SUBMIT A PR SUBMIT AN ISSUElast edit: Feb 06, 2025

Staking and Unstaking in Dynamic TAO

This page refers to the nature of staking and unstaking operations in the Dynamic TAO model, which is a planned evoluation of the Bittensor network.

Staking is always local to a subnet.

Each subnet operates its own automated market-maker (AMM), meaning it mantains its own reserves of the two tokens being traded so that it can facilitate a trade of any desired quantity of liquidity (as long as its available), at a price that it automated calculates.

Each subnet has a reserve of TAO and a reserve of its currency, referred to in general as its alpha ( $\alpha$ ) currency. Stake is held in $\alpha$ token denominations.

As a TAO holder you will stake to a validator’s hotkey (as previously), but now you select a subnet to stake to them within.

When you stake:

First, your TAO stake goes into the subnet's TAO reserve of its AMM (automated market maker) pool.
Then, the subnet AMM pool algorithm uses the exchange rate and calculates the equivalent units of $\alpha$ , for the TAO that was just added to the TAO reserve side. This amount of $\alpha$ is taken out of the alpha reserve of the pool and is sent to the validator’s hotkey.
The validator’s hotkey holds the $\alpha$ . The sum of stake among all hotkeys is referred as $\alpha$ outstanding for that subnet.

When you unstake:

When you issue an unstake command, btcli stake remove, and specify the units of $\alpha$ token you want to unstake, this $\alpha$ is first taken out of the validator’s hotkey and added to the $\alpha$ reserves of the subnet pool.
The subnet AMM pool algorithm then applies the latest exchange rate and calculates the equivalent TAO units for the $\alpha$ token units that were just added to the $\alpha$ reserves of the pool.
These equivalent TAO units are then taken out of the TAO reserves of the subnet pool and are sent to the TAO holder’s coldkey.

Stake is always expressed in alpha units

In Dynamic TAO, except for the stake held in the Root Subnet, the stake held by a hotkey in a subnet is always expressed in the subnet-specific $\alpha$ units. Root Subnet stake is expressed in $\tau$ .

Prereq

To follow along, install the Dynamic TAO-enabled release candidate of the Bittensor command line interface btcli, by running:

pip install bittensor-cli==8.2.0rc10

Understanding pricing and anticipating slippage

Each Bittensor subnet operates as a constant product AMM, meaning that it will accept trades that conserve the product of the quantities of the two tokens in reserve, TAO and alpha. To calulate the price in one token of batch of the other token that a buyer wishes to acquire—alpha if they are staking, or TAO if they are unstaking—the algorithm assumes that the transaction does not change this product, so the product of TAO and alpha is the same before and after.

When staking, the product K of TAO in reserve and alpha in reserve is the same before and after the transaction, so the initial product must be equal to the product after the cost in TAO is added to the reserve, and the stake is removed from the reserve and placed in the staked hotkey:

\tau_{\mathrm{in}} \,\alpha_{\mathrm{in}} = k

(\tau_{\mathrm{in}} + \text{cost}) \bigl(\alpha_{\mathrm{in}} - \text{stake}\bigr) = k

(\tau_{\mathrm{in}} + \text{cost}) \bigl(\alpha_{\mathrm{in}} - \text{stake}\bigr) = \tau_{\mathrm{in}} \,\alpha_{\mathrm{in}}

This means that if we choose to stake in a certain amount of TAO (if we specify the cost), then the yielded stake (the quantity of alpha to be removed from reserve and granted to the staked hotkey) is:

\text{Stake} = \alpha_{\text{in}} - \frac{\tau_{\text{in}} \alpha_{\text{in}}} {\tau_{\text{in}} + \text{cost}}

For example, suppose that a subnet has 100 alpha in reserve and 10 TAO, and we want to stake in 5 TAO.

The price at this moment is 10 TAO / 100 alpha, or 10 alpha per TAO, so if we stake 5 TAO, we would expect 50 alpha, without taking slippage into account.

With slippage, the yielded alpha stake will be:

\text{Stake} = 100 - \frac{ 10 * 100} {10 + 5}

or 33.333 alpha sent to the hotkey. So in this case, the slippage is the difference between the ideal expectation of 50 and the actual swap value of 33.33333:

16.667 = 50 - 33.333

This slippage is 50% of the actual swap value, which is extremely high, because we chose small values for the available liquidity. In general, slippage is high when available liquidity is limited compared to the magnitude of the transaction, since the transaction itself is changing the price significantly.

tip

btcli shows the slippage of staking and unstaking operations, so you don't need to calculate it yourself. See Stake into a node.

View subnet currency reserves

To see the list of subnets and their currencies, run:

btcli subnet list

You should see something like the following output. Notice that next to the subnets Netuid and Name is the subnet's token Price (τ_in/α_in), which, as indicated, is a ratio of the TAO in reserve τ_in to alpha in reserve α_in.

