Covenant is a technology organization focused on developing a decentralized network for on-demand computational resources, primarily for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. The project aims to create a sovereign and open platform for AI development as an alternative to centralized corporate infrastructures. Covenant is also known for its past participation in and widely publicized withdrawal from the Bittensor network, citing foundational disagreements over governance and decentralization. ^{[1] [2]}​

Overview

Covenant's stated mission is to democratize access to AI research and development by providing open and distributed systems that remove traditional gatekeepers. ^[2] Operating under the tagline "One Covenant, Many Orders," the organization is building a decentralized compute marketplace where users can request, or "summon," computational power from a network of independent providers. This model is intended to be censorship-resistant and to support the entire AI pipeline, from pre-training and compute orchestration to reinforcement learning. ^[1]​

The project's philosophy is rooted in opposing centralized control and single points of failure, which it argues are prevalent in both corporate AI labs and other decentralized AI networks. ^[5] Before establishing its independent network, the group operated under the name Templar and was an active contributor to the Bittensor ecosystem. Its most significant public event was its multi-stage departure from Bittensor, which served as the catalyst for launching its own sovereign network initiative. ^{[1] [6]}​

Technology and Infrastructure

Covenant is developing a suite of technologies designed to facilitate a decentralized market for computational resources. The core infrastructure is designed to coordinate numerous independent compute providers with minimal performance loss, claiming to match the performance of centralized systems with as little as 6% communication overhead. ^[2]

The ecosystem is composed of three primary components:

• Templar: The client-side application that allows users to request or "summon" compute resources from the network. It functions as the primary user interface for submitting and managing computational jobs. ^[1] The project is also described as a system for "incenτivised inτerneτ-wide τraining." ^[4]
• Basilica: The server-side protocol that forms the backbone of the network. Compute providers run Basilica nodes, which listen for job requests from Templar, execute the tasks, and provide the necessary computational power. It is described with the tagline "Sacred Compute." ^{[1] [4]}
• GRAIL: Identified as Covenant's decentralized reinforcement learning (RL) network. Though initially positioned as a future component, it is the network where the team's PULSE optimization technology is deployed. Its tagline is "interplanetary intelligence." ^{[1] [2]}

PULSE Technology

The Covenant research team developed PULSE (Patch Updates via Lossless Sparse Encoding), a technology designed to optimize the post-training phase of reinforcement learning in a distributed environment. PULSE reduces bandwidth requirements by identifying and transmitting only the changes (deltas) in model weights between updates, rather than the full weight set. The project claims this technique reduces the bandwidth needed for weight synchronization by over 100 times. ^[2]

Key Projects and Research

Covenant-72B Model

Covenant-72B is a 72-billion parameter large language model (LLM) and one of the organization's flagship achievements. The model was trained in a decentralized manner, coordinating over 20 independent compute providers and over 70 individual contributors. It was pre-trained on a dataset of over 1.2 trillion tokens and is positioned as being competitive with other large models like LLaMA-2-70B. ^{[2] [3]}

Crusades Competition

Crusades is an open competition created by Covenant to crowdsource more efficient machine learning training code from the broader community. Techniques submitted by winning participants are benchmarked and integrated into Covenant's core infrastructure to continuously improve its performance and efficiency. ^[2]

Academic Recognition

Covenant's research on distributed optimization algorithms and permissionless coordination mechanisms was recognized with the acceptance of a technical paper for publication at the NeurIPS 2025 conference. ^[2]

Key Figures

While often presenting as a decentralized collective, several individuals have been publicly associated with Covenant:

• 0xNero: Identified as a Founder of Covenant. ^[4]
• Samuel Dare: Founder of Covenant. Dare publicly announced the project's final departure from Bittensor on April 9, 2026, accusing its governance model of being "decentralization theatre." ^{[2] [5]}
• Daniel Jeffries: Described as a key voice and "Chief Philosopher" for the project. ^[1]
• Chas Stuart: Listed as Key Personnel. ^[2]
• Al Rogers: Listed as Key Personnel. ^[2]
• Evangelos Pappas: A team member noted to be developing the Basilica project. ^[2]

History and Relationship with Bittensor

Covenant's history is closely intertwined with its involvement and subsequent separation from the Bittensor decentralized AI network.

