Bittensor co-founder Jacob Steeves, known online as 'Const,' has publicly condemned former colleague Samuel Dare for what he calls a 'deep betrayal' following Dare's abrupt exit with the Covenant AI team. Steeves described Dare as someone he 'considered a brother' who chose to inflict 'maximum pain' on the protocol and its community. The fallout triggered a 25% collapse in TAO's price on April 10 — dropping from $337 to $253 in under six hours — wiping out over $650 million in market capitalization and triggering $9.1 million in long liquidations.
'He Let Everyone Down'
'He let everyone down who bought his token and who trusted in him — he betrayed us all,' Steeves said in an emotional statement. Dare had earlier posted on X that TAO's decline prior to the split was due to token sales by Steeves. Steeves dismissed those centralization accusations as 'unfounded,' suggesting Dare may be experiencing a personal crisis. Still, Steeves apologized to users who suffered financial losses, acknowledging the incident exposed a 'genuine threat' to network stability that stems from human-led governance.
Locked Stake: Taming Greed With Math
Steeves argued that the core problem is human 'greed and selfishness' — exactly what Bittensor was designed to resist. His proposed fix shifts accountability from legal contracts to cryptographic rules: a protocol-level feature called 'locked stake.' Subnet owners would lock their tokens for a defined period to signal long-term commitment. The 'time plus stake' metric makes sudden exits or dumps transparent and costly. 'We need to move from branding to pure mathematical rules,' Steeves said. The design aims to insulate the ecosystem from volatile human decisions by encoding commitment on-chain.
Subnet Recovery and Community Reboot
As for the subnets left idle by Covenant AI's departure, Steeves confirmed the community is already reorganizing. Because Bittensor runs on open-source code, miners and remaining team members are expected to revive the projects. 'Functionally, these subnets should not change. A single individual never owned the vision for these tools,' he noted. Despite the market turmoil, Steeves doubled down on Bittensor's mission, calling it 'by far the most decentralized AI protocol in existence.' The formal design for locked stake will be presented during an open Discord call next Thursday, where Steeves will field community questions.