Managing stake with btcli
This pages demonstrates usage of btcli, the Bittensor CLI, for managing stake.
TAO holders can stake any amount of the liquidity they hold to a validator. Also known as delegation, staking supports validators, because their total stake in the subnet, including stake delegated to them by others, determines their consensus power and their share of emissions. After the validator/delegate extracts their take the remaining emissions are credited back to the stakers/delegators in proportion to their stake with that validator.
See also:
Minimum transaction amount for stak/unstake/move/transfer: 500,000 RAO or 0.0005 TAO.
Pre-requisite: Create a wallet
To manage stake you will need a wallet. For practice, create one with btcli.
btcli wallet create
The funds in a crypto wallet are only as secure as your private key and/or seed phrase, and the devices that have access to these.
Test network tokens have no real value. Before managing liquidity on Bittensor mainnet, carefully consider all aspects of secrets management and endpoint security!
View TAO balance
To stake, you'll first need some TAO. Inquire in Discord to obtain TAO on Bittensor test network.
To ensure you are targeting the test network, run btcli config set, select network, and set it to test.
View your testnet balance with:
btcli wallet balance
Network: test
Wallet Name Coldkey Address Free Balance Staked Balance Total Balance
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PracticeKey! 5G4mxrN8msvc4jjwp7xoBrtAejTfAMLCMTFGCivY5inmySbq τ 54.6699 τ 4.3658 τ 59.0357
Total Balance τ 54.6699 τ 4.3658 τ 59.0357
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
View subnet currency reserves
To see the list of subnets and their currencies, run:
btcli subnet list
You should see something like the following output. Notice that next to the subnets Netuid and Name is the subnet's token Price (τ_in/α_in), which, as indicated, is a ratio of the TAO in reserve τ_in to alpha in reserve α_in.
Subnets
Network: test
┃ ┃ Price ┃ Market Cap ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃
Netuid ┃ Name ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ (α * Price) ┃ Emission (τ) ┃ P (τ_in, α_in) ┃ Stake (α_out) ┃ Supply (α) ┃ Tempo (k/n)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━
0 │ τ root │ 1.0000 τ/Τ │ τ 5.01m │ τ 0.0000 │ -, - │ Τ 2.77m │ 5.01m Τ /21M │ -/-
277 │ इ muv │ 1.7300 τ/इ │ τ 696.47k │ τ 0.0110 │ τ 17.24k, 9.97k इ │ 392.63k इ │ 402.59k इ /21M │ 74/99
3 │ γ templar │ 0.3123 τ/γ │ τ 129.95k │ τ 0.3383 │ τ 30.47k, 97.58k γ │ 318.57k γ │ 416.15k γ /21M │ 0/99
1 │ α apex │ 0.1117 τ/α │ τ 49.00k │ τ 0.1512 │ τ 20.61k, 184.54k α │ 254.22k α │ 438.76k α /21M │ 98/99
255 │ ዉ ethiopic_wu │ 0.0394 τ/ዉ │ τ 17.31k │ τ 0.0498 │ τ 8.20k, 208.05k ዉ │ 230.94k ዉ │ 438.99k ዉ /21M │ 52/99
119 │ Ⲃ vida │ 0.0235 τ/Ⲃ │ τ 10.30k │ τ 0.0265 │ τ 4.42k, 188.50k Ⲃ │ 250.43k Ⲃ │ 438.93k Ⲃ /21M │ 16/99
117 │ Ⲁ alfa │ 0.0227 τ/Ⲁ │ τ 9.96k │ τ 0.0270 │ τ 4.53k, 199.77k Ⲁ │ 239.10k Ⲁ │ 438.87k Ⲁ /21M │ 14/99
...
