Prototype brand  ·  for the team  ·  4 October 2026
01  /  The system

Many threads, woven into one line.

This is the prototype brand for IOTA. Its one source is W(e)ave, the motion piece chosen on 4 October as the canonical style: loose threads on dark grey, taken up one ply at a time into a single tan rope, with one saffron light running through it. Everything below is drawn from that piece and held to the brand strategy as revised on 3 October. It is a prototype to react to, not a finished identity. Every figure in a mockup is a placeholder in brackets.

Watch W(e)ave, 56 seconds →

Idea

Exact and loose in one frame.

From the strategy (§13): compute that arrives in pieces gathers into something with value; scattered becomes one run; one clock, many machines each arriving on its own delay. In the picture: loose threads, each drifting on its own line, are taken up into one rope by a twist that is exact (three into one, four times over).

The rule that follows: never all at once. The weave happens one ply at a time, and each twist starts at the left and travels along the line. Each group joins at its own fixed lag; the offsets repeat and are never random. You can always tell whether the line is loose, being woven or whole.

Mark

The rope, seen end on.

Cut the rope and look at the end: three ropes, each of three strands, each of three yarns, each of three threads. Eighty-one points in nested threes, and one of them lit in saffron: the thread the work is passing through now.

Three cuts. The section (eighty-one points) for print and large screens. The nine (three threes) everywhere else. The three, with one lit, below 32 pixels and as the favicon. In motion the lit point moves to the next thread on each beat.

The wordmark is IOTA in capitals (strategy §11), Montserrat semibold, tracked wide. Macrocosmos signs underneath in Garamond italic, the way a lab signs a paper.

One colour. On bone the mark is charcoal throughout and the lit point is a filled ring; saffron is kept for screens and for one spot colour in print.

Colour

Tan on dark grey, and one saffron light.

Two grounds. Charcoal for the world (screens, motion, the stage). Bone for the record (the register, badges, anything printed to be read up close). The three tans are the three ropes; in flat graphics, sand alone stands for all three. Saffron is the work in motion, and only that: the bead on a thread, the lit point in the mark, the one thing to press. One saffron element to a surface.

Type

One quiet sentence, then the label and the number.

03  /  Strands into ropes
Anyone can train a model. Every idle GPU can help.
Plies 2 / 4  ·  running
EB Garamond, regularThe statement. One per frame, sentence case, ending in a full stop. Never bold, never all capitals. Italic only for the parent's signature.
Montserrat, medium and semibold, trackedLabels, numbers, the wordmark, navigation. Capitals only, small, tracked at 0.38 to 0.42 em.
The orderLabel (a number and a name) above; the sentence; a short rule. Numbers sit in a corner, never in the sentence's line.
CopyThe strategy's lines as revised on 3 October. The vision line is never set beside an Orion number; the proof line is "Orion-16B trained without a reserved cluster."
Motifs

Each part of the picture means one thing.

The threadOne machine's hours. Loose, it drifts on its own line and is broken in places: idle time comes in pieces. The eighty-one are a picture, not a count of IOTA's machines.
The plyThe gathering. Threads into yarns, yarns into strands, strands into ropes, ropes into one. It stands for scattered machines being made one run; it is not a diagram of IOTA's architecture.
The travelling twistTime. Each ply starts at the left and moves along the line at its own lag from the one clock.
The beadA slice of work passing along a thread, in saffron, on the clock. The only thing that glows.
The ropeOne run, one model. It runs edge to edge and never ends inside the frame.
Motion and layout

Slow, in order, edge to edge.

Arc56 seconds: loose, four plies in turn, whole, let go. A ply takes about eight seconds to cross the frame.
Clock72 beats a minute. Beads move at one speed, each at its own fixed offset.
DriftLoose threads move slowly enough to follow by eye. Nothing snaps.
Type in motionCrossfades between states. Never animates letter by letter.
The lineHorizontal, full bleed, taking about a third of the height. Type sits above or below it, never across the whole rope.
MarginsThe sentence starts at 8 percent of the width; labels sit 40 pixels in from the corners.
StillsUse the rope whole for statements, the loose threads for beginnings, a middle ply for anything in progress.
NumbersBottom right, in capitals, with their date or the word placeholder.
02  /  The brand, in use

Social, web, an evening.

Each piece at its real proportions, built from the rules above. Imagery is rendered from W(e)ave at the size of the format. Click the loop to play it live.

Social

One claim, one number, the source in the image.

