TL;DR:
- Nature of the change: The proposed governance code modifies the automatic liquidation of rewards into an accumulation strategy.
- Mobilized capital: The Bittensor network emits approximately 7,200 TAO tokens daily, valued at more than $1.8 million.
- Development status: The initiative remains in the testing phase within GitHub and faces technical reviews due to bottlenecks.
A new line of code submitted to GitHub last Wednesday could reconfigure the economy of Bittensor, the decentralized AI network behind the TAO token. The proposal, called Root Reborn, was developed under the pseudonym “unconst” and proposes to transform the operational function of validators within the ecosystem into figures equivalent to on-chain fund managers.
When we first built the Opentensor Foundation to support Bittensor we were responsible for everything:
– The Python API.
– The Blockchain code.
– The Explorer/Scanner.
– The Validator nodes.
– The Subnet protocols.
– The CLI.
– Fundraising.
etc. etc.Today, the majority of…
— const (@const_reborn) June 17, 2024
Data from Glassnode indicates that the network distributes approximately 7,200 TAO per day, representing an emission valued at more than $1.8 million according to the prices recorded at the time of the report. This amount of capital gives significant weight to any modification in the distribution rules.
The impact of Root Reborn compared to the current emission design
In Bittensor’s current architecture, the protocol automatically liquidates the “alpha” tokens of each subnet to convert them into TAO before paying the staking yields of the root layer. Technical analysis of the network indicates that this mechanism generates constant selling pressure on the subnets’ native assets, affecting their market price evolution.
The update suggested by “unconst” seeks to reverse this financial dynamic. Instead of executing the automatic sale of assets, the proposal empowers each validator to select a basket of specific subnets to actively support.
Technical information of the proposal indicates that the yields that were previously liquidated would be reinvested in the selected subnets, remaining as a compound portfolio that is returned to the validator in the form of stake. This change in operational logic would transform selling pressure into net buying demand for the subnets’ tokens.
The network already has a history of restructuring its economic incentive design. In February 2025, the ecosystem implemented the Dynamic TAO (dTAO) mechanism, a development that stripped a committee of validators of the power to allocate emissions, transferring it directly to market forces.
The current proposal adds a layer of human judgment on top of dTAO’s automation. In the general context, independent empirical studies published on the arXiv platform (document 2507.02951) confirm that distributed computing projects, such as the Templar subnet, have managed to train AI models with tens of billions of parameters.
At the block level, current rules split the TAO emission, granting 41% to validators, another 41% to artificial intelligence miners, and the remaining 18% to subnet creators. Root Reborn aims directly at modifying the management of that 41% belonging to validators.
Despite the interest generated, official reports from the repository clarify that the code is under review in the testnet and has not been deployed to the mainnet. Initial automated evaluations identified potential risks, including a bottleneck in large-volume data migration and payment routing failures. A verifiable milestone to assess the project’s viability will be the technical resolution of these observations in the GitHub testing environment prior to any community governance vote.
