Synth

Synth is a decentralized prediction engine for financial markets operating as Subnet 50 (SN50) on the Bittensor network. Developed by Mode Network, an Ethereum Layer 2 project that is part of Optimism's Superchain, Synth generates synthetic asset price path data through a competitive network of AI models. Unlike traditional price prediction systems that produce single-point estimates, Synth captures the full probability distribution of possible price movements, providing probabilistic forecasts for smarter trading, risk management, and portfolio decisions.

The platform currently generates forecasts for BTC, ETH, SOL, XAU (gold), SPY, NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, and GOOGL on 1-hour and 24-hour timeframes. Each forecast consists of 1,000 simulated price paths at 5-minute intervals, modeling real-world dynamics including volatility clustering and fat-tailed distributions. Synth provides multiple consumer-facing dashboards on its website, including tools for volatility forecasting, Polymarket probability estimates, Limitless prediction markets, 0DTE options pricing, liquidity provision, and liquidation probability analysis.

Users can access forecasts through the Synth API, which integrates directly with on-chain AI agents and trading systems. The platform offers a dashboard at dashboard.synthdata.co for API key management, pricing, and miner rewards tracking. Mode Network has been awarded a $6 million OP grant from the Optimism Foundation.

Synth operates through a competitive system where hundreds of miners build AI models that generate simulated price paths, and validators evaluate the accuracy of those forecasts against actual market movements. Every hour, validators send prompts to miners requesting probabilistic forecasts for specific assets. Miners must return 1,000 simulated price paths before the start time, each containing price predictions at 5-minute increments over the specified time horizon.

Validators score miners using the Continuous Ranked Probability Score (CRPS), a statistical measure that evaluates both the accuracy and calibration of probabilistic forecasts. The CRPS is calculated across multiple time increments (5 minutes, 30 minutes, 3 hours, and 24 hours) to assess both short-term and long-term prediction quality. This means miners are rewarded not for predicting a single price target, but for accurately quantifying the full range of uncertainty around future price movements. Validators compare the miner's ensemble of predicted price changes (in basis points) to the observed price changes using real-time data from the Pyth Oracle.

Final emissions are calculated using a rolling average of scores over the past 10 days, with a softmax function that allocates rewards proportionally to performance. The system runs two parallel competitions: a 24-hour prediction track and a 1-hour high-frequency trading track, each receiving 50% of total emissions.