pays only for such work.
- Proof of Work
- The mechanism behind ordinary mining: graphics cards guess random numbers, and the result of the computation is never used for anything.
- Inference
- An already trained model doing its job on request: answering a question, generating text or an image. This is not training.
- Fine-tuning
- Further training of an existing model for a specific task or on your own data, instead of training from scratch.
- Re-check
- Another miner repeating someone else's computation to compare results. The network randomly assigns about 7% of requests to this.
- Epoch
- A stretch of network operation after which each participant's contribution is counted and emission is paid out.
- Coldkey and hotkey
- The wallet's two keys: the coldkey holds the funds and stays safe, the hotkey signs the miner's working actions.
- Builder
- The web console where a neuronet is assembled without code: choosing the model, the task type and the rules of its economics.
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