Ditto
SN118An ETF-style subnet that rewards long-term holding conviction
HODL rewards miners for holding conviction, not running models. It's Bittensor's portfolio indexing and market-making subnet, turning long-term staking into scoreable, on-chain proof of conviction.
// The ETF subnet for Bittensor alpha
HODL is a Bittensor subnet built around financial participation rather than AI compute. Miners earn emissions by staking into structured portfolio indexes or providing liquidity as market makers on the HODL Exchange. It's financial infrastructure running on Bittensor's incentive layer.
The simple version: It's like a crypto ETF protocol where the "fund managers" are replaced by an on-chain scoring system that rewards long-term conviction and active market making.
Centralized equivalent: Think Grayscale or Bitwise structured crypto products, but without a custodian and with protocol-level verification.
How it works:
- Miners either stake their coldkey in TrustedStake portfolio indexes (ETF track) or fill buy/sell orders on the HODL Exchange (market-making track)
- Validators evaluate miner scores using a time-weighted staking formula and fill-volume metrics, then set weights that determine emission distribution
- The problem it solves: Getting diversified exposure to Bittensor's subnet ecosystem is complex. There's no native ETF primitive, no structured portfolio product, and no on-chain incentive for long-term conviction. HODL builds that layer directly.
- The opportunity: As Bittensor scales to more subnets, capital allocation infrastructure becomes foundational. A protocol that rewards informed, long-term positioning creates a counterweight to short-term speculation.
- The Bittensor advantage: The scoring formula is transparent and on-chain. No single manager decides what a good portfolio looks like: the incentive mechanism does.
- Traction signals: GitHub shows 54 commits from 4 contributors with activity through April 20, 2026. TrustedStake integration is live with five supported indexes. The HODL Exchange, originally targeted for Q1 2026, is referenced in active present-tense documentation.
Category: DeFi and Portfolio Management | Centralized Competitor: Grayscale GTAO Trust, Bitwise, structured crypto ETF products
Most Bittensor subnets do AI work. HODL does financial infrastructure. Its thesis is that a decentralized protocol can incentivize two undervalued market behaviors: long-term conviction in diversified portfolios and active liquidity provision. As the subnet ecosystem grows and alpha tokens become a real asset class, the demand for both of those behaviors increases.
Mechanism:
The subnet divides emissions between two parallel miner programs, currently at a 75/25 split.
The ETF track rewards miners who stake their coldkey in one of five TrustedStake portfolio indexes: TSBCSI, Top 10, Full Stack, Fintech, and Bittensor Universe. Miner score follows a time-weighted formula: score equals stake amount multiplied by a duration multiplier of (1 + 0.25 times the natural log of (1 + days held divided by 30)). The longer a position is held, the higher the score multiplier. The design is non-custodial: TrustedStake can stake and unstake on behalf of the miner but cannot transfer funds. Notably, TrustedStake explicitly excludes subnet 118 from its own indexes to avoid conflicts of interest.
The IMM track (Incentivized Market Making) rewards miners who fill orders on the HODL Exchange. Score is based on total fill volume over a rolling five-day window. For buy orders, purchased assets must remain in the miner's coldkey during the window, creating a light proof-of-inventory requirement that discourages wash trading.
The roadmap adds derivative products over time: V3, targeted for Q3 2026, introduces futures and options, with transaction fees from V2 and V3 committed to automatic alpha buybacks.
The 7-day net inflow sits at roughly 349 TAO, with a 7-day price gain near 18.8%. Emission share is approximately 0.41%, against an EMA of 0.64%, suggesting the subnet is still building toward its long-run flow baseline. Root proportion is at 33%, indicating a mix of organic staking demand and protocol subsidy in the pool.
- TrustedStake dependency: The ETF track is built entirely on TrustedStake's indexing infrastructure. Any degradation in TrustedStake's service, trust model, or availability would directly affect miner scoring and ETF participation.
- Thin liquidity pool: With approximately 2,800 TAO in the liquidity pool relative to a market cap of roughly 7,700 TAO, larger positions carry meaningful slippage risk.
- Exchange liquidity bootstrap: The IMM track depends on the HODL Exchange attracting genuine order flow. Without sufficient volume, market makers have limited incentive to participate, and the 25% emission allocation to IMM goes underutilized.
- Small active miner base: A small number of active miners means emission distribution is currently concentrated. The scoring mechanism becomes more robust as more participants join.