Payouts

If you use your own Bittensor wallet, your earnings arrive in two separate streams. Lium transfers rental fees after daily settlement; Bittensor adds subnet emission to your hotkey each tempo. By default both arrive as SN51 alpha stake, not as spendable TAO; an account on the stablecoin payout gets its rental fees in USDT instead. Your coldkey controls the stake position and signs the unstake transaction when you want TAO.

Destination

The two earning streams land in different places:

• Rental fees are, by default (some accounts can choose a stablecoin payout instead), transferred as SN51 alpha stake to your provider coldkey — the same coldkey you registered with when you joined Subnet 51. On the daily rail you do not need to provide any additional wallet address.
• Subnet emission accrues as alpha stake on your hotkey, added every tempo (~72 minutes) via Yuma Consensus. It is not routed through Lium's billing and is not transferred to your coldkey. See Subnet emission → How emissions arrive.

Currency & amount

Both streams are denominated in SN51 alpha, whose TAO value changes with the subnet pool price. On the stablecoin payout, offered to some accounts for now, rental fees are booked in USD and paid in USDT; emission stays in alpha. Your earnings break down as:

• Rental fees earned (if you rented GPUs): your share of renter USD, by default converted to alpha and transferred to your coldkey at the daily settlement (with the delay below)
• Subnet emission (allocated to all eligible providers): your share of SN51 emission, added as alpha stake on your hotkey each tempo (~72 minutes)

Schedule & delay

Stream	What it is	Lands on	When
Rental share	95% of what renters pay for your GPUs	alpha stake controlled by your coldkey (by default)	once a day at 17:00 UTC, for the billing day 2 days earlier
Idle pay (unrented pool)	subnet incentive while your GPUs are free	alpha stake on your hotkey	every tempo (~72 minutes)
Rented extra (rented pool)	subnet incentive on top of rented hours	alpha stake on your hotkey	every tempo (~72 minutes)

Both incentive rows pay only while your Discord account is connected in the Provider Portal; stay in the Lium Discord server with that account too (Connect Discord). The Provider Portal Overview shows your next rental payout with its amount and time.

On the default payout, rental fees are processed daily: your earnings from a given day are computed and a transfer to your coldkey is initiated, arriving with a delay of 2 days from the earning date. Subnet emission does not follow this daily schedule — it accrues continuously as hotkey stake each tempo (~72 minutes), with no billing delay.

There is no expedited rental payout path. Once your alpha arrives, you can unstake it to TAO without an unbonding delay; unstaking does not shorten Lium's settlement schedule.

Misbehavior decline

If a rental fails because of your node, the renter is refunded and you pay for it: a rental that ends while your node is inactive costs you 48 hours of that rental's price, recovered from your later payouts as a debt, and a pod that could not be cleaned up declines that rental's fees for the day it fires and the day before. Payouts already settled are never clawed back, and subnet emission is unaffected. See Penalties for the triggers, the exemptions, and how to dispute one.

Why don't I see my emission on my hotkey?

Emission is stake, not a transfer, so it will not show up in your wallet's "Transfers" or extrinsics history. Look at the Stake view for your hotkey on the Subnet 51 page (taostats / TAO Market Cap) instead. It also arrives in small per-tempo increments, and your coldkey may periodically re-stake or move the accrued alpha to a delegate — either of which can make the hotkey look empty even though emission is landing. This is separate from rental fees, which by default arrive as a discrete daily transfer on your coldkey, or in USDT on the stablecoin payout.

How to receive as TAO

Both rental alpha and subnet emission are held as SN51 stake positions. Find the position and its hotkey in your wallet's Stake view. To receive TAO or another token:

1. Unstake the position on Subnet 51 using the coldkey that controls it. Bittensor swaps the alpha for TAO at the current pool price and credits the TAO to that coldkey's free balance. The amount received reflects the swap fee and price impact. See the Bittensor remove-stake guide.
2. Optional: To get another asset, use an exchange that supports TAO and check its deposit network and fees.

Ordinary unstaking has no unbonding period: the TAO is spendable as soon as the transaction settles. Lium's rental payout delay happens before the rental alpha is available to unstake; it is not a Bittensor lock. A conviction lock sets a floor on your coldkey's total SN51 stake: you can unstake down to the locked amount, from any position.

