TLDR;

• Highlights of the Week: Evert Scott’s The Incentive Layer premieres; TGIT outlines Root Claim with alpha-basket payouts and a TAO-flow emissions model; BitStarter debuts on-chain subnet crowdfunding with Loosh AI.

• Ecosystem & Research: Mentat+ launches custom staking with DCA and 1.613 TAO min; x402 pay-per-call APIs land across Data Universe SN13, Zeus, and Synth; first TAO ETP lists on SIX; Greg Schvey proposes Total Network Value.

• Subnet Updates: RedTeam SN61 confirms revenue with 1inch; Synth SN50 integrates Limitless with live PnL; SN25 rebrands to Embryon with competitive ownership; Targon SN4 offers confidential H200 and CPU rentals; Chutes SN64 overhauls incentives and adds a one-click miner VM.

• Media & Community: HackQuest China tour wraps with Const’s Beijing keynote; Hash Rate features Sundae Bar SN121, BitStarter, and Crucible’s Ledger-compatible TAO wallet.

• Development Updates: Root Claim slated first with manual or periodic alpha claims; TAO-flow emissions refactor targeted in the same upgrade cadence; x402 integrations expand via thirdweb Nexus.

Highlights of the Week

⚡️ Evert Scott released his second Bittensor Documentary, The Incentive Layer, a telling the story about how TAO aligns incentives to create open-source AI products. The film traces past technology waves, argues that AI’s scale requires open and permissionless systems, and presents Bittensor as an incentive alignment engine. It walks through dTAO, TAO’s hard-capped supply, and subnet competition.

The closing message is a call to build decentralized AI so value and governance accrue to contributors rather than centralized gatekeepers. This is truly a beautiful documentary and I am incredibly impressed at how well it was produced. Great job Evert!

⚡️ On this week’s TGIT (formerly Novelty Search) call, Const outlined two tokenomic changes:

1. Root Claim: Root stakers will be able to toggle dividends to arrive as a basket of alpha tokens (auto-claimed periodically or via manual claim) instead of the historical auto-sell to TAO.

2. Emissions will shift from price-share to measured demand: Instead of today’s price / sum of prices = emission% rule, the proposal outlines using a moving average of net TAO inflow per subnet and normalizes across subnets, granting zero emissions when net flow ≤ 0 and allowing tunable, winner-tilted distributions.

The intent is to reward subnets that sequester TAO (sustained inflows/liquidity retention), starve extractive or idle pools, and make emissions more responsive than the price-EMA regime. Rollout notes shared on the call suggested Root Claim lands first, with the TAO-flow emissions refactor targeted in the same near-term upgrade cadence. Mike from General TAO Ventures posted a succinct analysis of the changes here.

⚡️Const presented at the Bittensor x HackQuest event in Beijing, delivering a keynote on Bittensor’s open-source AI vision to a packed room before joining a panel with Jerry (Delysium) and Tobias (Affine). The stops capped a university tour (SJTU, ZJUT, Tsinghua, Peking) that drew strong student-builder interest, underscoring fast-rising APAC momentum around subnets and decentralized AI.

⚡️ Zach and Brian from Macrocosmos, alongside several other contributors, announced the release of BitStarter, an onchain crowdfunding on-ramp for Bittensor subnets, where teams submit proposals, get vetted feedback from a panel, then let TAO holders pledge directly to fund slots, liquidity, and runway. Pledges are secured at the substrate level, with flexible terms such as lock-staked pledges and optional sharing of owner-key emissions to align long-term backers with builders.

The project is independent, founded by ecosystem veterans, and aims to democratize subnet financing while speeding high-quality teams to mainnet. First up on the platform is Loosh AI, which focuses on cognitive inference for robotics.

Subnet & Ecosystem Updates, Research, & Media ⬇️