After a Bittensor upgrade, first confirm the btcli version and selected network, then check your coldkey balance, subnet holdings, hotkey registrations, and the metagraph for the subnet you care about. These are separate read-only checks: a wallet balance does not by itself confirm that a hotkey is registered or active on a subnet.
Before checking: confirm your CLI version and network
Bittensor v11 combines the Python SDK and command-line interface in the bittensor package. If you are moving from v9 or v10, follow the official migration guide before installing the new package. The guide warns that the legacy bittensor-cli and bittensor-wallet packages can conflict with v11 because both generations may provide the btcli command. It also warns that uninstalling the old CLI after upgrading can remove the command; its documented recovery is pip install --force-reinstall --no-deps bittensor.
Next, make sure you are querying the intended network. Bittensor’s quickstart documents finney for mainnet, test for testnet, and local for a development node. To set a default network, run:
btcli config set network finneyReplace finney with the network you intend to inspect. A network flag can override the configured default for an individual command, so check any flags as well as the saved setting before interpreting results.
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Check free TAO and TAO-valued stake
Use the coldkey name or path for the wallet whose funds you want to inspect:
btcli wallet balance <coldkey>This balance view reports free TAO and stake represented in TAO. A coldkey is the wallet identity associated with funds and financial actions; it is not the same thing as a subnet’s operational hotkey. The official quickstart and wallet and keys documentation explain the distinction.
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See holdings by subnet
For a subnet-by-subnet view, run:
btcli wallet overviewThe overview shows free TAO and stake for each subnet. Read the units carefully: TAO and subnet alpha are distinct units, not interchangeable amounts. The v11 balance model keeps these values distinct; do not add alpha to TAO or treat an alpha figure as a TAO balance. See the CLI guide and wallet and keys documentation for the documented views and terminology.
Verify hotkey registrations and subnet-level activity
Find the subnets where your local hotkeys are registered
Run:
btcli wallet registrationsThis command lists local hotkeys and the subnets where they are registered. Use it to check that you are looking at the intended operational identity, rather than assuming that a coldkey balance proves subnet participation.
Inspect neurons on a specific subnet
To query a subnet’s metagraph, use its netuid:
btcli query metagraph --netuid <N>Replace <N> with the intended subnet’s netuid. In v11, the metagraph is a typed per-neuron record. Documented fields include UID, hotkey, coldkey, incentive, dividends, rank, trust, consensus, emission, alpha stake, TAO stake, and total stake. Use the hotkey and netuid to narrow the check to the participation you mean to verify; a metagraph query for the wrong netuid will show a different subnet.
Keep verification read-only unless you intend to transact
The quickstart describes chain reads as free and unsigned, so the balance, overview, registration, and metagraph checks above do not require submitting a transaction. If you later prepare a transaction, Bittensor’s V431 release notes document --dry-run for previewing the fee, predicted effects, and policy verdict without submission. A dry run previews a mutation; it is not a read-only balance check and does not submit the transaction.
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What an upgrade does—and does not—tell you
Bittensor’s V431 release page, dated July 2026, describes chain spec version 431 and the v11 package consolidation. It also describes network changes involving contestable ownership through conviction under specified chain conditions, and cross-subnet emissions allocated according to subnet moving-average price with a miner-burn penalty. Those release details provide context, but they do not establish that an individual wallet’s balance, registration, or subnet position changed. Only the selected network and the wallet and subnet state returned by your own checks can answer that.
The same release page publishes performance comparisons for v10 and v11: startup codec build per btcli invocation of 337 ms versus 4 ms, metagraph decode throughput of 3–6 MB/s versus 60–77 MB/s, storage-map decoding of 92,000 versus 599,000 entries per second, and construction of a 1,000-operation batch in about 1.1 seconds versus about 50 ms. These are figures reported by Bittensor on its July 2026 release page, not independent measurements or evidence about a particular user’s account.
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