Conviction Finally Started Shipping

Bittensor mainnet was upgraded to spec version 411, bringing the testnet changes of the past week onto the live network along with several smaller refinements that accumulated during testing.

The headline updates are around Conviction, with locks now applying to owner hotkeys with immediate effect and decaying behavior becoming the default.

The upgrade also includes an “imbalances accounting” overhaul that hardens the chain’s 21 Million issuance cap at the code level, plus a configurable minimum childkey take that gives subnet owners more control over their validator parameters.

The Conviction Updates

The Conviction layer that has been the subject of weeks of debate is now live, though with deliberate guardrails on what it actually controls. The current behavior:

a. All locks made to an owner’s hotkey now receive immediate Conviction, not just locks made by the owner themselves. This expands who can accrue Conviction in support of a subnet.

b. Decaying locks are now the default behavior, replacing the previously perpetual model. Both unlock and maturity rates run on a 90-day half-life.

c. Owner’s cut is not auto-locked by default, but the owner can opt in or out of auto-lock based on their preferences.

d. Subnet ownership transfer is not yet active. The takeover functionality will not be enabled until the underlying primitive has stabilized through real-world use, with additional adjustments possible in the coming weeks.

A walk through of the core Conviction concepts and primitive is scheduled to hold on Novelty Search E075, which is where the operational details and edge cases will get unpacked in more depth.

The “Imbalances Accounting” Upgrade

The less visible but arguably more important change is an overhaul of how the chain handles $TAO minting and burning.

The technical shift in plain terms:

a. All minting and burning now happens through a single code path using Substrate’s imbalances feature, and only when strictly necessary.

b. Every other operation uses $TAO transfers instead, which dramatically reduces the surface area for accounting errors.

c. The 21M total issuance cap is now enforced throughout the codebase at compile-time, making it structurally impossible for accidental mistakes to violate the cap.

This is mostly an internal change, but it matters because it shifts protections from runtime checks to compile-time guarantees, which is the kind of hardening that prevents an entire category of bugs from ever shipping.

Configurable Minimum Childkey Take

The third notable change was present in the original testnet deploy but did not get much attention at the time.

Subnet owners can now set a minimum childkey take within a reasonable sanity range, giving them direct control over the floor of validator economics on their own subnet.

Subnets That Are Locking

SubnetRadar now tracks the subnets that are locking. Currently, 9 subnets are locked and a total of 3.63M alpha in both locked tokens and conviction. The dashboard shows strong, sustained participation from 11 active lockers. Notably, 3.24M alpha is owner-locked on a perpetual basis with zero decay, signaling deep, long-term alignment from key holders. The Conviction Radar visually confirms this concentrated strength, while the reigning subnet king, MVTRX (SN79), dominates with 1.27M alpha in 100% owner-locked conviction.

Where This Lands

Spec 411 is the upgrade where Conviction stopped being a proposal and started being live code, and the deliberate decision to ship the primitive without the ownership transfer mechanism reflects the right kind of caution.

The protocol is letting Conviction accrue and decay in production before flipping on the consequences, which gives the ecosystem time to stress-test the mechanism without subnet takeovers happening in parallel.

The accounting upgrade is the kind of structural reinforcement that does not generate headlines but quietly prevents the worst class of bugs from reaching the chain. Together with the childkey take configurability, this release reads as the protocol team prioritizing stability and optionality over flash, which is the right tone for the moment.