Const just did a full live session breaking down
$TAO's BIT-0011 in detail.
Most people won't watch the whole thing. Here's everything you need to know.
This was not reactive. Locked Stake was originally designed alongside dTAO. It was part of the initial release plan. It was pulled specifically to give subnet teams time to adapt to the complexity of Dynamic
$TAO first.
One year later, the time has come. The Covenant situation made it obvious this should already be live.
You lock your Alpha on a subnet. Stake times time equals conviction. Conviction ramps up, peaks halfway through the lock period, then decays toward zero at expiry.
The staker with the highest conviction score becomes the subnet owner.
Every 30 days the protocol checks. Ownership is no longer a one-time purchase. It's a continuous contest of commitment.
The 18% owner emission goes to whoever holds the highest conviction. If you want that revenue, you prove you're here for the long run. Cryptographically. Not through podcasts. Not through promises. On-chain.
Teams that don't lock? That's a signal too. Investors can read it. The market can price it.
Const was direct about this the purpose is not to restrict teams from selling or raising capital. Teams can still fund operations. They can sell unlocked portions. They can do OTC deals on future delivery. They can lock half and operate with the other half. Transparency is what matters.
What about hostile takeovers?
Const walked through the game theory in detail. Say a competitor buys in and tries to take over a subnet. They push the price up buying. They lock everything. They take ownership. Then what?
The miners don't follow them. The validators don't follow them. The community doesn't follow them. Everyone sells. The attacker is locked and watching their position collapse while the original team moves to a new slot with the community behind them.
It becomes an extremely costly and ineffective attack. The subnet is the team, the miners, the branding, the vision, the community. You can't buy that with a token lock. You can only destroy your own capital trying.
What about small subnets?
Const said they intend to roll this out for larger subnets first and see how it plays out. Smaller subnets that are less than a year old likely won't have this applied immediately.
What about a max lock period?
Not finalized yet but likely around one year. Has to be capped or it becomes gameable.
What about subnet deregistration?
Locked stake gets relinquished. Simple.
What about teams that need emissions to pay staff?
This came up directly in the conversation. A subnet like Video that operates close to the margin can lock a portion and be transparent about it. "We can only afford to lock half our Alpha." That's fine. If you're open, you do good work, and you communicate, it works.
The community member who raised this point said it best, the concept of skin in the game and conviction for subnet owners should not be a problem with careful thought and planning.
And Const confirmed something important about timeline. The core design is already implemented. It's about polishing rough edges. Could ship within a month.
There will be an immunity period for newly registered subnets so teams aren't immediately vulnerable.
The biggest insight from the whole session?
Const framed this as a primitive. Not a final product. A building block.
Teams can use it to prove conviction. Investors can use it to evaluate risk. And eventually, agents can use it staking, voting, locking for the best operator to run a subnet.
Bittensor is building cryptographic governance systems that can be run by computers. No jurisdictions. No lawyers. No slow courts. Transparent, liquid, verifiable, and fast.
No other project in Web3 has ever attempted this.
While the rest of crypto leans into degeneracy, Bittensor is solving the hardest governance problems in the industry. In public. In real time.
Link:
youtu.be/cjMLWRhFQyo?si=byLT…