View a subnet's nodes
btcli subnet show --netuid 119
Netuid: 119
Using the specified network test from config
Subnet 119: vida
Network: test
UID ┃ Stake (Ⲃ) ┃ Alpha (Ⲃ) ┃ Tao (τ) ┃ Dividends ┃ Incentive ┃ Emissions (Ⲃ) ┃ Hotkey ┃ Coldkey ┃ Identity
━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
101 │ 44.60k Ⲃ │ 44.60k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FRxKz │ 5FRxKz │ Owner119 (*Owner)
45 │ 81.33k Ⲃ │ 72.55k Ⲃ │ τ 8.78k │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FCPTn │ 5D2d3Y │ muv
21 │ 10.94k Ⲃ │ 10.94k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CFZ9x │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
22 │ 9.32k Ⲃ │ 9.32k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HbYLL │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
81 │ 8.19k Ⲃ │ 8.19k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HBK4F │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
96 │ 6.52k Ⲃ │ 6.52k Ⲃ │ τ 0.16 │ 0.50000 │ 0.0000 │ 41.00023 Ⲃ │ 5EqPr3 │ 5EvXtY │ ~
97 │ 4.13k Ⲃ │ 4.00k Ⲃ │ τ 125.80 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CorGT │ 5Cqiai │ ~
80 │ 3.98k Ⲃ │ 3.98k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CtaFa │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
100 │ 2.54k Ⲃ │ 2.54k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FqJEi │ 5G3sVe │ ~
99 │ 951.73 Ⲃ │ 951.73 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5GGmFp │ 5G3sVe │ ~
26 │ 940.77 Ⲃ │ 931.42 Ⲃ │ τ 9.35 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5Ct14B │ 5GEeMQ │ ~
78 │ 932.60 Ⲃ │ 932.60 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HgFYK │ 5DF8AP │ ~
20 │ 931.77 Ⲃ │ 931.77 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FnK5f │ 5DZPbo │ ~
76 │ 931.55 Ⲃ │ 931.55 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5DCPu5 │ 5G6UQE │ ~
32 │ 931.13 Ⲃ │ 925.51 Ⲃ │ τ 5.62 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5EARqJ │ 5CtBA6 │ ~
18 │ 929.49 Ⲃ │ 928.96 Ⲃ │ τ 0.52 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HNNws │ 5Hbazs │ ~
33 │ 929.22 Ⲃ │ 924.19 Ⲃ │ τ 5.03 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CeoYQ │ 5GKVqx │ ~
46 │ 928.60 Ⲃ │ 928.23 Ⲃ │ τ 0.38 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5GuqX1 │ 5Ehuid │ ~
Stake into a node
Use btcli stake add to stake to a validator on a subnet. You'll be prompted to choose a subnet and validator, as well as specify an amount of TAO to stake into the validator's hotkey as alpha.
btcli stake add
Enter the netuid to use. Leave blank for all netuids: 119
Enter the wallet name (PracticeKey!):
Enter the wallet hotkey name or ss58 address to stake to (or Press Enter to view delegates):
Using the specified network test from config
Subnet 119: vida
Network: test
UID ┃ Stake (Ⲃ) ┃ Alpha (Ⲃ) ┃ Tao (τ) ┃ Dividends ┃ Incentive ┃ Emissions (Ⲃ) ┃ Hotkey ┃ Coldkey ┃ Identity
━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
101 │ 44.60k Ⲃ │ 44.60k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FRxKz │ 5FRxKz │ Owner119 (*Owner)
45 │ 81.33k Ⲃ │ 72.55k Ⲃ │ τ 8.78k │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FCPTn │ 5D2d3Y │ muv
21 │ 10.94k Ⲃ │ 10.94k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CFZ9x │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
22 │ 9.32k Ⲃ │ 9.32k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HbYLL │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
81 │ 8.19k Ⲃ │ 8.19k Ⲃ │ τ 1.81 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HBK4F │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
96 │ 6.52k Ⲃ │ 6.52k Ⲃ │ τ 0.16 │ 0.50000 │ 0.0000 │ 41.00023 Ⲃ │ 5EqPr3 │ 5EvXtY │ ~
97 │ 4.13k Ⲃ │ 4.00k Ⲃ │ τ 125.80 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CorGT │ 5Cqiai │ ~
80 │ 3.98k Ⲃ │ 3.98k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5CtaFa │ 5H13H4 │ Owner136
100 │ 2.54k Ⲃ │ 2.54k Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5FqJEi │ 5G3sVe │ ~
99 │ 951.73 Ⲃ │ 951.73 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5GGmFp │ 5G3sVe │ ~
26 │ 940.77 Ⲃ │ 931.42 Ⲃ │ τ 9.35 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5Ct14B │ 5GEeMQ │ ~
78 │ 932.60 Ⲃ │ 932.60 Ⲃ │ τ 0.00 │ 0.00439 │ 0.0088 │ 0.35965 Ⲃ │ 5HgFYK │ 5DF8AP │ ~
─────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────────┼────────┼─────────┼───────────────────
│ 260.19k Ⲃ │ 251.23k Ⲃ │ 8.96k Ⲃ │ 1.000 │ │ 82.0005 Ⲃ │ │ │
After selecting a validator to delegate stake to, you'll see your wallet balance and be asked to specify the amount of TAO you wish to stake.
