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Conviction has been live on Bittensor mainnet since May 13, 2026, and it produced something the ecosystem never had: a public leaderboard showing exactly how much capital each subnet operator has locked behind their own product. According to TaoStats, twenty-five subnets out of 128 now show owner-locked alpha.
Owner-locked alpha is the cleanest commitment signal the network has produced, because subnet owners can show the community they are putting their money where their mouth is.
How Does Conviction Work?
Conviction is Bittensor’s governance mechanism for subnet ownership. Whoever has the most capital locked behind a subnet’s ownership hotkey holds the most governance weight over that subnet. Ownership is no longer a fixed status granted at registration. It is a continuous competition decided by locked capital.
When you lock alpha tokens to a subnet, you target a specific hotkey. Lock to the subnet owner’s hotkey, and you earn instant conviction equal to your full locked amount, with no waiting period. This makes supporting the current owner the most efficient use of locked capital, and it means the owner’s total conviction score reflects not just their own locked emissions but every token any supporter has locked behind them.
Lock to a different, non-owner hotkey, and your conviction builds on a maturity curve instead, starting at zero and growing toward the locked amount with a 60-day half-life. This is the challenger path: someone locking to their own hotkey, growing their score over months, and attempting to overtake the owner’s aggregate.
Locks default to decaying mode, meaning the locked mass shrinks exponentially over time and the locker gradually regains access to their tokens as they decay out. Perpetual locks keep the locked mass constant, let conviction grow toward its maximum, but cannot be unstaked until the locker switches back to decaying mode.
Ownership transfer activates when a subnet has been active for at least one year, and total conviction across the subnet crosses a participation threshold. At that point, the hotkey with the highest aggregate conviction becomes the owner. For abandoned subnets where owner conviction sits at zero, a small challenger position is enough to start the clock. The DAYS→KING figure shows exactly how many days remain before the leading challenger takes ownership.
How to Read the Conviction Leaderboard
The conviction table runs eleven columns. The four that matter:
- A-OUT is alpha outstanding, the total supply in circulation for that subnet. It sizes the subnet, not its commitment.
- OWNER is Alpha locked to the owner’s hotkey by the owner themselves, from voluntarily locked holdings and auto-locked emission cuts. This is the operator’s personal skin-in-the-game figure.
- TO-OWNER is Alpha locked to the owner’s hotkey by everyone else: supporters and stakers who believe in the current operator and want to add weight behind them. Because locking to the owner’s hotkey gives instant conviction, this column is a direct measure of community backing. A high TO-OWNER number means the community has locked their own capital behind the same seat.
- CHALLENGER is Alpha building behind a rival hotkey from someone trying to accumulate enough score to take the subnet.
OWNER and TO-OWNER are both on the same side. They are the operator’s personal commitment and their community’s support stacked together. CHALLENGER is the opposing force.
GAP is the total conviction that the owner-side holds over the top challenger. GAP % expresses that as a share of alpha outstanding. SPLIT visualizes the balance. DAYS→KING counts down to an ownership transfer, only visible when a challenger is actively overtaking a subnet with no owner defending it.
Twenty-Five Subnets Have an Owner Willing to Lock. Here Is the Order.
Ranked by owner-locked alpha, the commitment leaderboard reads as follows as of June 11th:
- MVTRX (SN79) — 1.27M
- DSperse (SN2) — 845k
- Investing (SN88) — 705k
- Bitsec.ai (SN60) — 640k
- Desearch (SN22) — 501k
- lium.io (SN51) — 291k
- MANTIS (SN123) — 290k
- Recall (SN31) — 284k
- Bitcast (SN93) — 255k
- Almanac (SN41) — 253k
- NOVA (SN68) — 225k
- Zipcode (SN46) — 138k
- TalkHead (SN108) — 135k
- blockmachine (SN19) — 100k
- Hippius (SN75) — 100k
- Affine (SN120) — 100k
- Score (SN44) — 94k
- Academia (SN109) — 62k
- Vidaio (SN85) — 30k
- Verathos (SN96) — 25k
- Parked (SN73) — 15k
- SN122 (unnamed) — 15k
- 404-GEN (SN17) — 8k
- Djinn (SN103) — 6k
- gm (SN28) — 5k
MVTRX alone holds roughly a fifth of all owner-locked alpha on the network, and the top five subnets hold the clear majority of it. Owner conviction, as the network expresses it today, belongs to a small group of operators rather than a broad population, which draws a hard line between the teams that have paid to prove commitment and the ones that have not.
Several subnets with zero owner-locked alpha show significant community support in the TO-OWNER column. Swarm (SN124) has 1.00 million alpha locked behind the owner’s hotkey by supporters, giving the owner substantial collective conviction without locking personally. Yanez MIID (SN54) shows 644k in community support, Numinous (SN6) shows 597k, and iota (SN9) shows 566k.
Zero in the OWNER column means the operator has not personally locked their own stake behind the seat. It does not mean the subnet lacks conviction, because supporters may have locked far more than the owner would have on their own. What it does mean is that the owner’s defense against a challenger rests entirely on community support rather than their own locked capital.
The Only Three Subnets With a Countdown Clock Are the Ones Covenant Left
Exactly three subnets on the entire network show a number in the DAYS→KING column.
SN3, SN39, and SN81 each read as deprecated, show zero owner convictions, and carry a challenger with a countdown: 62 days for SN3, 124 for SN81, and 200 for SN39.
These are the subnets Covenant AI abandoned on April 10, 2026, when founder Sam Dare sold 37,000 TAO and exited, dropping TAO 25% in six hours. The mechanism Bittensor built in response to that exit is now the mechanism counting down, in public, to the day a community challenger formally takes each abandoned seat. A challenger holding as little as 27,000 Alpha is enough to start the clock on SN3, because no owner conviction stands against it. The event that began as the network's worst moment is resolving as an orderly, on-chain transfer of ownership to whoever shows up with locked stake.
What a Zero Means, and What It Doesn't
Locking is voluntary, and Conviction shipped less than four weeks ago. Targon (SN4) shows zero owner-locked alpha against 183k in community to-owner support. Chutes (SN64) shows zero owner against 163k. Ridges (SN62) shows zero against 145k. These are active subnets with real usage whose communities have already locked meaningful support behind the owner’s hotkey.
The zero in OWNER tells you the operator has not yet locked personal capital behind the seat. Pair it with TO-OWNER and you get a fuller read on whether the community believes in the operator enough to lock behind them regardless.
Locking Alpha Is The New Buy Signal
Twenty-five subnets show an owner willing to lock their own alpha. MVTRX leads at 1.27 million. The community has added additional support across most active subnets in the TO-OWNER column. The only three subnets with a countdown clock are the three Covenant abandoned, and those clocks are running because no one on the owner side has locked a single token.
OWNER tells you what the operator is willing to freeze. TO-OWNER tells you how much the community believes it. Open the conviction table, read both columns, and find the subnet you are weighing before you read a word of its pitch.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. The information provided should not be interpreted as an endorsement of any digital asset, security, or investment strategy. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with a licensed financial professional before making any investment decisions. The publisher and its contributors are not responsible for any losses that may arise from reliance on the information presented.
