TrustedStake published its 2026 midyear report, covering six months of platform growth, security infrastructure investments, and ecosystem partnerships.
The headline numbers are the kind of operational depth most Bittensor platforms have not produced yet: $200M in trading volume year-to-date, peak AUM of 37,057 TAO, $1.5M saved through MEV shielding, and an estimated $2.2M in total value created for users through yield strategies and MEV protection.
The report also highlights the start of a validator partnership with Kraken Institutional, a security audit with Distrust.co, and a Trusted Execution Environment integration with Caution.co.
The Numbers, Year-To-Date
The first half of 2026 produced operational metrics that frame the platform’s growth across both retail participation and institutional infrastructure.
| METRIC | YEAR-TO-DATE |
| Trading volume | ~$200,000,000 |
| Best Month (May) | $40,267,250 |
| Peak AUM (Assets Under Management) | 37,057 $TAO |
| Staking Events | 583,370+ |
| Transactions Processed | 72,256+ |
| MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) Shielding Savings | ~$1.5M+ |
| Estimated YTD (Year-to-Date) Yield | 3,255.6 $TAO (~$833.9K USD) |
| Total value created | ~$2.2M |
It was noted that the yield digits apply a 25% haircut and normalization, which means the actual yield generated for users is higher than what is reported. The methodology is conservative by design.
Where The Platform Got Stronger
The metrics matter, but the infrastructure investments behind them matter more for what they signal about the next six months. TrustedStake spent the first half of 2026 hardening the underlying systems rather than just growing the top line.
1. Full platform security audit with Distrust.co. Validates and further hardens the infrastructure that powers TrustedStake, with the audit covering the systems that hold and route user funds.
2. Trusted Execution Environment integration via Caution.co. Enables cryptographically verifiable transaction construction and signing. The framing from TrustedStake is that the future of security is not asking users to trust systems, but giving them the ability to verify them.
3. Continued investment in proprietary MEV shielding. Built alongside one of the world’s leading MEV researchers, protecting users from hidden execution costs and improving realized returns. The $1.5M saved year-to-date is the measurable output.
4. Validator partnership with Kraken Institutional. A significant institutional milestone, with TrustedStake building infrastructure capable of serving both individual participants and institutions seeking digital commodity exposure.
5. Expanded community strategy ecosystem. Allocators, researchers, traders, validators, and subnet specialists working alongside the team to strengthen the opportunities available on the platform.
The throughline is non-custodial staking and portfolio management infrastructure that does not require users to become protocol experts to participate safely.
What Comes Next
The midyear report frames the rest of 2026 as accelerating rather than consolidating. Bittensor is moving fast enough that any platform serving it has to keep pace, and TrustedStake’s positioning is on infrastructure that serves both individual participants and institutional allocators. Q3 and Q4 will be where the Kraken Institutional partnership, the TEE integration, and the expanded MEV protection start showing up in user-facing improvements rather than just backend hardening.
The team’s stated mission has not changed: participation in decentralized intelligence markets should be accessible to everyone, with complexity abstracted away while transparency, security, and self-custody stay intact. For a platform that already processed 583,000+ staking events in six months without a public security incident, the second half of the year is the test of whether the infrastructure work pays out in the next leg of growth.
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