> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.tao.media/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # UR Launches Bittensor Subnet 25 With 350,000 Monthly Users - URL: https://www.tao.media/ur-launches-bittensor-subnet-25-with-350-000-monthly-users/ - Published: 2026-08-19T20:59:14.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-20T19:06:36.000Z - Description: The privacy network brings an existing consumer VPN, 100,000-plus residential providers, and a demand-funded bandwidth market to Bittensor. - Author: Bart Hillerich - Tags: UR, News, Subnets, Jack Ai-Leung, Brien Colwell, Keith Singery, #editors-picks [UR](https://ur.xyz/?ref=tao.media) has now launched as [Bittensor](https://www.tao.media/tag/bittensor/) Subnet 25\. Most importantly for Bittensor, the live privacy network brings with it an existing consumer demand to the tune of 350,000+ monthly active users, more than 100,000 residential network providers, and coverage across more than 100 countries. The launch was announced by UR and detailed in [Jack Ai-Leung's letter to Bittensor](https://ur.xyz/investors/august-investment-letter?ref=tao.media), where Ai-Leung said he is launching UR with [Brien Colwell](https://x.com/xcolwell?ref=tao.media) and [Keith Singery](https://x.com/KeithSingery?ref=tao.media). > “Three months ago, in Stockholm, Brien and I came together to discuss the necessity of a free and open internet for all, a mission which Brien has singularly dedicated himself to for the last two years.” - Jack Ai-Leung ## What Is UR? The project is a decentralized privacy and connectivity network, with its consumer product, [ur.io](https://ur.io/?ref=tao.media), as the first network operator and demand source. UR is built around residential internet access, letting people contribute network capacity from ordinary devices and connections, which UR then uses that distributed infrastructure to route users' internet traffic through rotating residential paths. Ai-Leung, putting the project into more simple terms, said: > “I think of UR (SN25) as a telco owned by the people: cover entire planet with nodes that can facilitate access to the internet. The more global and performant the coverage, the more powerful it can be for everyday users. For humans, and for agents." ### Participating in the Network UR turns residential providers into the supply side of a connectivity market. People running UR software can contribute IP coverage from devices such as a phone, laptop, or Raspberry Pi. Users connect through a network operator, such as [ur.io](http://ur.io/?ref=tao.media), which buys capacity from the subnet to serve its product. This is where UR is different from a typical VPN company. A centralized VPN generally owns or leases infrastructure and sells access to users, but UR's model separates the consumer product from the underlying supply network. The app can therefore serve users, while Bittensor coordinates the market for miners, validators, and operators that make the network function. ### How the Subnet Functions Three primary roles make up the network: operators run servers and route traffic, miners carry encrypted traffic, and validators re-measure the network to verify accuracy and quality. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/78/0b/780ba906-b1a7-4bf0-873c-bdd5c32e5331/content/images/2026/08/image-5.png) Three roles. One measured network. Network operators are the demand side. They run the user-facing privacy servers and verification endpoints, own the customer relationship, and buy capacity from the subnet. UR says operators are billed based on monthly active users served and data moved per day, with payments made in SN25 alpha. The first network operator is [ur.io](http://ur.io/?ref=tao.media), the live VPN-style product that already uses UR's residential fleet. Miners provide the supply. In UR's model, miners carry encrypted traffic and make routable IP coverage available to the network. The project's [miner documentation](https://ur.xyz/miners?ref=tao.media) says miners compete to make IPv4 and IPv6 subnets available for ingress and egress traffic, with the broadest distinct routable coverage promoted to top-level miner status. The design rewards unique, reliable coverage rather than simply paying for raw traffic volume. UR also distinguishes between top miners and a long tail of providers. [Ai-Leung's letter](https://ur.xyz/investors/august-investment-letter?ref=tao.media) says top IP miners will have their own UIDs on Bittensor, while long-tail miners can be pooled under miner UIDs. That structure is meant to let the roughly top 200 fleets compete directly while still allowing a much larger base of smaller residential providers to earn through pools. Validators are the measurement layer. UR's [validator page](https://ur.xyz/validators?ref=tao.media) says validators walk operator-assigned routes, collect cryptographic records of completed hops, and score operator pools based on demand and measured quality. Bittensor's Yuma Consensus then turns those independent scores into miner emissions. The measurement layer does more than pay people for bandwidth. It tries to prove the network has real, high-quality IP coverage that users can actually reach. Users of a privacy network care about reliability, geography, and whether the connection works under difficult network conditions. ## Why Residential Coverage Matters Residential IP access is valuable because much of the modern internet treats IP addresses as identity and reputation signals. Websites, platforms, governments, and infrastructure providers can use IP location and history to shape what people can access, what prices they see, and whether automated or human traffic is allowed through. That problem is at the center of the project. Ai-Leung wrote that an IP address is often an overlooked form of online identity because every site can see it and tie activity to geography. He also cited internet shutdowns and censorship as examples of why access infrastructure matters, saying [ur.io](http://ur.io/?ref=tao.media) reached an all-time high in monthly active users during a January 2026 internet disruption in Iran. Builders and AI agents face a different concern, since access to the public web may become scarce as platforms tighten controls around automated crawlers, data collection, and agentic browsing. To help fix each of these issues, UR is working to enable internet users to get a way to route internet traffic through alternative paths. UR's [research page](https://ur.xyz/research?ref=tao.media) points to several technical workstreams behind that goal, including multi-hop routing, ingress extenders, client-miner matching, reliable transfer, IP egress, reward allocation, and safe-by-default security controls. The team says the system is designed as a multi-IP, multi-transport network that can scale to millions of miners per network operator. ## A Live Business Enters Bittensor UR's subnet begins with real product usage, currently maintaining 350,000+ monthly active users of [ur.io](http://ur.io/?ref=tao.media), with UR having more than 100,000 residential providers across more than 100 countries. The live [ur.io](http://ur.io/?ref=tao.media) product and three research programs draw on the same subnet infrastructure. The research programs named in the launch letter are Project Bastion, focused on enterprise network connectivity; Project Stargate, focused on whether an open index can support model training and live retrieval; and Project Meridian, focused on dedicated identity for agents. Each depends on the same underlying idea, a broad and measured residential access layer. The Bittensor connection is intended to make that access layer more competitive. By turning IP providers into subnet miners and using validators to measure quality, UR is trying to move from company-funded supply toward an incentive market. In theory, better coverage attracts more traffic, more traffic creates more operator demand, and more demand increases the rewards available to miners that expand the network. That is the network effect UR wants to test on Bittensor.