Tao Emission does not add to 100%

Learn about tao excess and how it is calculated.

Looking at the Taostats Subnet page, you may notice that the Emissions do not always add to 100%

Here they add to 92.7%


If 1 tao is emitted per block, this means that just 0.817 tao is being awarded to subnets. Where is the other .183 ao going?

The chain is buying this tao and injecting it into subnet Liquidity pools.


Why??


Tao Emission is calculated from EMA flow.

Alpha Emission is calculated from tao emission and price - but it has a max value of 1.


At the time of writing, Subnet 8 has:

  • a normalized EMA flow of 0.05635527424782002.
  • Price is 0.035997

This would mean that alpha_in should be 1.55

But since the maximum alpha that can be emitted into the pool is one, this is not possible.

So we reset alpha_in to 1, and calculate the tao_in:

The tao_in cannot exceed 0.036997.

We have what is called excess tao = default_tao_in - tao_in

On SN 8 there is 0.0204 excess tao per block.

This tao is added to the liquidity pool, and the received alpha is recycled.

This serves to increase the price to nearer the emission percentage.

how can I find which are getting excess tao?

On the taostats subnet page - look for the daily chain buy column. This is the per block valus multiplied by 7200.


how will Excess tao change after the halving?

When tao halves in December 2025, all excess tao will drop to 0. Tao emissions will drop by 50%, and the max alpha_in will still be 1. This means that it is unlikely for excess toa be become a concern until we begin seeing alpha halvings in 2028.