τTaosisTaoScale

Guide

Bittensor, TAO and subnets: the guide

What the network is, how to get set up, what to check before buying a subnet’s α, how to buy it without being front-run, how to sell, move and withdraw it, and where to have it managed for you. Taosis itself is read-only — every market figure here is read from the chain, and the site never asks you to sign anything.

  1. Step 1

    What Bittensor is: TAO, subnets and α

    Bittensor is a blockchain where independent teams run AI services. Each service lives in its own subnet — think of it as a mini-economy with its own token, the α (alpha) token. TAO (τ) is the network’s main currency: every α is priced in τ, and the chain mints new τ every block to pay for the work the subnets do. Buying α of a subnet means putting τ into that subnet’s pool; staking it to a validator earns staking yield — new α distributed every tempo, the network’s reward cycle, which is 360 blocks, about 72 minutes, on most subnets. Your return therefore has two engines: the yield (more tokens) and the α price (each token’s value in τ), which can rise or fall. The explainers cover each mechanism in depth.

  2. Step 2

    Create a wallet, receive TAO

    Install a browser extension — SubWallet (Ledger-compatible), Talisman or Polkadot.js — and create an account. Your Bittensor address starts with 5…. Write your recovery phrase on paper, offline: whoever holds it controls your funds, and no site will ever legitimately ask for it. Then buy TAO on an exchange that lists it and withdraw it on the Bittensor network to your own address. Start with a small test amount, check it arrives, then send the rest. Always keep about 0.1 τ unstaked for transaction fees. Paste your address into the Portfolio page at any time to see it — no connection needed.

    One rule covers the rest: never send τ to a service that says it will stake it for you. Staking is signed from your own address and the α stays there — a validator can never move what you stake to it. A service that needs your τ at its address to “stake it for you” has taken custody of it, a risk the chain never asks you to take.

  3. Step 3

    Research before you buy: the team, the project, the numbers

    A subnet is a project run by a team, and the team comes first. Find out who runs it — named people or anonymous — and what they built before; compare what they announced last quarter with what actually shipped; ask a question on their Discord and see whether, how fast and how straight they answer. Its screener row opens a page with the on-chain description, website, GitHub and Discord, and the news feed tags every release by subnet, so you can see whether the code moves.

    Then watch what the owner does with its own α. The subnet page links the owner’s address, whose stakes and activity show whether it keeps its share of the emission or sells it. An owner who holds its own α is betting alongside you; one who sells every payout is not. The same page’s Owner lock and Owner conviction measure something wider: every conviction lock pointed at the owner’s hotkey, whoever placed it — the owner or any holder backing it. A large figure there shows support for that hotkey, not that the owner itself has locked anything: on some subnets all of it is other holders’ α.

    Last, the figures: its share of τ emission (how emission is split) and its TAO flow (net staking) — τ users staked minus τ they unstaked over 24 hours; the protocol’s own emission, chain buys and basket trades are not in it (volume and TAO flow) — then holders and their concentration, the conviction locks and takeover progress, the deregistration queue rank, the miner burn, the pool depth. A thin pool, one wallet holding half the α, τ flowing out day after day, or a subnet near the front of the deregistration queue are each a reason to wait. The definitions page says exactly what every figure means.

  4. Step 4

    Buy α safely: a tight slippage limit, a shielded order, and DCA

    Every subnet trades through a liquidity pool, so an order moves the price while it executes (slippage), and bots watch the public transaction queue to buy just before a large order and sell right after it. Three habits protect you.

    First, set a tight slippage limit — well under 1% on a deep pool. A bot works out how much it can take from every order: a loose limit invites it, and no limit at all lets it take as much as it wants.

    Second, send the order shielded. MEV Shield is built into the Bittensor chain: it encrypts your order when you send it and decrypts it only in the next block, so no bot can read it in time to trade ahead of you. taostats.io’s staking pages use it. A shielded order is signed twice — the order, then its encryption wrapper (taostats offers a way to skip the second password entry). taostats leaves the shield off for orders under 1 τ, too small to be worth attacking, and for root, which has no price impact to exploit.

