Bittensor Betrayal: TAO Crash, a Cry for Locked Stake

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In the echo of circuits and frost, a co-founder speaks of a “deep betrayal,” as if a door slammed in the face of trust, and he accuses his former comrade of weaving “maximum pain” into the community and pulling the rug from under investors’ feet.

Key Takeaways:

  • Jacob Steeves, with the gravity of a winter dawn, accuses Samuel Dare of betrayal after Covenant AI departed, and a 25% plunge in TAO flung the market’s candle into shadow.
  • The fallout shaved $650 million from the market cap and triggered $9.1 million in long liquidations on April 10, as if misfortune walked through the door with muddy boots.
  • Bittensor will unveil a “Locked Stake” feature during the next Discord gathering, like a vow carved into the bones of the protocol.

Betrayal Allegations

After a week that trembled like a window pane in a careless wind, TAO token sank 25%. Jacob Steeves-known to the faithful as “Const”-has broken his silence about Dare’s departure and Covenant AI. In a deeply personal statement, Steeves speaks of centralization as a rumor with teeth, and sketches a roadmap meant to spare the future from the same financial rugs that were so artfully laid on the floor.

He does not mince words about the ache of the schism, calling Dare someone he “considered a brother.” The accusation glides on the air: actions designed to inflict “maximum pain” on the protocol and its people.

“He let everyone down who bought his token and who trusted in him,” Steeves declares. “He betrayed us all.”

As Bitcoin.com News reports, TAO tumbled from $337 to $253 in under six hours on Friday, April 10. A hopeful rebound on Sunday reached nearly $280 before slowly retreating to just above $260. In a post on X, Dare suggested that the decline in TAO’s days leading up to the fallout owed something to token sales by Steeves.

Yet Steeves, addressing those who suffered losses in the price storm, offers an apology to those who felt a rug had been pulled. While he dismisses Dare’s centralization critique as “unfounded”-perhaps a sign of personal storms brewing in the harbor-he admits the incident laid bare a genuine threat to the network’s balance.

The ‘Locked Stake’ Proposal

Steeves argues that the incident reveals a flaw in human-led governance, where greed and selfishness threaten a ship meant to sail on open seas. To move forward, he proposes a shift from legal accountability to cryptographic accountability, a lighthouse of mathematics in a night sky of passions.

The centerpiece of this recovery is a protocol-level feature: a locked stake.

“The solution lies in a new form of ownership: commitment,” Steeves explains. “It is measured as the time before tokens can move; time plus stake.”

Under the proposed locked stake, subnet owners would lock their tokens for a defined period to demonstrate long-term fidelity. This transparency, Steeves argues, is designed to guard against sudden exits or founders’ dumps. By shifting from branding to “pure mathematical rules,” the protocol aims to shield the ecosystem from the volatile weather of human decision-making.

Regarding the subnets left adrift by Covenant AI’s departure, Steeves confirms the community is already reorganizing. Open-source to the core, miners and remaining team members are expected to breathe life back into the project.

“Functionally, these subnets should not change,” he notes, insisting that no single person owned the vision for these tools.

Despite a market haunted by volatility, Steeves doubles down on Bittensor’s mission, calling it “by far the most decentralized AI protocol in existence.” He casts the present crisis as a necessary evolution for a protocol meant to be permissionless and resistant to the darker shades of human nature.

Steeves is slated to present the formal designs for the locked stake feature during an open Bittensor Discord call next Thursday, where questions from the community will arrive like a chorus asking for candor.

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2026-04-12 22:57