Amount to stake (TAO τ): 5
You'll then see the details of the trade, including slippage, and be asked to confirm execution.
Staking to:
Wallet: PracticeKey!, Coldkey ss58: 5G4mxrN8msvc4jjwp7xoBrtAejTfAMLCMTFGCivY5inmySbq
Network: test
Netuid ┃ Hotkey ┃ Amount (τ) ┃ Rate (per τ) ┃ Received ┃ Slippage
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━
19 │ 5FCPTnjevGqAuTttetBy4a24Ej3pH9fiQ8fmvP1ZkrVsLUoT │ τ 5.0000 │ 991.3160712161465 t/τ │ 4,793.8697 t │ 3.2827 %
────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┼────────────────────────┼──────────────┼──────────
│ │ │ │ │
Description:
The table displays information about the stake operation you are about to perform.
The columns are as follows:
- Netuid: The netuid of the subnet you are staking to.
- Hotkey: The ss58 address of the hotkey you are staking to.
- Amount: The TAO you are staking into this subnet onto this hotkey.
- Rate: The rate of exchange between your TAO and the subnet's stake.
- Received: The amount of stake you will receive on this subnet after slippage.
- Slippage: The slippage percentage of the stake operation. (0% if the subnet is not dynamic i.e. root).
Would you like to continue? [y/n]:
If you confirm, the staking operation will execute. After completion
View your current stakes
Use btcli stake list to view your currently held stakes. For each validator you have staked, you'll see how much stake you currently hold on each subnet.
Stake is held in alpha, but note that value at the current price is also displayed, along with the computed Swap value and slippage rate of the current holdings.
Hotkey: 5GEXJdUXxLVmrkaHBfkFmoodXrCSUMFSgPXULbnrRicEt1kK
Network: test
See below for an explanation of the columns
┃ ┃ Value ┃ ┃ Price ┃ ┃ ┃ Emission
Netuid ┃ Name ┃ (α x τ/α) ┃ Stake (α) ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ Swap (α -> τ) ┃ Registered ┃ (α/block)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━
250 │ ኤ unknown │ τ 18.38 │ 602.14 ኤ │ 0.0305 τ/ኤ │ τ 17.96 (2.287%) │ YES │ 0.0000 ኤ
119 │ Ⲃ vidac │ τ 13.72 │ 98.73 Ⲃ │ 0.1390 τ/Ⲃ │ τ 13.61 (0.815%) │ YES │ 0.0000 Ⲃ
────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼──────────────────┼────────────┼───────────
2 │ │ τ 32.10 │ │ │ τ 31.57 │ │
Press Enter to continue to the next hotkey...
Transferring stake
The btcli stake transfer command is used to transfer ownership of stake from one wallet (coldkey) to another.
Don't confuse this with btcli stake move, which does not transfer ownership to another wallet/coldkey, but moves stake between validators or subnets, effectively unstaking and restaking it in a single operation.
