What Const Just Told Us About Root Reborn — And What It Means For Your Portfolio

On June 26, the Opentensor Foundation dropped a 74-minute Novelty Search featuring SN23 Trishool. But the first 20 minutes were all Const — and what he said changes the game for every subnet staker on Bittensor.

We pulled the full transcript. Here's what matters.

TaoFlow Is Dead. Price-Based Emissions Are Back.

Const confirmed that TaoFlow — the emission mechanism that replaced the original price-based system — has been scrapped. The reason? Traders figured out how to exploit it.

The exploit was simple: cycle between subnets, pump the EMA in one, dump it, move to another. Repeat. This drained real flow from the ecosystem and turned emissions into a trading game instead of a building game.

"We had to rip the band-aid off," Const said. "We had to catch people off guard because otherwise people could inside trade the change."

The replacement is straightforward: price-based emissions. Your subnet's price determines your emissions. Higher sustained price = more emissions. It's that simple.

Why This Changes Everything

Under TaoFlow, you could game emissions without building anything. Under price-based emissions, the only way to get more emissions is to get more people to buy and hold your alpha token. That requires one thing: building something people actually want.

As Const put it: "It's a very simple game. Raise your price. Get people to buy. Everyone is aligned."

This is bullish for real builders and bearish for empty subnets. The market will now directly reward subnets that ship products, attract users, and generate real demand.

Burn Key Measurement Is Coming

Const also revealed that they're going to measure burn key usage. This is significant because it means Bittensor is moving toward proof of real consumption. Subnets that aren't generating actual compute usage — that are just collecting emissions without producing anything — will be measurable and potentially penalized.

"We want to turn Bittensor on," Const said. "It's always been a mining network. It's opposed to our ethos to have a hollow protocol that doesn't produce anything."

The Infrastructure Subnets Const Named

During the call, Const specifically mentioned several subnets as critical ecosystem infrastructure:

• Chutes (SN64) — "You can get inference over open-source models cheaply"
• Targon (SN4) — "You can get compute from Targon"
• Hippius (SN88) — "You can get storage from Hippius"
• Trishool (SN23) — Featured subnet, Const personally using their GM tooling

When the founder of the protocol names your subnet on a public call, that's the strongest fundamental signal in the Bittensor ecosystem.

SN23 Trishool: The Featured Subnet

The main event was SN23 Trishool — a subnet running competitive jailbreaking competitions for AI safety. Here's what we learned:

• 14 weeks of continuous operation — miners try to jailbreak the model, the model gets trained on every attack, gets stronger
• Constitutional AI approach — the same methodology Anthropic uses for Claude
• 0.8B parameter model achieving ~90% jailbreak resistance, targeting 99-100%
• Enterprise clients already buying the product for AI agent security
• Runs on phones — near-zero infrastructure cost for deployment

This isn't a whitepaper subnet. It's a working product with paying customers and the OTF's endorsement.

How We Updated Our Scoring

After analyzing this video, we upgraded the Conviction Score engine:

1. Added an OTF Signal component (0-10) — Subnets mentioned by Const/OTF now get a scoring boost. If the founder of the protocol is using your product, that's a fundamental indicator we shouldn't ignore.

2. Added price sustainability scoring — In the price-based emissions era, volatile pump-and-dump patterns should be penalized. Subnets with consistent uptrends across all timeframes score higher.

3. Built an automated OTF transcript pipeline — Every Novelty Search and key Bittensor YouTube channel gets auto-transcribed, subnet mentions extracted, and intel fed into our scoring engine. We'll never miss a signal again.

What You Should Do

1. Check your positions against the new reality. If you're staked in a subnet that was benefiting from TaoFlow gaming, that advantage is gone. Price-based emissions reward real demand.

2. Look at which subnets Const named. The infrastructure layer — inference, compute, storage, safety — is what the protocol depends on. Those subnets have structural importance that survives any emission mechanism change.

3. Use the Conviction Score. Every subnet scored 0-100 with the new OTF signal and price sustainability components. Updated every 6 hours. Free at subnetaiq.io/subnet-intel.

Root Reborn is coming. The rules are changing. The subnets that survive will be the ones that build real products people actually pay for. Everything else is noise.

Scores update every 6 hours. OTF intel pipeline processes new videos daily. Not financial advice. Always do your own research.