Forge Overview
Forge is a Bittensor-native money market for users who want TAO liquidity without selling their Alpha tokens.
Forge is a product powered by Endure Network. Endure is the risk-intelligence layer underneath Forge, while Forge is the money market users interact with.
At a high level, Forge has two sides:
- Suppliers provide TAO liquidity. They receive the root yield as a base rate, and can earn additional interest from borrowers when utilization rises.
- Borrowers supply Alpha tokens as collateral, borrow TAO against them, and keep their Alpha token exposure. Alpha collateral keeps earning its yield through the wrapper exchange rate. Planned mainnet economics retain a 25% performance fee from Alpha collateral emissions and pass 75% through to borrowers; the current testnet deployment has the wrapper performance fee set to 0%.
Forge risk parameters begin with manual Guardian Multisig configuration as a safety step, but the long-term direction is risk intelligence produced by competition between independent Endure analysts, not committee judgment. As Endure proves its reliability, Forge can increasingly use that risk intelligence to inform parameter decisions. More than 50% of protocol revenue is intended to support Alpha buybacks, aligning Forge growth with the asset base that powers the risk network. Current parameters are shown in the app. See Markets, Rates, and Parameters for more detail.
Why Forge exists
Subnet owners can have a hard time funding operations without selling Alpha tokens. Users can also have a hard time keeping exposure while still accessing TAO liquidity for another opportunity.
Forge makes those Alpha tokens usable as collateral. Suppliers add TAO to the market. Borrowers use supported Alpha tokens as collateral and borrow TAO against them.
Forge also gives Endure a real economic anchor. Risk intelligence is only useful if it is tested against real outcomes. A live money market creates measurable credit risk, liquidations, losses, recoveries, and liquidity conditions. That real capital-at-risk feedback helps Endure's risk network learn from outcomes instead of producing theoretical risk opinions in isolation.
In plain language:
- Forge helps users access TAO liquidity while keeping supported Alpha token exposure.
- Forge helps suppliers earn root yield as a base rate, plus borrower-paid interest when the market is being used.
- Forge helps Endure connect risk intelligence to real market behavior.
What users can do
Forge is designed around a small set of user actions:
- Supply TAO to provide liquidity and earn yield.
- Supply Alpha token collateral for a supported subnet and hotkey market.
- Borrow TAO up to the account's available borrowing power.
- Liquidate unhealthy accounts when collateral value falls below the required threshold.
Forge uses a mature pooled-market pattern: each asset has a market, suppliers receive a receipt token for what they supplied, borrowers accrue interest, and the protocol checks whether each action is allowed.
Forge adds the Bittensor-native part on top: Alpha token collateral markets use Alpha-specific wrapper contracts that hold real Alpha stake through the staking precompile, instead of relying on a generic ERC20 asset. Even though users interact with smart contracts on Bittensor EVM, both TAO and Alpha live natively in the Bittensor Substrate layer.
Markets
Forge has one TAO supply and borrow market and a curated set of Alpha token collateral markets.
| Market | Role |
|---|---|
| TAO market | TAO supply and borrow market |
| Alpha token market | One collateral market per listed Bittensor subnet |
Specific Alpha token markets are selected through the listing process based on subnet volume, liquidity, and safety criteria. Alpha tokens are collateral only. They can be supplied as collateral, but they cannot be borrowed from Forge. The core user flow is Alpha token collateral → TAO borrow.
Supported subnets, collateral factors, liquidation thresholds, caps, reserve factors, interest-rate settings, and yield routing are shown in the Forge app.
Read Markets, Rates, and Parameters for the detailed version.
What makes Alpha collateral possible
Forge depends on the Bittensor staking precompile's contract-aware stake-movement path. In particular, opentensor/subtensor PR #2478 added approve and transferStakeFrom to the staking precompile.
This matters because a money market must know when collateral arrives. With transferStakeFrom, a user approves a Forge Alpha token market to move Alpha stake, then the contract receives that stake and updates accounting in the same EVM transaction.
This is the bridge between the Bittensor staking pallet and Forge's EVM lending contracts: native Alpha stake moves into the contract's mapped Substrate coldkey while Forge tracks the collateral position. That is why Forge is a Bittensor-native money market, not only a lending app deployed on a Bittensor EVM chain.
The user-facing flow is:
- The user approves the Forge Alpha wrapper to move Alpha stake for a specific subnet and hotkey.
- The user supplies Alpha token collateral through Forge.
- The Forge market calls the staking precompile's transfer-from path.
- The Bittensor pallet moves Alpha stake from the user's coldkey to the contract's mapped coldkey.
- In the same EVM transaction, Forge verifies custody and mints the user's collateral position.
The Alpha is wrapped through Forge's subnet-specific wAlpha contracts before it backs the lending market. The stake remains native Bittensor stake, owned by the wrapper contract's mapped coldkey and accounted for by Forge through the corresponding vWAlpha market.
This is also what makes Alpha-aware liquidations possible. If a borrower becomes unhealthy, Forge can repay TAO debt, seize Alpha token collateral, convert the seized Alpha with price protection, receive native TAO, and settle the liquidator and protocol shares in one liquidation flow. See Collateral and Risk for the details.
Next
Read Getting Started for wallet setup, Supplying and Borrowing for the user flow, Markets, Rates, and Parameters for the terms users will see in the app, Collateral and Risk for liquidations and Alpha-specific risks, then Audits for review status. A short Glossary covers the terms used throughout.