This operation effectively comprises a series of operations, which occur as an atomic transaction:
- first, the specified amount is unstaked from the subnet alpha token into TAO
- that amount of TAO is then transferred to the ownership of the recipient
- the recipient then automatically stakes the newly received TAO into the subnet, receiving the alpha tokens in return
btcli stake transfer
This command transfers stake from one coldkey to another while keeping the same hotkey.
Using the wallet name from config: PracticeKey!
Using the wallet hotkey from config: stakinkey1
Enter the destination wallet name or coldkey SS58 address: zingo
Using the specified network test from config
Available Stakes to Transfer
for wallet hotkey:
stakinkey1: 5GEXJdUXxLVmrkaHBfkFmoodXrCSUMFSgPXULbnrRicEt1kK
Index ┃ Netuid ┃ Name ┃ Stake Amount ┃ Registered
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━
0 │ 0 │ τ root │ τ 76.1340 │ NO
1 │ 3 │ γ templar │ 0.0008 γ │ YES
2 │ 119 │ Ⲃ vida │ 0.0009 Ⲃ │ YES
3 │ 250 │ ኤ ethiopic_glottal_e │ 11.2528 ኤ │ YES
Enter the index of the stake you want to transfer [0/1/2/3]: 3
Enter the amount to transfer ኤ (max: 11.2528 ኤ) or 'all' for entire balance: all
Enter the netuid of the subnet you want to move stake to (0-308): 250
Moving stake from: ኤ(Netuid: 250) to: ኤ(Netuid: 250)
Network: test
origin netuid ┃ origin hotkey ┃ dest netuid ┃ dest hotkey ┃ amount (ኤ) ┃ rate (ኤ/ኤ) ┃ received (ኤ) ┃ slippage
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━
ኤ(250) │ 5GE...1kK │ ኤ(250) │ 5GE...1kK │ 11.2528 ኤ │ 1.0ኤ/ኤ │ 11.2502 ኤ │ 0.0228%
───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼────────────┼────────────┼──────────────┼──────────
│ │ │ │ │ │ │
Would you like to continue? [y/n]: y
Enter your password:
Decrypting...
Origin Stake:
11.2528 ኤ ➡ 0.0000 ኤ
Destination Stake:
0.0000 ኤ ➡ 11.2502 ኤ
When the recipient check's their stake list, they'll now see the transferred stake:
btcli stake list --wallet_name zingo
Using the specified network test from config
Hotkey: 5GEXJdUXxLVmrkaHBfkFmoodXrCSUMFSgPXULbnrRicEt1kK
Network: test
┃ ┃ Value ┃ ┃ Price ┃ ┃ ┃ Emission
Netuid ┃ Name ┃ (α x τ/α) ┃ Stake (α) ┃ (τ_in/α_in) ┃ Swap (α -> τ) ┃ Registered ┃ (α/block)
━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━
0 │ τ root │ τ 2.34 │ τ 2.34 │ 1.0000 τ/τ │ N/A (0.000%) │ NO │ τ 0.0000
250 │ ኤ ethiopic_glottal_e │ τ 0.22 │ 11.25 ኤ │ 0.0195 τ/ኤ │ τ 0.22 (0.006%) │ YES │ 0.0000 ኤ
────────┼──────────────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼───────────
2 │ │ τ 2.56 │ │ │ τ 2.56 │ │
Wallet:
Coldkey SS58: 5F1TCdVcRWLYyKiS2kF2nBZ21EwQDDFr8hEqrDhRL6YvdtgQ
Free Balance: τ 0.0000
Total TAO (τ): τ 2.51
Total Value (τ): τ 2.56
Moving stake
The btcli stake move command is used to moves stake between validators or subnets, effectively unstaking and restaking it in a single operation. It does not change ownership of the stake, which remains with the same wallet/coldkey.
Don't confuse this with btcli stake transfer, which is used to transfer ownership of stake from one wallet (coldkey) to another.