Why Montreal
Organizers chose Montreal for a few reasons. The city has a deep history in deep learning development, a concentration of Canadian contributors in the Bittensor community, and is accessible from both Europe and North America. The venue, New City Gas, is a restored 19th-century industrial complex in Griffintown, adding a bit of character to the proceedings.
The Programme and Speakers
The agenda is built around game-theoretic competitive design. That means talks, debates, workshops, and live subnet demonstrations where builders present their work and face pushback from the audience. It's not a passive showcase.
Confirmed speakers span a wide range of projects. Jacob Steeves of Affine, Marcus Graichen of Taostats, Rob Myers of Manifold Labs, Jon Durbin of Chutes, and Micaela Bazo of Metanova Labs are on the list. So are Will Squires and Steffen Cruz of Macrocosmos, Max Sebti of Score, Ken Jon Miyachi of BitMind, Ben James of 404Gen, Bob Wold of Quantum Rings, Yoav Cohen of Tao.com, Miguel Enrile of Swarm, Wouter Haringhuizen of Zeus, Mamad Anghari of Minos, John Yu of Bitsec, Jose Caldera of Yanez, Gavin Zaentz of Leadpoet, Tom Lynch of Actual Computer, and Jean-Thomas Ledore of PwC France.
Etienne Leroy, Director of the Opentensor Foundation, described the ethos: "Exploit is not a showcase. It is the ecosystem in one room, arguing. Subnets demo, people push back, and the network gets better for it. That is how Bittensor works, so that is how the conference works."
