Bittensor Will Start Blocking Emissions on Bad-Actor Subnets Next Week

In an announcement to the Bittensor community, Jacob ‘Const’ Steeves confirmed that the network will begin blocking emissions to subnets engaged in foul play or with no clear path to adding value to the ecosystem.

The interim measure rolls out next week, with a chain operation to execute the blocks going live on Tuesday, May 26th.

The Four Criteria

Const flagged the targets clearly. A subnet is in scope if it falls under any of the following:

• Long-term 100% burns with no team plan to bring the subnet online.
• Active self-mining, i.e., subnets with no code that use stake weight to pass emissions to their own keys.
• Dead, abandoned, or “unclaimed” subnets that have never announced themselves.
• TaoFlow exploiters, such as SN104, which show little to no chain activity from the broader network.

Each call will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Why It’s Temporary

Const was upfront that this is not the long-term plan. The interim mechanism is a stopgap until the protocol-level upgrades already on the roadmap can take over the job organically:

• Conviction, the token-locking takeover mechanism launching Tuesday
• Shorting and longing, rolling out gradually through the year via Yuma
• The full decentralized governance system arriving this summer

Once those are live, subnet owners and proposers can disable emissions on abusive subnets through governance rather than a top-down chain operation.

For the deeper context on how Conviction, chain governance, slashing, and TaoFlow V2 fit together, see our earlier piece on Bittensor’s most aggressive governance roadmap yet.

The Takehome

Const believes there’s a broad community consensus that this needs to happen, and that redirecting emissions away from extractive subnets will push more value toward teams actually building great stuff.

We will cover more updates as they arise.