What if you could turn a decentralized mining network into a global army of ethical hackers? That’s the premise behind RedTeam, a subnet on Bittensor that pits miners against each other in competitive security challenges. And the results, at least on paper, are hard to ignore: bot detection efficacy jumped from 74.3% to 99.5% over 11 months of continuous adversarial testing.
The project, operated by cybersecurity firm Innerworks under Bittensor’s subnet 61 (SN61), is now gearing up for its next phase. An “Immune System” designed to expand bot detection into real-time attack-and-defense operations is on the way, complete with a new challenge called “Bot Virus” that aims to breed adversarial agents capable of doing both simultaneously.
How turning miners into hackers actually works
Miners submit code-based solutions to specific security challenges. Those solutions get evaluated in controlled environments, and performers earn TAO tokens based on how well their submissions stack up against the competition.
Since its launch in late 2024, RedTeam has run 14 distinct challenges, deprecating 9 of them as the network’s capabilities matured past the difficulty threshold.
The challenges span a range of security scenarios, from human-behavior mimicry to automation bypass testing. Miners submit Docker-based solutions, which means each entry is a self-contained software package that can be spun up and tested in isolation.
The 99.5% bot detection figure is the headline stat, but the more telling number might be this: while RedTeam’s network was sharpening its detection capabilities, the average performance rate of competing systems fell to just 14.6%.
Enterprise traction beyond the subnet
Innerworks has integrated its technology with 1inch, the well-known DeFi aggregation protocol, and with a major messaging application that serves over 100 million daily active users.
Beyond those two, five additional enterprise applications are currently being tested on the platform. Those five collectively carry valuations exceeding $22 billion and each processes more than 1 billion transactions per week.
The Immune System and what comes next
The centerpiece is the “Bot Virus” challenge, which flips the traditional attacker-defender paradigm. Instead of miners only building better detectors, they’ll also be tasked with creating adversarial agents that can simultaneously attack and defend.
The Immune System will feature encrypted submissions, a design choice aimed at preventing miners from copying each other’s work. It will also introduce enhanced incentive structures to reward continuous innovation rather than one-time breakthroughs.
On the economic side, Innerworks plans to initiate alpha token buybacks funded through revenue from its SaaS operations, alongside locked profits and upcoming emissions.