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Emissions: Root vs. Alpha Stake

In the Bittensor ecosystem, holders of tao may stake to a validator in a subnet in two different ways:

  • Root stake : Staking to a validator in subnet 0, the root subnet.
  • Alpha Stake: Staking to a validator in a subnet, exchanging your tao for alpha token.

The ratio of root: alpha staked is calculated using the root_proportion.

root proportion is calculated from 3 values:

  • tao on root: The total amount of tao on root.
  • alpha issued: The sum of alpha_in and alpha_out (all alpha emitted)
  • tao_weight: a variable set by the chain. The current tao_weight is 0.18.

Root vs alpha emission split

For a given subnet, how emission flows between root stakers and alpha stakers.

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Root prop
Alpha prop

Root proportion will change every block, as the tao and alpha values will have increased (by 1 and 2 respectively). The results can be charted over time:

At day 0 there are 9M tao available.

The chart will vary on the amount of tao available at the moment the subnet is created. The above chart shows day 0 = 6 million tao.

On day 0 of the subnet, 100% of emission will go to root stakeholders.

50% root: 50% alpha is met at approximately day 70 (this is highly variable, and just an estimate).

In this second chart, the yellow/green subnet is created 100 days after the blue/red subnet (9,720,000 tao, and 0 alpha for the 2nd subnet):

Now that the stake has been divided into root and subnet shares, we can divide these amongst the stakeholders.

Stakeholder Emissions: Root

Stakeholder Emissions: Alpha