Child & Parent Hotkeys
A child hotkey lets a validator delegate a portion of its stake weight to another hotkey, which validates on its behalf. The parent retains ownership of the stake; the child earns a configurable childkey take on the emissions it produces.
Parent hotkeys launched on the Bittensor chain in September 2024 — a way for a stakeholder to earn TAO from stake without running a validator themselves.
For how child hotkeys affect validator returns and emissions, see Validation and Emission and parent hotkeys.
Key points
- Parent hotkey: owns the stake and assigns weight to one or more child hotkeys. It adds its stake to an existing validator, increasing that validator's total stake on the subnet.
- Child hotkey: validates using delegated weight and takes a childkey cut of the resulting emission.
- Child/parent relationships are factored into every per-subnet validator return calculation.
Why use a parent hotkey?
- A parent hotkey does not need to run a neuron.
- You can begin building a validator while already validating — many subnets have minimum stake requirements, and parenting lets you participate below your own competitive floor.
Parent hotkeys on Taostats
In the subnet metagraph, a yellow stake value indicates parent hotkeys. Clicking the caret opens a view showing all of the parents (and the percentage of their stake) added to the child hotkey.
For the benefit of being a parent hotkey, Taostats charges a child take of 4.5% — the parent's returns are reduced by 4.5%, which is distributed to Taostats and its stakeholders.
Can parent hotkeys "beat" existing validator returns?
If the parent hotkey chooses child validators with high VTrust, it can achieve competitive returns — but it will never earn higher returns than the validator it is parenting on.
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Updated 2 days ago