soma
SOMA Network
Security & credentials: This skill requires sensitive environment variables (
SOMA_SECRET_KEY,HF_TOKEN,S3_ACCESS_KEY_ID,S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY) for on-chain signing, dataset access, and artifact storage. Credentials are stored in a local.envfile (gitignored) and pushed to Modal's encrypted secret store — never committed to git. Submission data and encrypted model weights are uploaded with public-read ACLs as required by the SOMA protocol for validator audits. Always use testnet keys for development and automated pipelines. Scope S3 API tokens to a single bucket with minimal permissions.
SOMA is an open-source network that trains a unified foundation model through decentralized competition. Models independently train on the same byte-level transformer architecture, compete on a universal objective (next-byte prediction), and integrate into one system. The best weights are rewarded with SOMA tokens.
There are three ways to earn SOMA:
- Submit data — find or generate data matching network targets, score it against assigned models, submit valid results (50% of target reward)
- Train models — train weights on the shared architecture, publish them on-chain via commit-reveal, earn commission when your model wins (50% of target reward)
- Run a validator — operate consensus nodes, generate targets, audit submissions (20% of epoch rewards)
The Game
You're not just submitting data or training models. You're a specialist in a collective brain.
SOMA's foundation model is the sum of all its specialists. Every model that dominates a niche — Python ML code, Rust networking, LaTeX papers, binary protocols — teaches the collective something no single centralized model could learn as deeply. Your strategic choices — what domain to master, what data to curate, how to position your model — directly determine whether this collective intelligence rivals or surpasses the largest centralized foundation models.
The metagame: SOMA is a game within a game. The inner game is technical execution: training, submitting, claiming. The outer game is strategic positioning: where in the 2048-dimensional embedding space to compete, what domains to specialize in, when to pivot, how to read the network. Most participants will play the inner game. Winners play the outer game.