IOTA  ·  early access
Anyone can train a model. Every idle GPU can help.
Liquid Training  ·  by Macrocosmos
Launch post · 1080 × 1350

The vision line, alone, over the rope whole. No number beside it, by the strategy's rule.

The Orion register  ·  run 02
Orion-16B trained without a reserved cluster.
RunOrion-16B
Started[date]
Hardware[peak count] mixed GPUs
Source[register URL]
IOTA
Register post · 1080 × 1080 · light ground

The proof line with its run, date and source. Bone ground, the one-colour mark. Figures stay in brackets until they are on the claims sheet.

03  /  Strands into ropes
Mismatched GPUs in many places, made into one run.
Motion loop · 1080 × 1080 · 56 seconds

The whole weave as a square loop. Click to play it live; the label changes with the ply in the posted version.

96
48
32
16
The nine holds at 48. Below 32 the three takes over: three points, one lit.
Profile · 400 × 400, down to the favicon

The nine on deep grey, round-cropped, one point in saffron.

IOTA
Liquid Training  ·  subnet 9  ·  by Macrocosmos
Anyone can train a model. Every idle GPU can help.
Header · 1500 × 500

The format the rope was made for: one line, edge to edge.

Web

The vision first, then how a run works.

IOTA
How it worksThe registerFor operatorsDocs
The SDK
Liquid training
Early access, [date]
Anyone can train a model.
Every idle GPU can help.
We are making distributed training a legitimate alternative to the reserved cluster: proven in public, run by run, until training anywhere is ordinary.
Get early accessRead the register
Latest run  ·  Orion-16B
[date]  ·  [peak count] mixed GPUs
Site, first screen · 1440 × 900

H1 and H2 from the strategy above the rope, which runs live across the foot of the screen. The one saffron element is the thing to press.

The SDK  ·  how a run works
Train your own models: faster to start, cheaper to run.
RunStartedHardwareTokensSource
Orion-100B[date]Single A100s, [n] data centres[tokens][link]
Orion-16B[date][peak count] mixed GPUs[tokens][link]
Your run[date]Whatever is idle[tokens]Yours
Site, the SDK page · 1440 wide, scrolled

The SDK page's own line, then the strategy's H3 broken into five steps, each beside a stage of the weave. It ends on the register, with a row for the reader's own run.

Event

Every guest is a thread.

[Event]  ·  [date]
Anyone can train a model.
Every idle GPU can help.
IOTAEarly access  ·  [URL]
Stage screen · 1920 × 1080

The holding slide behind a talk, with the weave running live under the line. Between talks it plays the full 56 seconds.

IOTA
[First name]
[Last name]
[Organisation]
Your thread
34 / 81
Badge · 4 × 6 inches, light ground

Each guest is given one of the eighty-one threads. The badge shows the rope's section with their thread lit, the one spot of saffron on the print.

[Event]  ·  [city]  ·  [date]
Anyone can train a model. Every idle GPU can help.
Mismatched GPUs in many places, made into one run.
IOTA
Poster · 24 × 36 inches

The rope whole across the middle; the vision above it, the capability below.

IOTA
Early access  ·  [date]  ·  [place]
Bring the script you would run on a grant.
Watch a run start on idle GPUs, and meet the people who built it.
[Time]  ·  [address]
RSVP  ·  [link]
Invitation · 7 × 5 inches

The voice's own example line, beside the yarns part-woven: something in progress, to come and see.

Open before the team sees it

What this prototype has not settled.

A rope is literalAn earlier note called the first Braid "too literal of a rope". W(e)ave is slower and quieter, but it is still a rope, and it no longer shows a model being built in layers. If the team misses that, the rope can open at the end into the layered figure from the Chords study.
Where is the waterThe strategy's idea for design is liquid. W(e)ave has drift and flow and no sea. The Sea study (waves lifting into the model) is the nearest piece that has both.
The parent's colourMacrocosmos and the stage deck use a mint green. This system has none. Either Macrocosmos signs in its own colour or this is a deliberate break.
Whose lookGaramond, the warm neutrals and the chaptered pacing come from Metapattern's principles. The rope, the section mark, the saffron and the clock are IOTA's.
The mark at three pointsThe section and the nine are distinctive. Three points in a triangle is a common shape; it needs a trademark look before it is used alone.
Not yet in this styleThe brand strategy page, the brand essence deck, the launch site's brand page and the film still carry the Lagoon-era brand world. They are next.
Stated, not verified"Two changed lines of PyTorch" and every bracketed figure. Casing (IOTA or iota) is still a founder question.