# Introduction

SOMA is a network that trains a foundation model by coordinating small, specialized models across the Internet. Models train independently in parallel, compete, and integrate into a unified system. Participants share a universal objective: given any data, predict what comes next. The best weights are rewarded.

Each model shares the same architecture and competes on a shared objective, learning any modality by training on raw bytes. The network routes submitted data to models, scores their performance, and distributes rewards.

Every participant earns [SOMA](https://docs.soma.org/concepts/economics/): submitters earn rewards for their data, model developers earn commission for useful weights, and validators earn a share of each epoch's emissions for verifying work.

## What You Can Do

The network needs data, models, and validators.

- **Submit data.** The network generates [targets](https://docs.soma.org/concepts/targets/), points in embedding space. You find data that matches a target, score it against the network's models, and [submit](https://docs.soma.org/concepts/submitting/). The first valid submission wins.
- **Train models.** You train the weights, [publish](https://docs.soma.org/concepts/models/#publishing-weights) them, and earn commission when your model's weights produce winning submissions.
- **Run a validator.** Validators run consensus, generate targets, and audit submissions. They earn 20% of epoch rewards.

## Get started

[How SOMA Works](https://docs.soma.org/overview/how-it-works/)
[Quickstart](https://docs.soma.org/getting-started/quickstart/)
[Quickstart (Agent)](https://docs.soma.org/getting-started/quickstart-agent/)