This is for everyone who thinks a TAO pump automatically triggers a subnet dump, as if it were some law of nature. You might be surprised.

ICYMI: @allan_quantifi from @taogalaxy_ published a sharp piece earlier this week on why a great subnet is not automatically a great investment, and how ranking, not just “quality,” drives returns. Their Momentum Index is now live for selected stakers on TrustedStake. It applies a classic factor approach to dTAO by identifying subnets whose recent outperformance has historically persisted, then systematically allocating based on that signal rather than chasing narratives. If you’re already staking $TAO with us and want exposure to a strategy that ranks opportunities instead of simply following market cap, check them out!

If you want to understand how we think at @taogalaxy_, start here. @allan_quantifi lays out the lens behind everything we build: a great subnet and a good investment are two different questions. At what price, compared to what. Glad to see it resonate

Feb 14, 2025. Day one of dTAO. Mentat launched the first set & forget strategies on subnet tokens. Since then, our focus has been simple: build the best indexes to give people the easiest and most profitable exposure to the subnet market (Mentat 5, Mentat 15, Mentat SoS, Mentat SoMS, Compute, Training AI...). Today on Mentat, you build your own basket with the subnets you want, alongside those indexes. Your portfolio follows the network as it evolves, with zero effort on your side. Along the way, a lot of teams came to us to distribute active quant strategies. None had the rigor it takes. Until @taogalaxy_ @allan_quantifi , @adefi_ and @0xLePilz have the background to become the first hedge fund on Bittensor. Years in top investment banks and the technical skills to build quant strategies that outperform the subnet market over time.

We’re excited to announce our integration with @taogalaxy_. taogalaxy builds systematic investment strategies for the Bittensor ecosystem, giving $TAO holders a quantitative way to allocate across subnets without having to constantly decide what to buy, sell or rebalance themselves. Their strategies use rules-based models to identify opportunities across the subnet market and manage portfolio construction and risk systematically. Through our integration, taogalaxy strategies can be executed automatically using TrustedStake infrastructure, while investors keep full custody of their $TAO. The team has been a pleasure to work with, and we’re excited to help make quantitative investing on Bittensor accessible to a broader set of $TAO holders. More to come. 🤝

The new @taogalaxy_ website is live. Anyone interested to delegate part of their bittensor:native on our strategies can do so in a fully automated way with our proxy partners @mentatminds and @TrustedStake

We’ve reached the symbolic milestone of half a million dollars in TVL, just 4 weeks after our strategies went live. This is very exciting and shows there is a clear demand from dTAO investors for an algorithmic, systematic exposure to subnets. The reason, in my view, is very simple: dTAO is an incredibly time-consuming and emotionally draining market to navigate manually. It is impossible for a human to process information, manage risk, execute allocations and rebalance with the same level of consistency as a systematic strategy, and the same level of "coldness" required to stay alive. Our goal is precisely to build the algorithmic layer for subnet exposure that entirely removes the human biases from the equation. Obviously, none of this is magic. This isnt a get rich quick scheme. There is still a level of mental toughness required, which is to continue following the strategies even when it is painful, because the process has shown, through thousands of data points, that it is robust and reliable. Right now, everything feels easy because the strategies are performing well (along with the overall market on top of that), but there will be times when it wont be so easy. And we will be here for it too. We will continue to gradually increase our TVL until 5,000 bittensor:native within the next 4 weeks, while making sure we preserve the quality of our signals and execution.

Momentum has been momentuming lately bittensor:native

Investing in bittensor:native should be done with the utmost care. In such a young and volatile market, I believe algorithmic investing should be the default approach: systematic rules, disciplined execution, and far less room for human bias. Yesterday, we crossed 1,000 bittensor:native in TVL. Extremely proud of what my team @0xLePilz, @adefi_ and I have built over the last 12 weeks since we joined @joinstationf We’re now slowly approaching 2,000 bittensor:native, but we’re not in a race for the biggest AUM. dTAO is still a thin market. We deliberately choose to grow slowly and carefully, always with one priority: preserving the quality and capacity of our strategies. Momentum and Carry are live. Uncrowded is coming next.

I made a fascinating discovery today while researching new predictive signals for subnets There seems to be a clear inverted-U relationship between the number of holders of a subnet token and its future performance In simple terms: Subnets with a medium number of holders consistently outperform those with either very few or very many holders What makes this particularly interesting is that the exact same effect has been documented in equities. A 2022 paper finds a similar relationship across US stocks from 1977 to 2016 And I think there’s a pretty intuitive explanation for it: The number of holders may be a good proxy for where a subnet sits in its adoption lifecycle Few holders → too little adoption, still highly uncertain Many holders → widespread adoption, increasingly crowded Medium number of holders → enough adoption to validate the subnet, but still plenty of room for growth In other words: too few holders = too early too many holders = too late in between = perfect timing Of course this isnt financial advice. I just think its super interesting to see how such straightforward signals can do an amazing job at ranking future relative performance.

