🚨 $TAO BITTENSOR PROPOSAL A few hours ago, there was a live meeting on Discord with Bittensor founder Const and our amazing and committed community. I took notes on the most important points and I’m leaving them below. Here are the key takeaways. Bittensor philosophy; -Const reinforced that the protocol has always “rolled with the punches” and learned from exploits since the very beginning. Every failure helped improve the chain, refine incentives, and move closer to building functional decentralized AI markets. -Const acknowledged Sam’s betrayal, took responsibility, and offered direct apologies to affected holders. (You are not the one to blame. But apology accepted.) Main proposal: Locked Stake (Conviction Mechanism) A new staking dimension is being introduced. Beyond normal stake, time now becomes part of the equation. Stake can be locked for months or even years. This creates a public and cryptographically verifiable conviction metric: locked stake multiplied by remaining lock time. Subnet owners, and any holder, will be able to demonstrate long-term commitment transparently. Objectives of the mechanism; -Prevent rugs and sudden exits that drain liquidity and harm investors -Give Alpha and TAO holders more influence over the direction of subnets -Replace human trust assumptions with mathematical, protocol-level guarantees -Make subnet ownership dynamic and competitive. Today it is immutable. How rollout will work; -First step will be the lock mechanism itself, without hierarchical governance yet -Initial testing will happen in mature subnets like 3, 39, 81 and possibly other large ones -New subnets will have a grace period (immunity) -During governance activation; -Anyone will be able to lock stake and vote on the owner key -The highest conviction wins Benefits for the ecosystem; -Increases investor confidence and helps capital formation -Teams can signal real skin in the game through locked stake -Improves long-term alignment between owners, miners, validators and stakers -Opens the path for stronger governance at subnet level and later at root/chain level Long-term vision; -Bittensor wants to solve real governance problems that no one in Web3 has fully solved yet. Not just degen cycles and pump mechanics. -The Conviction mechanism is seen as a key step toward building a real federation of decentralized and trustworthy AI companies. My thoughts; After the Covenant episode, this feels like the beginning of a full transparency phase. Now it’s time to implement, improve, evolve and keep building. The best builders will come out stronger from this moment. Holders miners validators teams owners Everyone moves forward from here. I hope so. I strongly recommend going directly to the original source on the official Bittensor channel. Don’t be lazy. 😅