BitRobot is building the “Bittensor for robots”

They just raised $8m from top investors and depin founders to do so

Here’s everything you need to know:

Previously Michael @micoolcho built FrodoBots which is a fleet of sidewalk robots that can be operated, using natural language instructions, from anywhere in the world

You can buy one for $199

As a serial entrepreneur based in Singapore, he learned lessons that he’s now applying to BitRobot:

“No point building a great product if you cannot figure out distribution”
“You really wanna get the TAM right”
“Helps a lot to be on the edge”

FrodoBots was a hobby project during covid as a way to work together with his brothers

It’s a mix of DEPIN, AI, robotics, and crypto (with $SAM, the memecoin)

https://www.frodobots.ai/
https://x.com/frodobots

In a few years, they have:

-shipped several sidewalk robot models, an order of magnitude cheaper than existing options

-released the largest opensource dataset of 2000+ hours of human robot telemetry data

-collaborated with researchers from Deepmind, UC Berkeley, YGG, and more

Michael was red-pilled in crypto by depin project Helium (decentralized wireless)

This made him realize he could turn his passion for robotics + AI into something much bigger

Thus was born BitRobot — a bittensor-like network for robotics subnets

So what is BitRobot?

-network of subnets (independent robotics startups, projects, and competitions)

-North Star is to “solve embodied AI”

-co-created with Jonathan Victor (@jnthnvctr) and Juan Benet (@juanbenet) from Protocol Labs (the creators of Filecoin and IPFS)

Whitepaper coming soon: http://bitrobot.ai/

Why now?

Michael believes robotics is an even playing field — maybe Tesla has won for self driving cars — but even with Optimus, they have the same challenges as every other robotics company

“So crypto isn’t behind” (key point)

If BitRobot’s incentives are structured well, the network could have more resources and move even faster than web2 competitors

“Each subnet is a competition with a defined objective”

Examples could include sidewalk robots… robots for home chores… datasets including video data and synthetic data… AI models specialized for robots…

“History is very path dependent”
Michael would not have believed BitRobot could exist if it weren’t for Axie, Helium, and Bittensor

Like Bittensor, each subnet owner defines the objective – and define tokenomics within its subnet for resources, marketing, and community

If there’s 10 subnets, how will rewards be distributed?
(1) A Senate with human robotics experts
(2) An AI decision maker (named Gandalf) as a counterweight to human biases

“Each subnet should move embodied AI research forward”

As subnets create value, the datasets and model weights will be open source for non-commercial use

The BitRobot Foundation will accrue commercializable IP and represent the ecosystem

Finally, Michael believes the bottleneck is the “10 to 100K world-class robotics researchers”

BitRobot wants to find those robotics experts and help them with resources and money – let them 10x

Thanks for reading all this!

For more —
Whitepaper coming soon on BitRobot.ai

Follow @BitRobotNetwork

Follow Michael @micoolcho

In a followup thread, I’ll talk about Robots.fun — a new initiative from FrodoBots that is “Virtuals for robots” — stay tuned!

Longhash
Started 2018, one of first web3 accelerators - more Asia focused; Early stage founders
What’s unique - close partnership w/ ecosystems - Polkadot, Filecoin, Acela
Two funds - 2021 defi fund, 2022 infra/multichain fund
Small distributed team

Accelerator
-running since 2018, how has your approach to startups changed since then
-during bear cycles (2022-2023), hard to find capital - accelerator can really help during this phase
-normally it’s a team of 2 cofounders, we’re 3rd cofounder - first check
$100-200K co-invest
-2024 meta - more money and investment options, accelerator is still core element of helping early stage

What accelerator teams had most success and what was different about them?
-if VC is 99% failure, accelerator is even greater risk
-lot of teams just have idea
-bet on background, seasoned founders
-web3 / crypto native, what’s magic of web3
-“great founders pivot with the times”

Ecosystem report
https://www.longhash.vc/post/bootstrapping-developer-ecosystems-for-web3-protocols
-developers are always your first users - b2b2c
-0:1 phase (bootstrap) and 1:100 phase (flywheel)
-0:1 — need technology, need to market it well, core team must be very vocal + present
what is your positioning? Solana = onchain Nasdaq; Bitcoin = digital gold
Bittensor = incentivization platform for AI models
write a lot, be vocal on twitter and farcaster, produce a lot of content
meme season — attention is next currency
-1:100 phase — now u have developers, how do u get them to build interesting stuff
Ronin: focus on helping game devs build good games — dev tools, SDKs, marketplace
address different dev needs (eg, new devs v experienced ones)

How do builders choose between the ecosystems?
Many are mercenary
How do ecosystems retain devs?
- Case studies on Axelar, Berachain, Solana
- Devs wanna go where the users are — eg, narrative that users are migrating to Base

Flywheel
Get best devs to build a few pioneer apps / use cases — get good users — get more devs
Ronin — onboarded Pixels team one year ago, migrated from Polygon, Mavis Hub + Ronin name service, went from 10K to several hundred K DAU

Token price matters a lot in web3
-in bull, everyone wants to stay in ecosystem, get rewards
-in bear / when price crashes, how to retain? Need clear focus on what ecosystem is about, why devs should build there
-for bootstrapping, need well-designed tokenomics so early adopters are rewarded, yet sustainable (deflationary) in long-run

In-person / offline events — hosting events, panels, sponsoring conference tracks

“Everyone building an ecosystem”
L1s > L2s > L3s
L1s > EigenDA / Celestia
Big projects will become own appchains / rollups
Want to become a place where new ideas are built atop

Influencers / crypto Twitter
“Attention is next big world currency”
Everyone attention span getting shorter, TikTok
Crypto next meme coin, next narrative
Few types — investor type (actually invest), founder/builder type (know tech), token price type (appeal to retail, what’s next 10x)

Links shared:
https://x.com/mo_baioumy/status/1760296558539501698
@mo_baioumy AI x Crypto is a hot narrative right now.

https://www.workingtheorys.com/p/before-the-crowd

This is the same way people talk about the good ole days of the San Francisco tech scene (circa late 2000s to mid 2010s). The meetups were more meetup-y. The hackathons were more hack-y. The nerds were more nerdy. Everything in the tech scene felt more authentic, more egalitarian, and less sceney

follow Michael on X @brazenburrit0

Follow Two Degens on X - @habits and @bridgexplore

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