Stablecoin payout (USDT on Ethereum)

Offered to some accounts for now. If Settings → Payout is not shown in your portal, your account is paid as described above.

An account can choose to be paid its rental fees daily in USDT on Ethereum. In the portal, Settings (Profile Settings) → Payout:

• How you are paid: Daily payout, as today (the default for accounts with their own key) or Stablecoin payout (USDT on Ethereum).
• USDT address (Ethereum): the address you receive USDT with. The portal checks the EIP-55 checksum and refuses an address whose mixed-case checksum does not match — that is a typo. An all-lowercase paste is accepted and stored checksummed. Changing the address asks you to confirm it is you, the way you sign in: an account with its own hotkey signs a message with it (nothing is sent to the chain), an account that signs in by e-mail and password gives its password — a password set less than 72 hours ago, or during the sign-in that offers it, cannot confirm yet (the card says from when it can). An account that signs in with Google confirms with a fresh Google sign-in: a small window asks you to pick the Google account (also when it is already signed in on this browser), and Google decides whether it also asks for its password or a second factor. Someone at your unlocked computer with your Google session open could click through the account chooser; sign out of Google on shared computers. An account that signs in with Google only cannot add a password from the portal (that would let a stolen session make its own proof); every time a password is set or changed on an account that signs in by e-mail with a confirmed address, the owner is mailed, with the date from which it can confirm an address. An account with its own hotkey is not mailed: its password never confirms a payout change. An account with neither — no password, and Google sign-in not offered — cannot set or change the address yet: write to support. A new or changed address is on hold for 72 hours: nothing is paid to it before then (the card shows New address on hold and the date it becomes payable; a balance due meanwhile waits and is paid on the first run after), and the e-mail on your account is told about the change at once. If you did not make the change, change the address back and change your password within the hold.
• Minimum payout (USD): at least $5. You can set it higher and change it back down to $5, never below.
• USD balance / Next payout / Minimum: what you have accrued, the next run and your minimum — and, once one has run, the last payout with its status.

The terms — the $5 floor, the daily run, the 5% conversion fee, and Lium paying the network fee — are settings on Lium's side, and the card always shows the ones in force.

How it works:

• Each day's rental fees are booked to a USD balance at the same rate and with the same delay as the daily payout; the alpha transfer for that day is skipped. A penalty or a maintenance refund declines the day's fees: before the day is booked it adds nothing to the balance; after, while the balance still holds that amount, it is taken back from the balance as a clawback. A day already sent stays paid. Debt recorded against your coldkey (an overpayment) is recovered from each day's share and recorded as a clawback in your account's ledger — or added, when a debt Lium owed you (a day whose payout failed) is repaid with the day's share (not itemised on the Payout card); the USD balance shown is net of it.
• Every day, one hour after the day's fees are booked (18:00 UTC by default), the balance, if it is at or above your minimum, is sent as one USDT transfer to your address. A balance under the minimum rolls over to the next day. Lium takes at most $2,000 of each account's balance per daily payout (before the conversion fee), and no second transfer within 20 hours of one takes it past that (a setting on Lium's side); the rest of the balance stays on it and is paid on the next days. A transfer that fails is booked back to the balance and sent again on the first run at least 32 hours after the failure (the time the transfer service can still report it as sent; if it does, it is booked as paid and the balance is paid once), unless Lium cannot yet tell whether it was sent: then it stays deducted until Lium has checked, and is booked back or confirmed by hand. A transfer whose result the service has not reported yet stays deducted until it is confirmed or fails.
• A 5% conversion fee is taken from each payout ($100 sends $95 USDT), and Lium pays the network fee; the fee is recorded on your account's ledger as its own line. The provider share of rental fees (Rental fees) does not change.
• Switching back to the daily payout keeps your address: a balance still at or above the minimum is paid on the next run (the card shows no next-payout date while you are on the daily payout); a balance under the minimum stays as balance (the daily payout does not add to it) until you switch back to the stablecoin payout. Days already paid as alpha never become a stablecoin balance.
• Subnet emission for an account with its own hotkey keeps arriving as stake on that hotkey; only rental fees move to the balance.