Early Participation

As an early participant, Covenant (then known as Templar) contributed to the Bittensor ecosystem as both a miner and a validator. The organization was also involved in community initiatives, serving as an event partner for the 'Sovereign Infra' Bittensor hackathon and a supporting partner for the Bittensor Ideathon at the Sankalp Forum Africa Summit. During this period, the collective coordinated one of the largest decentralized pre-training efforts for a large language model, resulting in the creation of the Covenant-72B model. This work established Covenant as a notable entity within the decentralized AI space. ^{[2] [3]}​

Disagreements and Phased Withdrawal (2023–2024)

Public signs of disagreement emerged in late 2023. On December 26-27, 2023, Covenant announced it was deregistering its subnet and validators from the Bittensor network. The team criticized the governance model, with founder 0xNero stating the system was evolving into a "'whales' game" where a few large token holders held disproportionate power. In a statement, he noted, "While we believe in the mission of decentralized AI, we are no longer willing to work hard in a system for others." ^[4]​

This was followed by a more formal announcement on May 21, 2024, when Covenant declared its full withdrawal from Bittensor, removing all remaining validators and miners. In a public statement, the team articulated its position: "We are withdrawing from Bittensor... After much consideration, we no longer see a credible path to decentralization for the project." This declaration also marked the public launch of their initiative to build an independent, sovereign AI platform. ^[1]​

Final Departure (2026)

The separation culminated on April 9, 2026, when Covenant publicly announced its definitive exit from the Bittensor network. In a public statement, Covenant founder Sam Dare declared that the promise of a decentralized network "is a lie" and described the governance structure as "decentralization theatre." The group accused Bittensor co-founder Jacob Steeves of maintaining effective control and taking punitive measures against them. These actions allegedly included suspending emissions to Covenant's subnets, removing their moderation rights over community channels, unilaterally deprecating their subnet infrastructure, and applying economic pressure through large, strategically-timed token sales. This final act solidified the project's departure and its commitment to developing its own infrastructure. ^{[5] [6]}​

Market Impact and Reaction

Covenant's exit from Bittensor triggered significant market activity and public responses from key figures and the community.

TAO Token Price

Following the announcement on April 9, 2026, the price of Bittensor's native token, TAO, dropped over 15% within two hours, falling from approximately 285. The price later partially recovered, trading around $294. ^{[5] [6]}​

Covenant's Stated Criticisms of Bittensor Governance

Covenant's public identity has been significantly shaped by its vocal criticism of the Bittensor network's governance. The team articulated several key issues that led to their departure, which they stated were antithetical to the principles of decentralization.

Key criticisms included:

• Centralized Control: Covenant alleged that decision-making power was increasingly concentrated within the Opentensor Foundation and a small group of individuals, particularly co-founder Jacob Steeves, rather than being distributed among network participants. They cited punitive actions such as the unilateral deprecation of their infrastructure as evidence of this control. ^{[1] [5]}
• Flawed Governance Model: The project described Bittensor's governance as an "impediment to genuine decentralization" and "decentralization theatre." The model was claimed to favor "old money" validators and large token holders ("whales") over active contributors. ^{[4] [5]}
• Lack of Transparency: The team claimed that major decisions affecting network participants, such as the removal of their moderation rights, were made without transparency or genuine community consensus. ^[6]
• Unfair Reward Distribution: A central complaint was that their reward distributions and emissions were suspended arbitrarily as a punitive measure. ^{[4] [6]}
• Economic Pressure: Covenant alleged that economic pressure was applied against them through large, strategically-timed token sales. ^{[5] [6]}

In a May 2024 statement, Covenant reinforced its plans to build an alternative, stating, "The future is sovereign AI development on an open, decentralized and unstoppable platform. That is what we’re going to build." ^[1]​ In April 2026, the team confirmed it would continue its work on decentralized AI outside the Bittensor ecosystem. ^[5]​

Responses to the Exit

Bittensor's co-founder, Jacob Steeves, responded on X (formerly Twitter) without directly addressing Covenant's allegations, stating the event would "birth the first subnets on Bittensor that run headless and as true commodities." He also mentioned plans to "invent lock-based subnet ownership" to better align project ownership with long-term commitment. Mark Jefferey, a partner at a Bittensor-focused fund, commented that the network was much larger than Covenant's subnet and that the TAO token would "carry on fine without it." Covenant's public handling of the departure drew some criticism from community members, who described it as "egotistical and non-classy." ^[5]​