Bittensor (TAO) dilutes holders about 4.5 times faster than NEAR, adding 11.35% a year to CoinMarketCap's 3 October 2026 supply against up to 2.5% for NEAR. That settles Bittensor vs NEAR on dilution in NEAR's favour, even though TAO is the token with the Bitcoin-style 21 million cap.
Both networks cut issuance in late 2025, and CoinMarketCap's daily supply rows show it. NEAR's additions fell from 137,330 on 29 October to 81,118 on 30 October, and Bittensor's block reward halved to 0.5 TAO in December. At the 3 October Phemex closes, TAO's new supply is worth about $1.11 million a day against at most $0.43 million for NEAR.
Bittensor vs NEAR at a Glance
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Bittensor (TAO)
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NEAR Protocol (NEAR)
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Supply design
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21M maximum
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No maximum
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Issuance after the cut
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About 3,600 TAO a day, 11.35% a year on the 3 Oct supply
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Up to 2.5% a year
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3 Oct 2026 close (Phemex perpetual)
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307.1 USDT
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4.828 USDT
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30-bar move to 3 Oct
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+36.13%
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+146.96%
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Market cap at the 3 Oct close
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$3.56B
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$6.32B
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On Phemex (12:20 UTC 4 Oct)
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Perpetual and spot
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Perpetual and spot
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What Is Bittensor (TAO)?
Bittensor describes itself as an open network where independent subnets produce digital commodities, and its chain pays the people who build and run those subnets in TAO.
Bittensor's emissions documentation sets the launch reward at 1 TAO per block, with a block every 12 seconds, and caps the supply at 21 million TAO. Every block the chain mints new TAO and splits it across the subnets. Each subnet then pays 18% of its rewards to its owner and divides the rest evenly between its miners and its validators with their stakers. The first halving landed in December 2025 and cut the reward to 0.5 TAO per block, which the docs put at roughly 3,600 TAO a day.
Our explainer on what Bittensor is after the TaonSquare launch walks through the subnet economy and the AI app directory built on top of it.
What Is NEAR Protocol (NEAR)?
NEAR Protocol is a sharded layer-1 blockchain whose validators stake NEAR to produce blocks. A 24 February 2026 post on evolving NEAR tokenomics on NEAR's own site called the token the anchor for the AI economy and said its supply was fully unlocked. The same post said NEAR Intents had settled more than $13 billion of cross-chain volume by then.
For the chain's design and how it handles dApps at scale, our guide to what NEAR Protocol is and how it speeds up dApps goes further.
How Do Bittensor and NEAR Differ?
Bittensor vs NEAR Protocol comes down to two supply designs that reached a late-2025 cut by different routes, and to what each token pays for once it's minted.
Supply Design
TAO borrows Bitcoin's 21 million cap and its halvings, and it times each halving by issuance. Its emission halves each time total issuance crosses the midpoint of the remaining supply, first at 10.5 million TAO and then at 15.75 million. Registration burns and transaction fees come off total issuance and can be minted again, so recycling pushes each halving later. Taostats' halving notes add that the exact date can't be predicted precisely. CoinMarketCap's TAO supply row shrank on nine days between 19 December 2025 and 8 May 2026, by as much as 26,536.80 on 19 March. Any net figure you build across those days mixes issuance with recycling.
NEAR has no maximum supply, so its brake is a rate. Near One's 21 October 2025 post on the nearcore 2.9.0 halving upgrade cut NEAR's maximum annual inflation from 5% to 2.5%, effective once validators holding 80% of block-producing stake adopted it.
Issuance After the Cuts
CoinMarketCap's daily rows put a date on each cut. NEAR's supply grew 156,075 on 25 October 2025 and 137,330 on 29 October, then 81,118 on 30 October. The median daily addition across the 337 rows from 1 November 2025 to 3 October 2026 is 80,300.
