The Big Picture
TotalIssuance is the total TAO supply in existence. It grows from emissions (new TAO minted) and shrinks from burns (registration burns, slashing). This is a fundamental economic number - most ratios and percentages use it as the denominator.
Why This Matters
What's the total TAO supply? TotalIssuance. Combined with TotalStake, you get staking ratio. Combined with price, you get market cap. It's the base for many calculations.
Example Scenario
Query TotalIssuance() returns 21000000000000000000 (21 million TAO in RAO). This is total supply. If TotalStake is 10.5M TAO, staking ratio = 50%.
Common Questions
- Does this include locked/staked TAO?
- Yes, TotalIssuance is ALL TAO - free, staked, locked, everything. It's the full supply.
- How does issuance grow?
- Emissions mint new TAO. Every block emits TAO to subnets, increasing TotalIssuance. Burns (registration, slashing) reduce it.
- Is there a max supply?
- The emission schedule determines total eventual supply. Check protocol parameters for the emission curve and eventual cap.
Use Cases
- Calculate staking participation rate (TotalStake / TotalIssuance)
- Track token supply growth from emissions
- Build economic dashboards and metrics
- Research tokenomics and inflation
- Calculate market cap and dilution
Purpose & Usage
Purpose
Track total token supply for economic calculations - the denominator for many metrics.
Common Query Patterns
- Single value query for supply metrics
- Calculate staking ratio with TotalStake
- Track issuance over time
Stored Value
Relationships
Modified By
Related Events
Code Examples
import { ApiPromise, WsProvider } from "@polkadot/api";
import { stringCamelCase } from "@polkadot/util";
const provider = new WsProvider("wss://entrypoint-finney.opentensor.ai:443");
const api = await ApiPromise.create({ provider });
// Query TotalIssuance storage (no keys - plain value)
const result = await api.query
[stringCamelCase("SubtensorModule")]
[stringCamelCase("TotalIssuance")]();
console.log("TotalIssuance:", result.toHuman());On-Chain Activity
Modified by runtime hooks (e.g., epoch transitions), not directly by user extrinsics
As of block 7,429,232
Runtime Info
View Source- Pallet
- SubtensorModule
- Storage Kind
- Plain
- First Version
- v101
- Current Version
- v393