When the subnet has too little alpha and TAO reserves, normal coinbase emissions may try to add liquidity or swap excess TAO into alpha and those operations will fail because the swap refuses unhealthy reserve conditions.
At the same time, successful inflows are not recorded, while root-claim outflows continue to be recorded. This makes the subnet’s protocol-flow metric go negative. The emission-share algorithm treats negative protocol flow as a positive contribution, so the broken subnet can appear more deserving of emissions than it really is.
On a new subnet one would need about 1000 TAO to drain alpha reserve and more to maintain it drained. The situation is not impossible, but is low severity.
When the subnet has too little alpha and TAO reserves, normal coinbase emissions may try to add liquidity or swap excess TAO into alpha and those operations will fail because the swap refuses unhealthy reserve conditions.
At the same time, successful inflows are not recorded, while root-claim outflows continue to be recorded. This makes the subnet’s protocol-flow metric go negative. The emission-share algorithm treats negative protocol flow as a positive contribution, so the broken subnet can appear more deserving of emissions than it really is.
On a new subnet one would need about 1000 TAO to drain alpha reserve and more to maintain it drained. The situation is not impossible, but is low severity.