TAO's rows halved about seven weeks later, from 7,201.87 on 14 December 2025 to 5,524.07 on 15 December and 3,593.87 on 16 December. The median addition ran 7,177.09 a day from 2 September to 23 October 2025 and about 3,591 across the 292 rows from 16 December 2025 to 3 October 2026.
Method: CoinMarketCap held NEAR's supply flat from 28 August to 23 October 2025 and then added 27,960,821 in one step on 24 October, so its rows show no NEAR issuance for those weeks. CoinMarketCap also recorded a one-day TAO step of 175,535.40 on 15 September 2026. One row barely moves a 292-row median, and every TAO growth rate in this comparison starts after that step.
What the Token Pays For
New TAO goes to work inside the subnets. The emissions page says each block's TAO goes into subnet liquidity pools, and the subnets pay their contributors in their own alpha tokens. TAO left unstaked in a wallet earns none of that issuance.
New NEAR goes to the validators and the holders who delegate stake to them. The February 2026 post adds a second channel in the NEAR Intents fee switch, which pays third-party distribution partners in NEAR. It also lists buybacks among the tools governance may use, and says "No specific mechanism is guaranteed or committed to."
Market Structure on Phemex
Phemex lists both tokens as USDT perpetual futures with leverage up to 50x, and both trade on Phemex spot as well. The two contracts settle funding on different clocks, every four hours for TAO and every eight hours for NEAR. If you run NEAR vs TAO as a pair on Phemex, you pay or collect on two schedules. Our explainer on what the funding rate in crypto futures is covers how those payments work.
On the 3 October bar the NEAR perpetual turned over $8.41 million on Phemex against $7.75 million for TAO. Across all venues CoinMarketCap counted $562.29 million of NEAR volume on 3 October against $180.39 million for TAO. That's 8.94% of NEAR's market cap and 5.08% of TAO's on CoinMarketCap's own 3 October figures.
The Dated Price Record
On price, NEAR vs Bittensor has favoured NEAR over both the 30 bars and the 2026 year to the 3 October close. TAO took the 3 October bar itself, up 5.19% to NEAR's 2.96%. Over the 30 bars from 3 September, NEAR's perpetual rose 146.96% from 1.955 to 4.828 and TAO's gained 36.13% from 225.6 to 307.1. From the 31 December 2025 close, NEAR had gained 219.52% by 3 October and TAO 40.18%.
Both set their lowest 2026 close on 11 February, TAO at 145.75 and NEAR at 0.961. NEAR's highest 2026 close came on 27 September at 5.379, and the 3 October close stood 10.24% below it. TAO's 3 October close was 11.57% under its highest 2026 close of 347.27 on 25 March. On Phemex's perpetual closes, TAO's 50-day average crossed above its 200-day on 1 October 2026, a golden cross NEAR printed on 26 May.
TAO vs NEAR: Which Dilutes Holders Faster?
NEAR dilutes holders more slowly, by a factor of about 4.5 on both the protocol rates and the supply that reached CoinMarketCap's rows.
Bittensor's 3,600 TAO a day comes to 1,314,000 TAO a year, or 11.35% of CoinMarketCap's 3 October supply of 11,580,442.61. NEAR's 2.5% ceiling on 1,308,004,152 NEAR allows at most 32,700,104 new NEAR a year, about 89,589 a day. On those numbers TAO's protocol rate runs 4.54 times NEAR's.
The supply rows agree. Across the 18 daily rows from 16 September to 3 October 2026, TAO's count rose 62,966.26, an annual pace of 11.03%. NEAR's rose 1,570,141 over the same rows, a pace of 2.43%, which puts TAO 4.53 times ahead.
In dollars at the 3 October Phemex closes, Bittensor mints $1,105,560 of TAO a day and NEAR at most $432,537, or 2.56 times less. The TAO vs NEAR gap in market value runs the other way, since TAO's $3.56 billion cap is 0.56 times NEAR's $6.32 billion. So the token with the Bitcoin-style 21 million cap is the one diluting holders about 4.5 times faster on the 3 October supply.
