Learn·Risk
Moving stake without selling it
Three chain events shift α between validators, subnets or wallets with no sale intended — and reading them as trades is how a chart lies about a wallet.
Published 2026-09-17
Three events, three meanings
StakeMoved: one coldkey moves α from one hotkey to another, on the same subnet or across subnets. StakeSwapped: same coldkey, same hotkey, another subnet. StakeTransferred: α leaves one coldkey for another — the only one where ownership changes.
In none of them did the wallet cash out. But the chain does not execute them as a relabelling: it unstakes and restakes, writing a StakeRemoved and a StakeAdded in the same block beside the movement event. Read naively, every move is a sale and a purchase.
What Taosis does with the legs
The indexer records the movement as its own out and in legs, and tags the sell and buy written beside it with the movement they belong to. A chart then draws one move marker instead of a sell and a buy, and the wallet history says "moved … onto a different validator — nothing bought or sold".
The chain states a movement's amount in τ, not α; where the α is not stated, Taosis leaves it blank rather than convert at a guessed price.
Where a move stops being neutral
α of one subnet cannot exist on another, so a move or swap across subnets passes through two pools — out of the origin pool into τ, then into the destination pool — each leg a pool trade with that pool's fee and price impact. Not a sale in intention; two swaps in effect.
Cost basis follows the intention: a move or swap between your own hotkeys or subnets carries its basis and realises nothing; a transfer to another coldkey is a disposal at market price. Volume leaves all three out — their τ is already in the pool legs — and in the holder scan a validator move nets to zero.
Where to see one
Paste a coldkey into the Explorer and its history reads in sentences: moved onto a different validator, swapped into another subnet, sent to another wallet. A validator's own page reads the same row from the other side — stake moved onto or off this validator — so a nominator's money is never written up as the validator's trade.
On a subnet's chart, moves, swaps and transfers are marker kinds of their own.
Read next
Cost basis and P&L
WAC or FIFO, replayed over indexed fills — with coverage stated, because a partial history makes a fake profit.
How buying α works
Buying α is a stake call against the subnet's pool: τ goes in, α comes out, and it is staked to a validator from the first block.
What a wallet page shows
Paste any address: Taosis says what kind of key it is, what it holds at today's prices, what it paid where it can prove it, and what happened to it.