Guides

Staking

Back validators with TAO, manage positions across subnets, and claim root dividends.

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Staking backs a validator (a hotkey) with your TAO. On a subnet, staking swaps TAO into the subnet's alpha at the pool price; your position's value then follows the pool price and the validator's performance. On the root network (netuid 0) stake stays TAO-denominated. For how the pools themselves work — price impact, fees, MEV — see staking and pools.

Pick a validator

btcli query delegates --json          # all delegate hotkeys
btcli query delegate --hotkey 5F...   # one delegate's details
btcli query delegate-take --hotkey 5F...   # the fraction the delegate keeps

The take is the fraction of staking emissions the validator keeps before distributing the rest to its nominators. The chain default is 18% (stored as 11796/65535); a delegate can lower it any time with decrease-take, but raising it (increase-take / set-take) is rate-limited to once per 216,000 blocks (~30 days). Read the current value with delegate-take.

Stake and unstake

Quote first — staking is a swap, so large amounts incur slippage:

btcli query quote-stake --netuid 1 --amount-tao 100 --json
btcli tx add-stake --hotkey 5F... --netuid 1 --amount-tao 100 --dry-run
btcli tx add-stake --hotkey 5F... --netuid 1 --amount-tao 100 -w my_coldkey
intent = bt.AddStake(hotkey_ss58="5F...", netuid=1, amount_tao=100)
await client.execute(intent, wallet)

Every stake operation must move at least the chain minimum — by default 2,000,000 rao (0.002 TAO), stored in MinStake. The chain can also sweep nominations that fall below a nominator minimum (a governance-set fraction of the minimum stake; currently zero, so the sweep is effectively disabled).

Exit with remove-stake, or exit everything at once with unstake-all. Quote the exit the same way you quote the entry:

quote = await client.prices.quote_unstake(netuid=1, amount_alpha=50)  # TAO out, fee, slippage
await client.execute(bt.RemoveStake(hotkey_ss58="5F...", netuid=1, amount_alpha="all"), wallet)

"all" resolves to the full position at build time — only the remove-stake variants accept it.

To bound the execution price instead of accepting whatever the pool gives, use add-stake-limit / remove-stake-limit. Compute the limit from the spot price and your tolerance (see how money moves for the pool mechanics):

spot = await client.prices.alpha_price(netuid=1)
intent = bt.AddStakeLimit(
    hotkey_ss58="5F...", netuid=1, amount_tao=100,
    limit_price_rao=int(spot["price_rao"] * 1.02),  # accept at most 2% above spot
    allow_partial=False,
)
await client.execute(intent, wallet)

There is no unbonding period: plain unstaking settles immediately, with the TAO spendable at once. The only time constraints in the staking system are conviction locks (opt-in, below) and the rate limits on child and take changes.

Move positions without exiting

  • move-stake — different hotkey (and optionally subnet).
  • swap-stake — same hotkey, different subnet.
  • transfer-stake — different coldkey (gives the position away). Pass --dest-hotkey to land it on a different hotkey in the same call.
intent = bt.MoveStake(origin_hotkey_ss58="5F...", origin_netuid=1,
                       dest_hotkey_ss58="5G...", dest_netuid=1, amount_alpha=25)
await client.execute(intent, wallet)

Same-subnet moves just change which validator backs the stake; cross-subnet moves swap through both pools and can incur slippage on each leg.

Inspect what you have

btcli stake show --hotkey 5F... --netuid 1
btcli query stake-for-coldkey --coldkey my_coldkey --json     # all positions
btcli query stake-value-for-coldkey --coldkey my_coldkey --json  # marked to TAO at spot

Spot valuation is alpha × price, excluding slippage and fees — use quote-unstake for what you would actually receive.

Conviction locks

lock-stake commits alpha on a subnet as locked mass — a floor on unstaking that accrues conviction toward a target hotkey over time. Locked alpha keeps earning rewards; locking changes liquidity, not emissions.

