Staking tao/alpha is how investors earn yield.

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Staking with taostats

See Staking Instructions for a number of pages describing how to stake using Taostats.

Staking plays a principal role in the functioning of the Bittensor network. In February 2025, the dTao release gave stakeholders additional power: staking into a subnet increases the emissions of the subnet.

in dTao, there are two options for staking:

• Staking to root
• Staking to a Subnet

Staking to root

Staking to root uses only tao. Your tao is staked on a root validator, and you receive returns based on the validator's performance in the subnets.

Staking to root is a safe staking option — there is no way to lose tao value. However, root staking decreases over time by design, as the root proportion decreases on all subnets.

Root rewards under Root Reborn

Root dividends are handled by Root Reborn, live on mainnet (subtensor spec_version 441). It replaced the earlier auto-compounding and "keep vs. swap" claim options — there is no auto-claim.

Instead, each root validator curates a basket: your root dividends are auto-sold to TAO (as before) and immediately re-bought across a set of subnets the validator chooses, then held as compounding subnet-alpha exposure until you redeem. You pick a validator on its basket, not just its take rate — a validator that publishes no basket buys nothing, and its stakers earn no root reward that cycle.

Your balance no longer rises on its own. To realise rewards you make a single manual claim_root call, which sweeps every validator you have root stake with, values your basket shares at current NAV, and swaps them to TAO (there is no "keep as subnet alpha" redemption). Claiming costs a fee that scales with basket width, so prefer a concentrated basket and claim infrequently — and claim before switching or unstaking from a validator, or your claim on that basket drops toward zero.

For the full mechanics — the basket vector, how shares accrue, fees, and per-participant impact — see Root Validator Baskets (the short canonical reference) and the Root Reborn explainer and TL;DR.

Root dividends accrue to your basket roughly every 2 days (the chain awards them somewhat randomly — a week between accruals is not abnormal), but they only reach your balance when you make the manual claim_root call.

Staking to alpha

This is the new feature and primary goal of dTao - to enable stakeholders to vote and determine the emissions for every subnet.

To stake in alpha, tao is exchanged via the Subnet Pools into alpha. This will incur Slippage. The received alpha is then staked to the validator selected. Your returns will be in alpha, and autocompounded to the validator hotkey.

Because alpha staking trades through a subnet pool, it can be front-run by MEV bots that worsen your slippage. Taostats protects alpha stake/unstake transactions with MEV Shield, which encrypts the transaction so bots cannot read or front-run it.

Staking to alpha does incur risk: a drop in alpha token price will result in a lower amount of tao when unstaking.

Emission is awarded every 360 blocks (approx 72 minutes).

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No unbonding period

Unstaking is immediate — there is no lock-up or unbonding delay. As soon as an unstake settles, the resulting tao is in your free balance and spendable right away. (The exception is conviction locks: alpha locked in conviction cannot be unstaked while the lock is active — your total staked alpha on the subnet must stay at or above the locked amount. Only alpha held above the locked amount is unstakable.)

Staking fees

For all staking transactions there is a small extrinsic (transaction) fee charged by the chain. Taostats currently does not allow staking every last tao — it leaves a small amount behind to cover the fee for the eventual unstake transaction.

Root

There is no additional staking fee to stake or unstake from root — only the standard chain extrinsic fee applies.

Subnets

• Staking and unstaking through a subnet pool carries a fee that defaults to 0.05% of the stake/unstake value.
• This can be changed by the subnet owner, so read the current value before you stake.

Get the current fee (and price) for a subnet

The live pool endpoint GET /api/dtao/pool/latest/v1 returns the subnet's current fee_rate (staking/unstaking fee) along with its price in TAO. Pass the netuid for the subnet you want.

Moving stake

The move stake command can be used to switch validators in a subnet. Under the hood, this is an unstake, and then staking. However, only one fee is charged.

There are three distinct operations for relocating an existing position — they are easy to confuse:

• Move (move_stake) — re-delegate a position to a different hotkey and/or a different subnet. You keep ownership. Moving across subnets swaps through both pools and incurs slippage on each leg.
• Swap (swap_stake) — move a position to a different subnet on the same hotkey. Both legs (sell on the origin pool, buy on the destination pool) can incur slippage, and the two subnets must differ.
• Transfer (transfer_stake) — hand the position to another coldkey. After this, that coldkey controls and can unstake the funds — not you. This is a transfer of value and is irreversible; double-check the destination address.

Unstaking everything at once

The "unstake all" operations sweep your entire stake on a hotkey in one call, but they behave differently from a normal unstake and have two things worth knowing:

• No slippage protection. Each pool swap executes at the current price with no limit, so large positions can incur significant slippage.
• Silent skips. Subnets where subtoken trading is disabled, or where a position is dust below the chain minimum, are silently skipped — the call can succeed while leaving some stake untouched.

unstake_all returns everything to your free tao balance; unstake_all_alpha sells your alpha positions and restakes the proceeds as tao on root (netuid 0), keeping the funds staked.

Root or subnet — which should I stake to?

• Root uses only TAO and carries no price risk, but its returns decline over time by design as subnets take a growing share of emissions. Rewards are realized on a manual claim_root (see Root Validator Baskets).
• Alpha (subnet) staking buys a subnet's token, which can appreciate or depreciate against TAO — higher potential return, higher risk, and it incurs price impact.