How a subnet is registered, and what immunity protects

A slot, paid for with a lock

The chain holds a fixed number of subnet slots (SubnetLimit). Registering a subnet claims one, and the price is a lock in τ: the chain keeps a last lock cost that falls over time and jumps after each registration.

When every slot is taken, a registration is also a deregistration — the non-immune subnet at the front of the queue is dissolved to make room. So the lock cost is also the price of removing whichever subnet sits at rank one. Taosis says "at capacity" only when the subnet count actually meets the limit, not because the limit is known.

The immunity window

From its registration block, a subnet is immune for a number of blocks the chain sets (NetworkImmunityPeriod). Until the head block reaches registration plus that period, no registration can remove it.

Immune subnets are not at the back of the queue; they are absent from it. The moment immunity lapses the subnet is ranked with everyone else by moving price — and if its moving price is low, it can enter near the front.

Immunity ends at a block, not a date. The screener's Immune column (Lifecycle) shows that block, or "no" once it has passed — a verified answer, not a dash. The subnet page restates it as days remaining, and a chain-state guard on the Alerts page fires when it expires.

The other immunity

Each subnet also carries an Immunity hyperparameter of its own, in blocks. That one shields newly registered neurons from replacement and says nothing about whether the subnet itself can be deregistered.

The subnet page shows it in the Hyperparameters panel beside Reg. burn — a different cost again: what a miner pays for a UID, not what a founder pays for a slot.

What Taosis reads

The registration block, the immunity period, the last lock cost, its reduction interval and the slot limit are all chain reads, refreshed with the conviction sync. The subnet page shows the cost to remove rank one and what it falls to at the next reduction step; the Explorer's deregistration panel shows the cost today and how many subnets are still immune.

What Taosis will not do is turn a rank into a probability without observed registrations. That refusal, and the queue's ordering, belong to the deregistration pages.