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Day 40 and Locked In: Where Attune Stands on Conviction

The Robotensor team3 min read

Forty days after launch, Attune (SN58) has locked 69% of its owner stake, τ1.81K, through conviction. Here’s why, and how eTAO and conviction work.

Attune cover image: “Day 40 and Locked In,” noting 69% of the owner stake, τ1.81K, is locked via conviction.

We took control of the Attune coldkey and launched on September 18. That was 40 days ago. Since then we have been heads down: shipping Vector, running duels, publishing results and getting Horizon ready. We are busy, and we will stay busy. But there is one thing we want everyone to hear from us directly, and that is where we stand on conviction.

On Bittensor, every new subnet starts with 18% of its emissions going to its owner. Since eTAO went live, owners can set that share anywhere from 0% to 33%, so 18% is the baseline rather than a fixed rule. Conviction is how an owner shows what they intend to do with it: alpha locked on-chain, in public, that cannot be sold below the lock, where any move toward unlocking is visible to every other staker.


We have locked 69% of the Attune owner stake, τ1.81K, through conviction. Nobody required us to; auto-locking is off by default. We did it because talk is cheap in crypto, and a commitment anyone can verify is worth more than any announcement. Community runs on trust, and trust is built by what you can check, not what you are told.

That lock ties our outcome to the same thing our miners compete on every day: training a better robot model, where each new champion has to beat the last one. To the miners, validators, stakers and researchers who believe in Attune: we are here for the long term. We will keep shipping, keep publishing our results in the open, and keep earning that belief one champion at a time.

Background: how eTAO and conviction work


eTAO and conviction answer two different questions. eTAO decides how large a subnet owner’s share of emissions is. Conviction decides whether the owner can sell it.

eTAO (release notes, guide)

  • eTAO went live in runtime v480 and was finalized in v481. It gives every subnet a five-way emission split: burn, recycle, owner, validators and miners. Burn and recycle are fixed at 0 for now.
  • New subnets start at 18% to the owner, 41% to validators and 41% to miners.
  • Owners can set their share anywhere from 0% to 33%. Validators can receive up to 50%, and miners always get at least 33%.
  • The split can change about once a week, and root TAO stakers keep their baseline payout whatever the owner chooses.

Conviction (guide)

  • Locking alpha on a subnet sets a floor on unstaking. Locked alpha still earns rewards, but it can’t be sold below the lock.
  • Locks decay by default. A perpetual lock keeps the full amount locked, and switching it back to decaying is recorded on-chain, so every staker can see it.
  • Alpha locked on the owner’s own hotkey counts as full conviction immediately.
  • Conviction also matters for ownership. Once a subnet is a year old, a hotkey with more conviction than the owner can take it over (PR #2800).
  • Automatically locking the owner’s cut is off by default, so every lock is the owner’s own choice.

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