Bittensor is itself a subnet. And what does a subnet do? It continuously adjusts its incentive mechanism until the interests of participants align with the outcome it is trying to produce. For Bittensor, that outcome is simple: allocate capital as efficiently as possible toward the subnets creating the most value. So when the protocol changes its rules, it doing exactly what every subnet is supposed to do: refining its incentive mechanism as it learns what works, what gets exploited, and what produces the best outcome. You can debate the direction, the speed, or the execution of each change. But (in my view) expecting the rules to remain fixed makes little sense. Asking Bittensor to stop tuning its rules is asking a subnet to stop being a subnet.

Everyone in Bittensor will be affected by Root Reborn, whether they want it or not. Before: Root APY was manufactured by the protocol automatically selling a slice of validators’ subnet emissions back into bittensor:native. After: that slice is no longer auto-sold. Validators now have to continuously re-inject it into the subnets they choose. My understanding of the consequences (please correct me if/where I’m wrong): 1. Root APY will stop being uniform across validators. We should start seeing much wider dispersion between validators, driven by allocation decisions, timing, risk management, and ultimately skill. 2. Validators are being forced to become portfolio managers overnight. They now have to compete on a skill most of them were never trained on: capital allocation. Will we see weight-copying here too? Probably. 3. Root stakers now have to actively choose validators. Looking at past APY won’t be enough. Past performance says very little about future performance. What will matter is consistency, drawdowns, volatility, allocation discipline, and the ability to separate actual skill from temporary luck. 4. For subnets, the big change is that validator demand becomes more visible. The subnets that keep attracting validator capital over time may start sending a strong signal to the market: “serious allocators believe this subnet is worth backing.” Of course, this will not be perfect. Some validators may copy others. Some subnets may try to court validators like in pre-dTAO times. Some flows may be political or short-term. But if you combine this update with the miner burn penalties and OTF freezing emissions to unproductive subnets, validators who allocate to subnets for the wrong reasons will mechanically under-perform over time. So the only signal subnet teams should focus on sending validators to receive that extra chain buy back is to ship, ship, ship Thats exactly why I think its a genius move to make these 3 protocol updates happen in a similar time span. The subnets that are building will benefit from extra buy pressure and a positive market flywheel, while the ones who are not, will suffer from capital rotation. So overall, I am very pleased about where the protocol is going with these updates less narratives, less politics, less relationships, more useful work and good allocation of capital.

The Bittensor conference that we hosted at @42born2code in early June is now fully available on YouTube: piped.video/FkBu-C8Zn94?is=231R… Thanks again to our sponsors / guests @opentensor, @bitstarterAI, @MacrocosmosAI, @webuildscore and @42Blockchain_ Episode 2 coming soon ⌛️

I choose to look at the opportunities this update will create, and it will create some massive ones. Validators will now be incentivized to work as subnet allocators. Does being incentivized necessarily mean they will be able to excel in that? Not really. But thats what why we are here. Root stakers are about to get much pickier. If you're in root, it means you want stable yield that compounds quietly over time. If you wanted volatility, you'd be in subnets. Root's entire appeal is stability- lose that, and there's no reason to be in root at all. So the validators who win this won't be the ones chasing the highest returns to the detriment of predictability. They'll be the ones who maximize stable, compounding returns over time, relentlessly. That's not a side quest. It's a serious quant problem, and it can't be taken lightly. We're a team of quants who've spent nearly a year building yield-optimizing allocation strategies on Bittensor subnets. We're one of these young teams @const_reborn. For us, this is the most important update since dTAO. We're all in. We offer tailored subnet strategies that have been thoroughly backtested to meet risk-adjusted targets and liquidity constraints. If you are validator who see this coming and want to start building toward it now, DMs open.

We’re making dTAO allocation less opaque. With taogalaxy Active Trades, investors can see exactly what each index currently holds: entry price, current price, allocation, and performance. Rule-based investing, fully transparent.

Two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Some have existed for billions of years. Others are just lighting up. The taogalaxy is one of those. Young, expanding, and burning brighter every day. We build quantitative strategies to help investors navigate the noise and discover the stars shaping the future of this galaxy.

Litteraly the reason why I joined this ecosystem

While the whole $tao subnet market is down quite badly, our growth index has been extremely robust since the covenant crash and is currently at an ATH. It is a rather defensive strategy, so especially adapted to moments like now.

What a week for @taogalaxy_ From our own Bittensor event at @42born2code to @proofoftalk at the Louvre... incredible people, incredible conversations. A huge thank you to our speakers @allan_quantifi @macrozack @mccrinbc @webuildscore and to our sponsors @bitstarterAI and @opentensor for their trust. The ecosystem is moving fast. We are moving with it. #Bittensor #ProofOfTalk #DecentralizedAI