Published on behalf of the Subspace Foundation.
A second season of staking rewards will keep the operator and nominator community strong while the Autonomys Network continues to grow toward sustainable, organic transaction activity.
A healthy network needs an active staking community from day one, long before real usage can pay for it. Closing that gap is what Guardians of Growth was built to do.
The program is run by the Subspace Foundation, which oversees the Autonomys Network. Its role is to support the network’s growth and resilience. The Foundation launched Guardians of Growth in August 2025 with a clear goal: build strong staking participation and support a healthy ecosystem of operators, who run the network’s infrastructure, and nominators, who stake their AI3 behind them. The program would sustain that community while activity on the network grew toward generating its own transaction fees.
One year on, the community has answered. At its peak, 41,270,560 AI3 was committed to operators. Around 39.9 million AI3 remains committed today, roughly one-third of the circulating supply, spread across 5 nominator positions and four active operators. Season 1 did what it set out to do. It built meaningful staking participation from a standing start and made the staking process familiar to a growing community.
Season 1 was always meant to be a bridge. It would carry operators and nominators through the early period, before organic network activity generated a larger share of their rewards.
That activity has grown more slowly than hoped. One year in, usage and fee generation are not yet where the Foundation expected them to be. The ecosystem needs more time. The staking community, meanwhile, remains strong.
Season 1 is still concluding as announced. Season 2 is a new and separately funded program that extends that bridge, providing continuity for the people who stake while giving the wider ecosystem room to grow. It is not a substitute for adoption. The Foundation and Autonomys Network continue to pursue product, developer and adoption work aimed at increasing real network usage. Guardians of Growth simply provides a stable base from which that work can continue.
The Foundation will allocate a further 5,000,000 AI3 to Season 2. The additional AI3 comes from the Foundation’s Near-Term Treasury, which is earmarked for ecosystem development. Across both seasons, that brings the total to 10,000,000 AI3, exactly one percent of total token supply, dedicated to bootstrapping staking and supporting the execution domain ecosystem.
Rewards will be distributed over approximately twelve months. Season 2 is expected to begin once Season 1 concludes, targeting around the end of August 2026, with Season 2 completion targeted around the end of August 2027. Actual timing may vary with block production and live network conditions, so treat these as operational targets rather than fixed dates.
Everything that made Season 1 trustworthy stays in place. Staking remains fully non-custodial: nominators keep control of their AI3 at all times and never hand custody to the Foundation. Rewards are protocol-native, distributed through the same mechanism that handles ordinary transaction fees. And the program remains open and verifiable, with the Guardians of Growth Auto EVM Vault, operational wallets and reward transactions all followable on-chain. The Foundation will keep publishing staking figures in the End of Month reports and will release a retrospective once Season 2 concludes.
The mechanism is deliberately simple. On a regular cadence, the Foundation submits a simple transaction on the Auto EVM domain and attaches a tip. Operators that include that transaction in a block earn a share of the tip, and their nominators automatically receive a proportional share through the normal staking process. The protocol decides how rewards are split. The Foundation does not choose individual recipients.
The system runs on the open-source Operator Reward Distributor, which submits the transactions, attaches configurable tips, and tracks the program budget and confirmations. This keeps the program transparent, reproducible and aligned with how the network already handles fees.
A strong staking community matters for what comes next, too. When Game of Domains, the network’s incentivized testnet initiative, resumes, an active base of operators and nominators will already be fluent in the workflows it depends on.
There are no guaranteed returns. Rewards vary with the size and cadence of the tips, the amount staked to each operator, and the number of other participants. Anyone considering it should understand the staking mechanics and the associated risks first.
To take part, view the active operators and their current staking information on the Autonomys Staking Portal. If you are new to staking, the staking guide walks through connecting a wallet, choosing an operator, and managing your position.
For the complete details of Season 2, the FAQ, and everything you need to get involved, read the full announcement on the Autonomys forum.
Фундаментальный уровень для AI3.0