    Third, DCA — split your entry into several smaller buys over days or weeks instead of one order — so no single fill pays much slippage and a bad day does not set your whole cost basis. Never chase a spike.

    One DCA slice on taostats, step by step:

    1. Open the subnet’s page on taostats.io and connect the same wallet extension.
    2. In Settings, pick your validator (Step 6) and the slippage you accept.
    3. Type the amount of one slice — not Max, which spends all your free τ — and check the estimated slippage it shows.
    4. Click Buy, read the popup, then Confirm.
    5. Approve in your wallet — twice if the order goes out shielded.
    6. Paste your address into Portfolio on Taosis to see the position land.

    taostats’ own staking guide shows each screen.

  5. Step 5

    Or have it managed for you: TaoScale

    If you would rather not track every subnet, compare validators and time entries yourself, TaoScale is a non-custodial managed fund on Bittensor: you commit a budget in τ, and its desk deploys and manages it across screened subnets — allocation, entries, timing, validator choice. Your funds never leave your wallet: a limited staking proxy lets the desk stake and reallocate, never withdraw, and you can revoke it and exit at any time — the positions sit at your own address, so they stay yours on-chain whatever happens. Its pricing page states the current fee and minimum budget, and Invest is where a budget is committed. Taosis and TaoScale share the same operator; Taosis stays the free, read-only explorer, TaoScale is where a budget gets managed.

  6. Step 6

    Pick a validator, and read the yield honestly

    α is staked to a validator, which affects your yield, never your capital. Check its take: the share of its dividends a validator keeps before paying its nominators. The chain caps it at 18% (its MaxDelegateTake setting) and allows 0%. Prefer a validator with a large delegated stake and a yield close to the best on that subnet — a tiny validator showing a huge APR usually shows it for one epoch. The validators directory lists every delegate with its take, stake and yield, and a subnet page lists its own validators. A yield is annualised from recent epochs — the directory shows the 24-hour median on each validator’s main subnet — so it moves every tempo and guarantees nothing. Root (SN0) is the exception: staking there is one-to-one with τ, pays the lowest yield, and is a place to wait, not to grow.

  7. Step 7

    Sell, move and withdraw — always from your own wallet

    Everything you buy stays at your own address, so everything can be undone from your own wallet — the extension, or a staking platform such as taostats that you connect it to. Never from Taosis, which only reads.

    Selling α (unstaking) swaps it back to τ through the same pool as a purchase, so the same rules apply: a tight slippage limit, the shield on orders of 1 τ or more, and slices rather than one large exit from a thin pool. There is no unbonding period: the τ lands as free balance straight away. The exception is α under a conviction lock you placed: it stays locked and cannot be sold. A decaying lock frees it gradually (half of what is left about every 90 days); a perpetual one frees nothing until you set it back to decaying.

    Root (SN0) has no pool, so root stake comes back to τ one-to-one, straight away, with no price impact.

    Moving α to another validator on the same subnet is not a sale: the chain transfers the same α from one validator to the other, one-to-one, with no slippage — only the transaction fee. Moving to another subnet is different: it sells through one pool and buys through another (what a stake move is).

    Sending τ is a plain transfer from your extension to any 5… address. Check its first and last characters, send a small test amount to any new address first, and keep about 0.1 τ for fees — a transfer cannot be recalled.

  8. Step 8

    Know the risks, take profits deliberately

    Capital at risk: α can fall below what you paid, and a subnet can be deregistered. You hold your keys: a lost seed phrase or a signed transaction cannot be undone. Only invest what you can leave at work; sell a slice when you want to bank a gain rather than waiting for a top; and remember that a sale goes through the same pool as a purchase — a large exit from a thin pool sells at a discount. Each subnet page’s TAO in pool shows how deep the pool is, and the Locked τ column you can add to the screener shows what locked α would fetch through it. Nothing on Taosis is financial advice.

Further reading: every explainer · every metric defined · FAQ. Links to taostats.io and taoscale.com are to third-party services with their own terms; TaoScale is operated by the same team as Taosis.