Applied Quanta Seeks Millions After Alleged Misappropriation of Bittensor Subnet

On Monday, February 9, 2026, Applied Quanta LLC filed a complaint in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California against Greg Zaitsev, John Reed, Sam Johnson, Triumvirate Members A-C, Senate Members, and John Does 1-10, alleging theft and fraud related to the digital asset Subnet 90. Applied Quanta, a Wyoming-based limited liability company, claims the defendants unlawfully stripped them of ownership of Subnet 90, a subdivision of the Bittensor blockchain network.

The lawsuit states that Applied Quanta invested over $500,000 in developing Subnet 90 into a multi-million dollar venture, including a consumer-facing platform called DegenPredict.com. The company alleges that the defendants, associated with the Opentensor Foundation, secretly rewrote the rules to strip away Applied Quanta’s ownership and sold the asset to someone else for $60,000, destroying a business valued in the tens of millions of dollars.

Applied Quanta claims that before the seizure of their asset, the defendants made explicit promises that subnet ownership on the Bittensor network was permanent and tied exclusively to the owner’s cryptographic key. They allege that the defendants removed technical limitations that could have threatened ownership, publicly declaring “there can be as many [subnets] as we want,” an unlimited number of permanent assets.

The lawsuit further states that the defendants created a secret proposal called BIT-0016, which allowed them to forcibly remove or replace a subnet owner from the Bittensor network without community vote or chain governance. Applied Quanta claims that this system was implemented without any disclosure to existing owners whose property rights were being retroactively altered.

The complaint alleges that the defendants’ actions constitute violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and the Lanham Act, as well as various state laws. Applied Quanta is seeking compensatory damages in excess of $25 million, punitive damages, injunctive relief, and equitable relief.

Please contact BlockTribune for access to a copy of this filing.