                                                                Subnets
                                                             Network: test


        ┃            ┃ Price       ┃ Market Cap  ┃              ┃                        ┃               ┃                ┃
 Netuid ┃ Name       ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ (α * Price) ┃ Emission (τ) ┃ P (τ_in, α_in)         ┃ Stake (α_out) ┃ Supply (α)     ┃ Tempo (k/n)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━
   0    │ τ tau      │ 1.0000 τ/Τ  │ τ 5.01m     │ τ 0.0000     │ -, -                   │ Τ 2.92m       │ 5.01m Τ /21M   │ -/-
  119   │ Ⲃ vidac    │ 0.2462 τ/Ⲃ  │ τ 14.43k    │ τ 0.0526     │ τ 873.55, 3.55k Ⲃ      │ 55.07k Ⲃ      │ 58.61k Ⲃ /21M  │ 23/99
  250   │ ኤ unknown  │ 0.0586 τ/ኤ  │ τ 3.43k     │ τ 0.0258     │ τ 427.54, 7.30k ኤ      │ 51.32k ኤ      │ 58.61k ኤ /21M  │ 54/99
  277   │ इ muv      │ 0.0588 τ/इ  │ τ 3.27k     │ τ 0.0066     │ τ 109.83, 1.87k इ      │ 53.67k इ      │ 55.54k इ /21M  │ 81/99
  255   │ ዉ unknown  │ 0.0446 τ/ዉ  │ τ 2.62k     │ τ 0.0488     │ τ 810.66, 18.16k ዉ     │ 40.46k ዉ      │ 58.61k ዉ /21M  │ 59/99
   1    │ α alpha    │ 0.0290 τ/α  │ τ 1.70k     │ τ 0.0337     │ τ 559.80, 19.32k α     │ 39.27k α      │ 58.59k α /21M  │ 5/99
  117   │ Ⲁ alfa     │ 0.0258 τ/Ⲁ  │ τ 1.51k     │ τ 0.0273     │ τ 452.36, 17.55k Ⲁ     │ 41.06k Ⲁ      │ 58.61k Ⲁ /21M  │ 21/99
  ...

View a subnet's nodes

btcli subnet show --netuid 119

Netuid: 119
Using the specified network test from config

                                                   Subnet 119: vidac
                                                     Network: test

 UID ┃ Stake (Ⲃ) ┃ Alpha (Ⲃ) ┃  Tao (τ) ┃ Dividends ┃ Incentive ┃ Emissions (Ⲃ) ┃ Hotkey ┃ Coldkey ┃ Identity
━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
│   5.03k Ⲃ │   5.03k Ⲃ │   τ 0.00 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58163 Ⲃ   │ 5FRxKz │ 5FRxKz  │ Owner119 (*Owner)
│  18.72k Ⲃ │  18.72k Ⲃ │   τ 0.00 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5CtaFa │ 5H13H4  │ ~
│  16.87k Ⲃ │   9.57k Ⲃ │  τ 7.30k │  0.30140  │  0.0000   │  35.62095 Ⲃ   │ 5FCPTn │ 5D2d3Y  │ ~
│   9.46k Ⲃ │   9.46k Ⲃ │   τ 1.81 │  0.17008  │  0.0065   │  20.10072 Ⲃ   │ 5CFZ9x │ 5H13H4  │ ~
│  777.12 Ⲃ │  775.31 Ⲃ │   τ 1.81 │  0.01837  │  0.0096   │   2.17105 Ⲃ   │ 5HbYLL │ 5H13H4  │ ~
│  682.43 Ⲃ │  558.57 Ⲃ │ τ 123.86 │  0.01674  │  0.0096   │   1.97877 Ⲃ   │ 5CorGT │ 5Cqiai  │ ~
│  362.15 Ⲃ │  360.35 Ⲃ │   τ 1.80 │  0.01112  │  0.0097   │   1.31442 Ⲃ   │ 5HBK4F │ 5H13H4  │ ~
│  120.37 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 9.31 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5Ct14B │ 5GEeMQ  │ ~
│  118.54 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 7.48 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58163 Ⲃ   │ 5D2nW1 │ 5D9to6  │ ~
│  118.48 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 7.42 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5CDZVv │ 5Ff9GG  │ ~
│  116.68 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 5.62 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5EARqJ │ 5CtBA6  │ ~
│  116.09 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 5.03 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5CeoYQ │ 5GKVqx  │ ~
│  114.02 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 2.96 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5DekuZ │ 5GHSq9  │ ~
│  111.87 Ⲃ │  111.06 Ⲃ │   τ 0.81 │  0.00492  │  0.0098   │   0.58162 Ⲃ   │ 5EUyUT │ 5G9RAF  │ ~

Stake into a node

Use btcli stake add to stake to a validator on a subnet. You'll be prompted to choose a subnet and validator, as well as specify an amount of TAO to stake into the validator's hotkey as alpha.

 btcli stake add

Enter the netuid to use. Leave blank for all netuids: 117
Enter the wallet name (PracticeKey!):
Enter the wallet hotkey name or ss58 address to stake to (or Press Enter to view delegates):
Using the specified network test from config


                                                      Subnet 117: alfa
                                                       Network: test

