Bittensor’s TAO Goes Native on Solana

Bittensor’s native token TAO is now available natively on Solana, following the activation of a canonical bridge by Wormhole Labs’ Sunrise platform on Tuesday, May 5. The launch, unveiled at the Solana Accelerate USA conference and marked by an NYSE-style opening-bell ceremony, gives the roughly $3 billion decentralized AI network direct access to one of the deepest DeFi ecosystems in crypto.

The integration is built on Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT) system rather than a conventional wrapped-asset model. TAO is locked or burned on the Bittensor chain and minted on Solana while preserving its metadata, allowing the bridged version to behave as a first-class Solana asset rather than a derivative. That distinction matters in practice: anyone can mint an SPL token and label it “TAO,” but the Sunrise version ships with explicit canonical status backed by both Wormhole and the Solana Foundation, displacing the patchwork of unofficial wrappers and earlier community bridges.

“Solana is the natural place to start. It’s where the liquidity, capital, and users already are,” said Yoav, chief executive of tao.com and the Tensora Group, during the announcement. “It’s a no-brainer for us to go where the users are already.”

From day one, canonical TAO (contract address taoC6xyv2v8tDLcev4uaGUgV4vdQsWJrGft2kcBRrBY) is live on Jupiter, Meteora, Mayan, Titan Exchange, dflow, and FOMO, with Kamino offering zero-fee swaps. Phantom and Solflare support holding, swapping and management out of the box. Derivatives venue derp.trade is offering up to 8x leverage on the asset, and Moonshot has verified TAO for retail trading on iOS and Android. The token trades natively against SOL, USDC, JUP and other Solana-native pairs.

The activation fits Solana’s broader “Internet Capital Markets” thesis, the argument that any meaningful onchain asset should be globally accessible the moment it exists. Sunrise has previously delivered Solana-native versions of HYPE, AVAX, MEGA and MON, and XRP arrived earlier via Hex Trust. With TAO, Solana adds a flagship AI asset to that lineup at a moment when AI-aligned tokens are commanding outsized capital flows.

Earlier wrapped versions of TAO, including legacy wTAO bridges dating back to late 2025, will continue to exist, but the Sunrise activation is the first to ship with full DeFi composability and canonical recognition from launch. For Bittensor, the practical upshot is a deeper liquidity layer and easier on-ramps for retail and institutional capital. For Solana, it is another argument that the chain is positioning itself as the default settlement layer for AI-aligned assets.