In Asian philosophy, Tao is the natural way of the universe, an unexplainable force that is an important part of everyday life. It gets its name from the Chinese character which means “the way” or “the path”. If you are a Star Wars fan - think "The Force."

The tao token similarly pervades into every part of the Bittensor ecosystem. Tao is the token that is both earned and utilised by the core participants of the Bittensor network.

For a high-level overview, the Tokenomics has a great history and background of the tao token.

Units

1 billionth of a tao is a rao. 10^9 rao = 1 tao. The Bittensor network has a hard limit of 21,000,000 (21 million) tao.

Emission

One block is written to the Bittensor blockchain every 12 seconds. For every block written, 1 tao is created (in the current halvening cycle).

Blocks are organised into epochs of 360 blocks (72 minutes).

~7200 tao are created every day.

To learn more about how emission is distributed:

Recycling

Recycled tao is tao that is removed from circulation back into the unissued supply.

There are two ways that tao is recycled:

Emission on the root subnet assigned to Subnet 0 is recycled.
When a node is registered by a miner or validator on any given subnet, the tao used to purchase the node is recycled

Halvening

When 50% of the unissued supply has been issued (approximately every 4 years) the rate of tao issuance will decrease by 50%. The next halvening will be in October 2025 when the emission will drop to 0.5 tao per block. This mirrors the tokenomics of Bitcoin and can be seen in more detail with exact dates in the Tokenomics of Taostats.

Allocation

The tao allocation page breaks down how tao is divided amongst the active participants of the BIttensor network.