Smart contracts and EVM

Bittensor also runs the Ethereum Virtual Machine, which lets developers deploy smart contracts written in Solidity directly on the Bittensor chain. TAO is the native currency, so there is no separate token to buy.

Wallets such as MetaMask connect to Bittensor as their own network, with chain ID 964 on mainnet. Accounts on this side use addresses that start with 0x, while standard Bittensor wallets use addresses that start with 5. Each kind of account has a matching alias address on the other side, so TAO can be sent between them.

A standard Bittensor wallet cannot run a contract itself. That takes an EVM wallet.

For a trader, EVM matters because some apps and tokens in the ecosystem are built as contracts. These use 0x addresses, which is why two address styles appear on Bittensor.