Tao Emission

Basics on how tao is emitted and distributed in Bittensor.

Every block, 0.5 tao is emitted by the chain (the first Halving was in December 2025). Where do these tokens go?

The tao is divided amongst the subnets based on emission. And, then, depending on the alpha price, some is injected into the liquidity pool, and some is used as a chain buy to purchase alpha (that is then recycled).

How emission is determined

As of 2026-06-23, each subnet’s share of per-block emission is proportional to:

root_proportion × subnet_moving_price × (1 − miner_burned)

…normalized across all subnets. Tao Flow / Net Tao Flow no longer drive emission. See the canonical page: Price-based subnet emission shares.

Emitted tao has 2 destinations:

tao injected
chain buy

Tao injected

This is the primary feature of tao emission. Tao from the chain is injected into the subnet’s liquidity pool. An equal amount of alpha is minted and created at the same time (in order to keep the liquidity pool and the price balanced.

However, there is a limit of 0.5 alpha that can be injected into the pool per block. This means that the tao injected is max(emitted, price*0.5).

Chain Buy

If tao injected is limited by the alpha price, there is excess tao that was emitted to the subnet. This tao is used to buy alpha, an dthen the alpha is recycled. This mechanism raises the alpha price - eventually leading to the chain buys stopping.