Subnet Deregistration History

Before dTao (Feb 2025), there was a competition on subnet activity, The subnet with the lowest emissions could be de-registered when a new subnet registered.

When dTao was launched, de-registration was removed from the chain

Subnet current state

There are 128 subnets, but many are inactive, and the tao/alpha in these subnets is not being adequately utilized.

Proposal

In the August 12, 2025 OpenDev call, Const proposed adding deregistration again. For a subnet to be deregistered, it must be:

1. Out of immunity
2. NAV over 1.
3. Lowest price

This will likely change over time, and will be voted on by the Senate before it is put into place.

Immunity

In the pre-dtao world, immunity was 7 days. Today, Subnets can not even start emission for the first 7 days. In the new proposal, subnets will be given adequate runway to get established and create a product. The initial take was 6 months of immunity.

Net Asset Value >1

Net Asset Value (NAV) is a companies assets minus liabilities, divided by the number of shares.

For a Subnet, this looks like:

tao_in is a sum of all the assets in the subnet. The shares are the alpha owned by subnet participants (and converted to tao to ensure both are reported in the same units).

If NAV >1, this means that the value of tao in the pool is greater than the value of alpha held by shareholders.

📘

A subnet has 100 tao_in, but the alpha_out is worth 50 tao (alpha_out * price).

• NAV is 2, and the subnet could be deregistered.
• When the subnet is liquidated, they will receive alpha_out_price_NAV tao.

If a holder has 1 tao worth of alpha, they will receive 2 tao on liquidation - increasing the value of their holding.

Subnet Historical NAV can be found as a chart on the statistics page: https://taostats.io/subnets/3/statistics

Lowest price

The subnet with the lowest price (and would be the next to be deregistered.