 # ┃ UID ┃ Stake (Ⲁ) ┃ Alpha (Ⲁ) ┃ Tao (τ) ┃ Dividends ┃ Incentive ┃ Emissions (Ⲁ) ┃ Hotkey ┃ Coldkey ┃ Identity
━━━╇━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 1 │  4  │   5.16k Ⲁ │   5.16k Ⲁ │  τ 0.00 │  0.00000  │  0.0000   │   0.00000 Ⲁ   │ 5G9pfx │ 5G9pfx  │ (*Owner controlled)
 2 │  0  │    0.20 Ⲁ │    0.00 Ⲁ │  τ 0.20 │  0.00000  │  0.0000   │   0.00000 Ⲁ   │ 5GCTbn │ 5G9pfx  │ (*Owner controlled)
 3 │  2  │  39.32k Ⲁ │  32.02k Ⲁ │ τ 7.30k │  1.00000  │  0.0000   │  73.85240 Ⲁ   │ 5FCPTn │ 5D2d3Y  │ ~
 4 │  5  │   4.44k Ⲁ │   4.44k Ⲁ │  τ 0.00 │  0.00000  │  0.0000   │   0.00000 Ⲁ   │ 5CtaFa │ 5H13H4  │ ~
 5 │  3  │    0.00 Ⲁ │    0.00 Ⲁ │  τ 0.00 │  0.00000  │  0.0000   │   0.00000 Ⲁ   │ 5GTzwV │ 5Gxcfw  │ ~
 6 │  1  │    0.00 Ⲁ │    0.00 Ⲁ │  τ 0.00 │  0.00000  │  0.0000   │   0.00000 Ⲁ   │ 5C8Hop │ 5EyVeu  │ ~
───┼─────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────────┼────────┼─────────┼─────────────────────
   │     │  48.92k Ⲁ │  41.62k Ⲁ │ 7.30k Ⲁ │   1.000   │           │   73.8524 Ⲁ   │        │         │

After selecting a validator to delegate stake to, you'll see your wallet balance and be asked to specify the amount of TAO you wish to stake.


Amount to stake (TAO τ): 5

You'll then see the details of the trade, including slippage, and be asked to confirm execution.

                                                        Staking to:
                   Wallet: PracticeKey!, Coldkey ss58: 5G4mxrN8msvc4jjwp7xoBrtAejTfAMLCMTFGCivY5inmySbq
                                                       Network: test

 Netuid ┃                      Hotkey                      ┃ Amount (τ) ┃      Rate (per τ)      ┃   Received   ┃ Slippage
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━
   19   │ 5FCPTnjevGqAuTttetBy4a24Ej3pH9fiQ8fmvP1ZkrVsLUoT │  τ 5.0000  │ 991.3160712161465 t/τ  │ 4,793.8697 t │ 3.2827 %
────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────┼──────────────┼──────────
        │                                                  │            │                        │              │

Description:
The table displays information about the stake operation you are about to perform.
The columns are as follows:
    - Netuid: The netuid of the subnet you are staking to.
    - Hotkey: The ss58 address of the hotkey you are staking to.
    - Amount: The TAO you are staking into this subnet onto this hotkey.
    - Rate: The rate of exchange between your TAO and the subnet's stake.
    - Received: The amount of stake you will receive on this subnet after slippage.
    - Slippage: The slippage percentage of the stake operation. (0% if the subnet is not dynamic i.e. root).

Would you like to continue? [y/n]:

If you confirm, the staking operation will execute. After completion

View your current stakes

Use btcli stake list to view your currently held stakes. For each validator you have staked, you'll see how much stake you currently hold on each subnet.

Stake is held in alpha, but note that value at the current price is also displayed, along with the computed Swap value and slippage rate of the current holdings.

                       Hotkey: 5GEXJdUXxLVmrkaHBfkFmoodXrCSUMFSgPXULbnrRicEt1kK
                                            Network: test

                             See below for an explanation of the columns

        ┃           ┃     Value ┃           ┃    Price    ┃                  ┃            ┃  Emission
 Netuid ┃ Name      ┃ (α x τ/α) ┃ Stake (α) ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃    Swap (α -> τ) ┃ Registered ┃ (α/block)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━
 250    │ ኤ unknown │   τ 18.38 │ 602.14 ኤ  │ 0.0305 τ/ኤ  │ τ 17.96 (2.287%) │        YES │  0.0000 ኤ
 119    │ Ⲃ vidac   │   τ 13.72 │  98.73 Ⲃ  │ 0.1390 τ/Ⲃ  │ τ 13.61 (0.815%) │        YES │  0.0000 Ⲃ
────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼───────────
 2      │           │   τ 32.10 │           │             │          τ 31.57 │            │

Press Enter to continue to the next hotkey...

Staking and Unstaking in Dynamic TAO

Understanding pricing and anticipating slippage​

View subnet currency reserves​

View a subnet's nodes​

Stake into a node​

View your current stakes​

Understanding pricing and anticipating slippage

View subnet currency reserves

View a subnet's nodes

Stake into a node

View your current stakes