TAO Flows #3 – Welcome Back
Issue #3 is here, and we are officially in the "final boss" territory before the Halving.
The money printer is jamming. We are roughly 4 days away from the biggest economic shift in Bittensor’s history. If you thought the last week was quiet, you haven't been watching the supply shock loading bar.
We explain Bittensor & decentralized AI the way you’d break it down to a friend over coffee and donuts at a diner: zero jargon, zero code, just the facts, the alpha, and the occasional meme.
Our mission stays the same: turn curious normies into TAO believers—one short, addictive Flow at a time.
Let’s dive in. 🧠💧
☕ TAO Today
1 TAO = $300 USD
1 TAO = 0.003327 BTC
1 BTC = 300.7 TAO
7d: +14.9% | Market cap: $3.15B
**All data as of Dec 9th @ 7 am EST
🌊WTF - What The Flow?
TAO is money that rewards people for knowledge. Right now, one TAO is worth about $300; it's up almost 15% this week. In less than 4 days, the amount of new TAO created every day gets cut in half and about 50% of its circulating supply is staked (locked), receiving about 40% APR on average.
⚡ TOP 5 SUBNETS BY EMISSIONS
Subnet | Emissions | Price (USD) | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
Chutes | 8.07% | $24.84 | ↓ 👑 King of Hill |
Affine | 6.77% | $20.34 | ↑ 🔥 Heating Up |
Targon | 4.34% | $13.01 | - Stable |
Lium.io | 4.03% | $16.96 | ↓ Holding |
Vanta | 3.62% | $10.88 | ↑ Climbing |
🌊WTF - What The Flow?
These are the top five Bittensor projects that are currently winning the largest portion of the daily prize pool and generating the most verifiable market value. They are like the headliner bands at a massive music festival, drawing the biggest crowds and scoring the fattest merch sales, while the indie opening acts scramble for stage time and fans.
Chutes is the headliner rockstar of the network’s AI. Crowds packing the stage, and merch (chain buys) flying off the shelves—still in the top spot, but ticket sales dipped a bit this week.
Affine is the co-headliner stealing the show. Fans are rushing in with a 10% attendance spike, even if some merch carts got raided.
Targon landed a few sponsors last week but lost some festival-goers overall. One hit song doesn’t fill the tent forever; aiming to rebuild the audience with a small rebound. New hit song coming?
Lium had a low-key set last week but still pulled big-ticket sales, die-hard groupies keeping the vibe alive despite a 5% crowd dip.
Vanta is the underground act everyone's whispering about, stacking huge merch hauls this week—the sleeper hit with an 11% fan surge, stealing the spotlight.
Emissions = Share of new TAO created going to the project
Live data: taostats.io/subnets | tao.app/explorer | bittensor-labs.com/
Representation of the bittensor network and different subnets - “The Flywheel”.
🔥 BIGGEST STORY
The Halving is Imminent. Bittensor’s inaugural halving drops in approximately 4 days (Dec 12th)—this is not a drill, we're just 96 hours from the network's ultimate scarcity play, hacking daily TAO minting from ~7,200 coins to a slim ~3,600 for good. We're closing in on that 10.5M circulating supply milestone, forever locking the max at Bitcoin's iconic 21M while decentralized AI apps explode like wildfire. Shrinking fresh TAO drops + endless demand for smart machine brains? That's the recipe that lit Bitcoin's fuse—degens, this could be Bittensor’s moonshot trigger.
🌊WTF - What The Flow?
Imagine a bakery that sells the best donuts in town. Every day they bake 7,200 donuts. Suddenly, on Thursday, they announce they'll only bake 3,600 donuts a day forever, but the line of customers outside is getting longer thanks to the AI hype. What happens to the price of a donut? You do the math—demand holds steady (or heats up) with half the new goods splashing out. Bitcoin nailed this four times over, minting epic rallies. TAO's turn for the scarcity spotlight? Buckle in; we're about to see.
Live countdown → https://bittensorhalving.com/
📰 THINGS TO KNOW
• Bittensor Activates MEV Shield on Testnet: Fair Transactions Ahead: Bittensor rolled out MEV Shield on testnet, using an encrypted mempool to hide transactions from bots, preventing front-running in staking/unstaking/subnet registrations. Opt-in feature with BTCLI 9.16.0rc1 and ASI tooling; mainnet hotfix paused $ALPHA fees for bug fix. This update reduces MEV attacks that distort economics, ensuring fairer emissions and subnet health—threshold encryption planned for 2026 NPoS upgrade.
• Almanac Beta is Live: New Era for Subnet 41 Mining: Subnet 41's Almanac Beta launches a front-end for miners to test markets, trade with real capital (1% fee), and claim rewards, improving signal quality and Sybil resistance. Incentive overhaul: 100% emissions to a performance-based mechanism (no 95% burn), with 40 miners showing positive ROI. Making Almanac scalable for thousands of traders, shifting from test to live economics—access at beta.almanac.market.
• Macrocosmos Launches “Training at Home”: Decentralized AI for Everyday Users: Macrocosmos' "Training at Home" app for MacBooks turns laptops into micro-nodes for Bittensor's Subnet 9 (IOTA), enabling no-code AI pre-training with $TAO rewards. Contributes to global distributed LLMs, competing with centralized clouds.
This democratizes AI (3x faster convergence in tests), but Mac-only raises questions on broader access—join the waitlist for community-powered scaling.
• Grayscale report on Bittensor’s First Halving: Founded in 2021 with a fair launch, Bittensor decentralizes AI creation/training/access. The Dec 14 halving halves block rewards (1 to 0.5 TAO), increasing scarcity like Bitcoin's cycles. 128 subnets (e.g., Chutes for inference, Ridges for agents) drive adoption, with institutional access via Yuma/Stillcore funds and Grayscale's Bittensor Trust. Very bullish for TAO’s scarcity narrative, as reduced supply could amplify demand if adoption grows. However, historical Bitcoin halvings show mixed short-term price impacts, and TAO’s -31% 30-day drop suggests skepticism.
🌊WTF - What The Flow?
• MEV Shield hides trades from bots, like a poker table with a privacy screen, so no one peeks at your cards before you bet. This update protects users’ money.
• Almanac Beta lets miners trade real money on Subnet 41, ike a fantasy sports league where your picks pay out in actual cash, no more practice rounds.
• "Training at Home" app turns your MacBook into an AI helper, like letting your old bike join a group ride and earning gas money for it.
• Grayscale's report calls the halving a "maturation milestone", with 128 subnets as the star lineup—like a band finally dropping their big album after years of garage jams.
😂 MEME OF THE FLOW
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Reply to this email and let us know! Be part of something new.
That’s the flow. See you in a week!
@TAOFlows
P.S. Forward to one friend who still thinks ChatGPT is the only AI tool.
Not financial advice. Please do your own research.