Vincent Rapido: Miners Union Validator, TaoSwap, sTAO, Root Reborn, Weight-Copying | Ep. 98
About SN27 Orion
In this episode, Rapido, co-founder of Miners Union Validator (MUV) and creator of TaoSwap, covers his full arc in the Bittensor ecosystem — from mining Neural Internet's compute subnet to building two of the ecosystem's most-used infrastructure tools. He discusses the origin of MUV's anti-weight-copying thesis, the sTAO experiment MUV ran before dynamic TAO reached the chain, and the business model tying TaoSwap's zero-fee model to MUV's validator revenue. Rapido also details the mechanics of TaoSwap's Conviction Takeover List, the implications of Root Reborn for validators becoming subnet-investment allocators, and why he has never registered a subnet despite two-plus years in the ecosystem. *In this episode, you'll learn* - The origin of Miners Union Validator: how a group of Bittensor miners discovered that validators were simply copying each other's weights without running subnet code, and co-founded MUV to be the most transparent and equitable validator in the ecosystem - The sTAO experiment: how MUV implemented stake-weighted subnet voting before dynamic TAO was built, proved that stakers would vote for their own subnets, and delivered the foundation a live chain experiment without requiring an upgrade - The Christmas sprint: how Rapido discovered a GPU-spoofing exploit on Neural Internet (SN27), spent his entire Christmas vacation fixing it using Hashcat proof-of-work verification, and won a 50 TAO bounty that funded his entry into validator operations - How MUV's copy-weight tool works and why Rapido argues it doesn't contradict the anti-weight-copying thesis — copying from vetted institutional sources like OTF is fundamentally different from lazy validator mirroring - TaoSwap's Conviction Takeover List: what the 51% takeover threshold means, how MUV tracks it on-chain, and why the Covenant situation made this tooling necessary - Root Reborn's implication for validators: how allocating stake to subnets ties APY directly to subnet performance, forcing valida
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SN27 Orion at a glance
SN27, Orion (α token ג), is one of the independent markets on the Bittensor network, each with its own α token and its own price. Its α currently trades at 0.002315 τ (≈ $0.73), against 6,205 τ of pool liquidity. On-chain, the best-delegated validator on it yields about 49.09% APR (simple) and 63.37% APY (compounded), emissions add 0.000000 τ to the pool each block, epochs run every 360 blocks. It was registered at block #1,727,132.
Taosis indexes announcements, articles, posts and releases about Bittensor subnets from their own channels and keeps a record of each. The text above is the source’s; the figures are read from the chain by Taosis.