Bittensor (TAO)

The founding fathers of Singapore were very different people with one commitment above all: make the country succeed.

Decades after we clearly see that it worked. Bittensor is the same and I love that, being open to go against an idea or direction is what makes whatever direction is followed at the end, even stronger.

“To infinity and beyond” $TAO

Okay, we are deep into the complexity here and I don’t want my PTSD of validators behavior pre dtao make me miss the point.

@const_reborn has me rethinking, and I want to lay out where I’ve landed neutrally, because I no longer think the case against it is as clean as I first believed, but I still have concerns.

The core of what worries me is this:
Under the proposal, validators set a distribution vector that directs real, recurring buy pressure into subnets.

Many validators overlap with subnet operators, or are close to them socially. So there’s a structural conflict of interest. A validator can route root capital toward subnets they hold or are friendly with.

@const_reborn argument is that this isn’t the old root network. Ok, I get that. The market is now dynamic, so there’s an objective truth, actual subnet performance, that validator choices get measured against. A single validator’s root‑derived buying is small relative to total subnet volume and to fake yield by pumping a subnet they hold, a validator has to do real buying and keep doing it. The moment the price strength shows up, their own stakers can front run it by unstaking, which drains the validator’s dominance and makes the scheme progressively more expensive to sustain. And validators are non anonymous, with public weights and known teams, so bad behavior is visible and could be socially costly (which is not necessarily true since stakers are more likely to follow the money/hype).

Anyway, that would cost continuous capital and market risk rather than being free extraction tho. So maybe not as easy as it seems.
That argument got me. Where I’m still stuck, and I say this humbly because well, I have been following @const_reborn vision for years now, and I respect his work. I may simply be missing the point, between the equilibrium argument and what’s actually shipping.

The self limiting story depends on stakers noticing and reacting. But a lot of root stakers are in root precisely because they don’t track subnets closely, and if the people who are supposed to discipline the validator aren’t watching or can’t easily switch, the corrective mechanism is weaker than the model assumes. Same way STAO required from stakers a more active and in scale participation but it never happened.

The argument that buy pressure is too small to manipulate cuts hardest in liquid pools. But the mess would happen on thin or illiquid subnets, exactly where a small (aka new teams on empty sn slots), steady drip of buying moves price the most, and those are also where a friendly validator relationship is cheapest to exploit.

So the place the conflict of interest is most tempting is the place the “it’s too small to matter” defense is weakest.
And the guardrail that would most directly address this, caps on buy size relative to pool depth and self deal limits on the weight vector, is by the PR’s own known follow ups not yet implemented. So the economic argument that it’s self limiting may hold in equilibrium, but the code going to devnet doesn’t yet contain the brake. That’s the part I can’t resolve on my own. @const_reborn I don’t know whether the conflict will be contained by market dynamics, as you argue, or whether it needs the explicit code guards that aren’t in yet.

I’m not where I started, for sure. I came in thinking this was clearly a bad PR, and I no longer think that. I find the answer more serious than I expected, except the Osho thing..that was unnecessary haha

I’m genuinely trying to figure out whether transparency (which is still tricky to fully expect) + competition is enough to neutralize the conflict, or whether you still need hard limits in the code.

If someone can show me why the self limiting mechanism holds even in thin pools and even when stakers aren’t paying attention, I’d happily change my mind.

$TAO

$TAO fam, Root Reborn is a big deal, and Const put out his response to Yuma's critique. He didn't dodge any of it. He went point by point. You need to see this.

Because a few of the scariest objections people had? He says they're just wrong on the code.

The custody honeypot, that single coldkey everyone was worried about:

Const calls it a flat-out error. The escrow isn't an account like yours or mine. It's a placeholder owned by the chain itself. It can't be stolen, can't be drained, and can't act like a honeypot.

It's just smart bookkeeping, not a wallet. If that's true, the scariest concern on the list is basically gone.

The bank run with no circuit breaker:

His answer is simple. Claims are just an unstake across the basket. Do alpha holders cause bank runs today when they claim their yield? No.

We don't need a circuit breaker now, and building on top of the same system doesn't suddenly create the need for one.

The chain choking at scale:

This is the one that hits the hardest. Const says Vune and Greg already solved this last year. The lazy accounting system distributes to every staker in a single operation.

His words: the critique simply doesn't know the chain code. That's not spin. It's a builder telling you you're describing a problem they already engineered around.

The LIBOR comparison:

He even flips it. LIBOR was opaque, non-competitive, and the people setting rates had zero skin in the game. Validators are the opposite. Transparent, competitive, and bad calls cost them directly. So LIBOR isn't a reason against this. It's a reason for it.

The insider dealing fear from 2024:

This is the part I want you to actually think about.

We're not in 2024 anymore. Back then, validators risked nothing and directed 100% of $TAO inflation at zero cost. Now, there's a live market judging them.

A validator trying to pump a subnet they secretly hold would have to keep buying it themselves. And the second they do, the stakers they just enriched can sell into that strength by unstaking. The attack pays for itself until it collapses. It's self limiting.

Then Const keeps it real:

His read on who's really pushing back: the real risk here isn't regulatory or technical. It's competition. Young smart teams coming into the root network with better staking products and threatening the big incumbents who've had a comfortable seat for a while.

That changes how I look at the whole thing.

So where does this leave us.

Striker's quality point still stands on its own. That's philosophy, not code, and Const didn't argue against it. Demand comes from quality. Fair.

But Yuma's structural fears? Const just argued that most of them fall apart once you understand how the chain actually works. If he's right about the accounting and the chain owned escrow, the No Brakes argument mostly loses its weight.

The honest tension now:

Const isn't asking you to trust him. He's telling you to read the code.

I came in cautious on the structural stuff. This response moved me. Not all the way. Striker's quality point is still fair, and Yuma asking for a real process and a roadmap is still fair, and a founder defending his own proposal is still an interested party.

But the honeypot, the bank run, the scaling fear? If the code does what he says, those were never really there.

And this is the part I keep thinking about.

This is a network defending its own economics in public, actually looks like. With founder on stage. Critics piling it on. And he answers with actual code instead of a spin.

Normal companies change their economics behind doors, meetings, etc...and they tell you after it's done. Bittensor does it out in the open and lets its toughest critics take a shot, and we get some answers.

A fixed protocol rule is centralized, but predictable. A market is decentralized, but only if competition is real.

Root Reborn is a bet that markets decentralize better than hardcoded rules do. I like that bet. But we better get it right.

$TAO