Bittensor (TAO)
Unlock Schedule
Bittensor (TAO) Token Unlock & Vesting Schedule
The unlock chart above provides a clear visual overview of the Bittensor (TAO) token release schedule, showing when and how tokens enter circulation across investor, team, treasury, and community allocations. Understanding these tokenomics dynamics is critical for evaluating potential supply pressure, inflation impact, and market liquidity over time — key factors that can influence TAO price performance.
Each color segment in the chart corresponds to a specific allocation group described in the Allocations section below. Underlying assumptions and data models used to reconstruct this schedule are explained in detail under Assumptions, while broader utility insights and token use cases are covered in Tokenomics & Utility.
Tokenomics & Utility
Bittensor tokenomics at a glance
Bittensor tokenomics are built to reward useful intelligence and align participants. The supply cap is fixed at 21 million TAO. New tokens are emitted on a steady schedule and distributed to miners, validators, and subnet owners based on Yuma Consensus scores. The design concentrates rewards where useful work is happening, rather than where hashpower alone is cheapest. (docs.bittensor.com)
Halving schedule
Like Bitcoin, Bittensor halves its daily emissions periodically, cutting new issuance in half when supply thresholds are reached. Before the first halving, emissions total 7,200 TAO per day (1 TAO roughly every 12 seconds). Community trackers and official learning resources estimate the first halving around late 2025, though the exact date can shift because some TAO is “recycled” back into the pool when miners register. After the halving, daily emissions are expected to drop to 3,600 TAO. (learnbittensor.org)
Utility of TAO
- Network fees and access: TAO is used to pay for on-chain transactions and to tap into subnet outputs through clients and APIs. (bittensor.com)
- Staking and governance: TAO holders stake to validators—on Root or on specific subnets under Dynamic TAO—and influence emissions and governance decisions. (docs.bittensor.com)
- Subnet creation: Entrepreneurs lock TAO to launch new subnets that define their own incentive mechanisms and model competitions. (docs.bittensor.com)
These pieces together—emissions, halving, staking, and subnet growth—form the core of Bittensor tokenomics and often shape expectations about long-term TAO price drivers. (docs.bittensor.com)
Assumptions
- Model treats the single source of TAO entering circulation as protocol block emissions distributed to subnets (then extracted by miners, validators/stakers, and subnet owners). There was no premine/ICO/team allocation.
Official docs describe only ongoing issuance with 21M hard cap and no genesis allocations to insiders; emissions are the mechanism by which participants earn TAO.
- Genesis date set to 2021-01-03 (Kusanagi fair launch).
Widely cited timeline; earlier tokens mined on Kusanagi migrated to later networks. Primary docs do not state an explicit genesis date; thus lower confidence.
- Halving #1 ended on 2025-10-08; subsequent halving end-dates are approximated by assuming ~12s blocks and negligible future recycling variability.
Learn Bittensor halving page showed a live countdown to 2025-10-08; future timing depends on recycling (fees, root emissions) and chain conditions.
- Monthly linear unlocks approximate continuous per-block issuance.
Charting requires monthly granularity; per-block variances average out over months.
- Recycling reduces net circulating supply versus gross issuance; this schedule models gross issuance to the cap.
Docs define recycling as returning TAO to the unissued pool, which delays halving dates but does not change the total eventual issuance.
- Late-stage unlock aggregates very small halving periods to ensure totals sum to the 21,000,000 hard cap for charting.
At rao (1e-9 TAO) precision, extremely small per-block rewards eventually diminish; aggregation is a pragmatic modeling choice.
- Dynamic TAO (Feb 13, 2025) changed distribution mechanics (TAO injection/ALPHA extraction) but not the per-block TAO issuance rate.
Emissions docs and release notes indicate 1 TAO per block pre-halving with distribution via subnet pools; upgrade affects routing, not issuance totals.
- 1. https://docs.taostats.io/docs/tao
- 2. https://docs.taostats.io/docs/halving
- 3. https://docs.taostats.io/docs/recycling
- 4. https://learnbittensor.org/concepts/tokenomics/halving
- 5. https://docs.bittensor.com/emissions
- 6. https://bittensor.com/dtao-whitepaper
- 7. https://docs.bittensor.com/bittensor-networks
- 8. https://docs.bittensor.com/chain-rel-notes
- 9. https://messari.io/project/bittensor/profile
Allocations
Description
#41
Bittensor is an open-source protocol that powers a decentralized, blockchain-based machine learning network.
| Sector: | AI & Compute |
| Blockchain: | Other L1 |