If you're choosing Bittensor or NEAR on dilution alone, NEAR is the pick for the least yearly dilution. TAO's case is what the issuance buys. The new tokens fund the subnets' miners and validators, and if you want direct exposure to that AI output, you accept the higher rate until total issuance reaches 15.75 million. The percentage also eases as the base grows, and one more year at 3,600 a day would cut it to 10.19% before recycling. Our Sentient vs Bittensor comparison of AI token models weighs that subnet model against a rival design.
Method: protocol rates divide each network's stated issuance by CoinMarketCap's 3 October 2026 circulating supply. Observed rates annualise the change in CoinMarketCap's daily supply rows between 15 September and 3 October 2026.
What Are the Risks of Bittensor and NEAR?
Bittensor's Risks
TAO's 3,600 a day doesn't halve again until total issuance reaches 15.75 million, and recycling can push that date later. The feeds also disagree on how much TAO exists. CoinGecko showed 11,339,645.93 TAO circulating at 14:17 UTC on 4 October 2026, 2.1% below CoinMarketCap's 3 October row. Its count had jumped to that figure from 9,597,491 between its 00:00 UTC snapshots of 14 and 16 September.
The chain has been halted before. On 2 July 2024 an attacker began moving funds out of wallets at 19:06 UTC with coldkey details stolen through a malicious copy of the Bittensor 6.12.2 package on PyPI. The Opentensor Foundation's 3 July 2024 update says it put the chain's validators behind a firewall at 19:41 UTC and entered safe mode, which stopped all transactions.
NEAR's Risks
NEAR has no maximum supply, and the 2.5% figure is a ceiling that governance sets. Near One's upgrade post says House of Stake will play a critical role in deciding NEAR's economic parameters going forward, so the rate can move by vote. If you're counting on buybacks to offset issuance, NEAR's own February 2026 post commits to none.
The price risk is the size of the run. NEAR's perpetual gave back 10.24% in the six bars after its 27 September high close. A 30-bar gain of 146.96% also leaves a long way down to the 11 February low of 0.961. NEAR's AI pitch has rivals too, and our NEAR vs Akash comparison of decentralized AI compute sets it against one of them.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Phemex list TAO and NEAR futures?
Phemex product data, read at 12:20 UTC on 4 October 2026, dates the NEAR/USDT perpetual to 23 December 2022 and the TAO/USDT perpetual to 12 April 2024. The spot pairs came earlier, NEAR/USDT on 7 May 2022 and TAO/USDT on 5 March 2024.
What do NEAR stakers earn after the 2025 cut?
Near One put staking rewards at about 4.75% a year after the cut, assuming 50% of the total supply stays staked. Its post said that if the vote passed by the end of the epoch including 01:00 UTC on 28 October 2025, the upgrade would follow about seven to eight hours later.
When does Bittensor halve again?
The next halving fires when total issuance crosses 15.75 million TAO and cuts the reward to 0.25 TAO per block, about 1,800 TAO a day. Measured from CoinMarketCap's 3 October count, that's about 1,158 days of issuance at 3,600 a day, and the halving after it comes at 18.375 million.
Did Bittensor or NEAR do better from October 2025 to October 2026?
From the 3 October 2025 close to the 3 October 2026 close, NEAR's perpetual rose 59.29% from 3.031 to 4.828. TAO's fell 4.40% over the same year, from 321.22 to 307.1.
Bottom Line
The 21 million cap tells you where TAO's supply ends, and the dilution bill arrives on the way there. For every $10,000 of TAO, the network mints about $1,135 of new TAO a year at a constant price, against a ceiling of $250 for the same stake in NEAR. Both bills land hardest on idle tokens, because each network routes its new issuance to the people who stake and work for it. A TAO holder who sits out of staking absorbs that issuance in full until the 15.75 million mark.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.