For a full walkthrough with interactive charts on a worked example subnet, see the Conviction locks guide.

Quick reference:

  • One lock per coldkey per subnet; top-ups add mass, conviction continues.
  • Perpetual vs decaying modes — opt in with set-perpetual-lock.
  • The two timescales are governance-set storage values, not fixed constants. On mainnet today MaturityRate is 311,622 blocks (~43 days) and UnlockRate is 934,866 blocks (~130 days) — read them live before planning around either.
  • Aggregate conviction can trigger subnet ownership after one year when total conviction ≥ 10% of SubnetAlphaOut.
  • Query with subnet-convictions, hotkey-conviction, coldkey-lock.

Root stake and dividends

Stake on the root network earns dividends from across subnets through baskets: each root validator runs an escrowed index fund of subnet alpha, allocated per its root weights, and root stakers accrue an entitlement to that fund in proportion to their root stake.

Unlike subnet staking, moving TAO in and out of root is not a pool swap: no swap fee, no slippage, no MEV exposure — you subscribe and redeem at face value. See how money moves for the swap mechanics that root positions skip.

btcli shows root positions in TAO: staked τ is principal on netuid 0, accrued τ is fund yield. List your positions, then claim — either realize accrued yield into stake, or withdraw to free balance:

btcli root list                                   # staked + accrued τ, per validator
btcli root subscribe --amount 100 --hotkey 5F...  # assets in
btcli root claim                                  # pick wallet → validator → claim / withdraw
btcli root claim --hotkey 5F... --amount all      # withdraw full position
btcli root claim --hotkey 5F...                   # claim accrued into stake only

Per-validator payouts below the claim threshold (default 500,000 rao) are skipped and keep accruing — there is no deadline. See Root Reborn for the full basket model, the validator-side curation commands, and migration notes from the retired per-subnet claim system.

Child hotkeys

A validator can delegate a fraction of its stake weight to child hotkeys per subnet with set-children. Two reasons to do this: confine a hotkey compromise to a single subnet (one child per subnet instead of one hotkey exposed everywhere), or lend stake weight to another operator without moving stake.

The chain enforces:

  • At most 5 children per netuid; a child can have multiple parents. Proportions cannot be zero, and any proportion not assigned to children stays with the parent.
  • Setting or revoking children is rate-limited to once per 150 blocks (~30 minutes) per hotkey per subnet, and changes only take effect after a cooldown (default 7,200 blocks, ~24 hours) — see pending-children.
  • The child's take (set-childkey-take) ranges 0–18% and defaults to 0; increases are rate-limited to once per 216,000 blocks (~30 days).
  • The parent must hold a minimum total stake (the chain's StakeThreshold, set by governance — read it live rather than assuming a value).

Dividends settle back along the same links: a child hotkey's dividends are split among its parents in proportion to the stake weight each contributed (alpha plus TAO × TaoWeight), after deducting the childkey take. The deducted take is added to the child validator's own dividends — and since those distribute to the child's nominators like any validator dividends, most of the take flows onward to that validator's stakers rather than its operator.

Because stake weight flows without infrastructure, a coldkey can act as a stakeless "validator": hold stake on its own hotkey and childkey-delegate the weight to operating validators, running no machines at all.

Inspect relationships with children and parents.

Automation

set-auto-stake makes future rewards on a subnet stake themselves to a hotkey of your choice instead of accumulating unstaked.

Security

Two habits for meaningful position sizes:

  • Bound the price and shield the submission. These protect against different things: limit variants (add-stake-limit) cap slippage however it arises, while MEV-shielded submission hides the transaction from front-runners until inclusion. Use both.
  • Use delayed proxies, and monitor them. A leaked zero-delay Staking proxy cannot transfer your balance, but it can still drain value by forcing repeated high-slippage stake/unstake round trips that counterparties profit from. Give staking proxies an announcement delay and watch for announcements you didn't make — see proxies.