Conviction

In Bittensor, almost everything is competitive. Miners compete for incentives, validators compete for stake , and subnets compete for emissions . Subnet ownership itself has been the exception. An owner once set stays fixed, meaning an owner can stop managing their subnet and keep collecting their 18% emission cut with no way for investors/stakers to change that.

Conviction changes this. Any staker can lock ALPHA on a subnet over time, building conviction that reflects how much stake they have committed and for how long. The staker with the highest conviction at a time becomes the new owner.

To lock stake, a staker chooses how much ALPHA to lock and which hotkey to lock it to on a given subnet. By default the lock decays over time (see "Unlocking ALPHA" below).

Once locked the ALPHA is committed to that hotkey on that subnet, only the portion that has already unlocked is available to unstake. A lock can be topped up at any time by locking more ALPHA to the same hotkey.

Conviction is a continuously updated score that grows toward the locked amount over time. When a staker first locks, their conviction starts at zero and gradually matures to roughly 50% after one half-life (around 90 days), 63% after one "maturity period" (around 130 days), 86% after two "maturity periods" (around 260 days), and 95% after three (around 390 days).

This means a short/"flash" lock provides almost no conviction at the moment of locking. Only ALPHA that has been committed and held over time carries weight.

Locks are decaying by default. The locked amount immediately begins to unlock at the unlock rate (which is approximately 130 days), and the corresponding ALPHA becomes available to unstake again as it unlocks. Conviction follows the locked ALPHA amount as it decays.

If a staker wants to preserve their lock rather than let it decay, they can switch the lock into "perpetual" mode at any time. The locked amount then freezes at it's current amount, and conviction continues to mature toward it indefinitely. They can switch back to decaying mode later when ready to unlock it again.

1. A staker has 1,000 ALPHA staked and locks 800 ALPHA in perpetual mode.
2. Immediately, 200 ALPHA is available to unstake.
3. After 90 days, conviction has matured to around 50% of the locked amount (~400), but the locked amount is still 800 ALPHA, so only 200 ALPHA is available to unstake.
4. The staker then switches the lock to decaying mode. After around 90 days of decay (~50% remaining), the locked amount is ~400 ALPHA, so up to 600 ALPHA is now available.
5. Once the locked amount fully decays, all 1,000 ALPHA is available again.

The subnet owner is treated differently from other stakers. Subnet owners can enable auto-lock on their owner's emissions cut (their 18% share of ALPHA emissions). When enabled (is disabled by default), every block the owner's emission cut gets automatically added to their locked amount. This means the owner continuously builds up locked stake as the subnet emits, and cannot unstake that ALPHA without first starting to unlock and waiting for it to decay.

The owner's conviction always immediately reflects their current locked amount. Other stakers experience a maturity "lag" before their conviction catches up to their locked amount through the EMA.

At the end of each epoch, the protocol checks conviction across all stakers on each subnet. The hotkey with the highest total conviction, summed across all coldkeys locked to it, becomes the new subnet owner. There are two conditions that must both be met for this to happen:

• The subnet must be at least 1 year old
• The total conviction across all stakers on that subnet must be at least 10% of the total ALPHA held by users as stake on that subnet

If either condition is not met, no ownership change happens. This prevents takeovers of new subnets or subnets with not enough lock participation.