Subnet Session with Jake & Alex from HODL: Subnet 118

This episode brings the long-awaited sequel with Jake (Investing 88) and Alex (Trusted Stake). They recap how the two teams teamed up to build Subnet 118 / HODL, a joint venture focused on making subnet investing less painful by reducing slippage, improving liquidity, and smoothing out the constant rotation/volatility that comes from trading directly against shallow alpha pools.

The core product is the HODL Exchange: a secondary-market style, automated escrow/order-book layer that lets users buy and sell TAO ↔ alpha with far less price impact than the native AMM pools. Instead of “one big swap” causing huge slippage, orders can be partially filled over time by counterparties (including incentivised market makers / IMMs) who earn subnet emissions for providing fill volume, plus there’s a private-order option for direct counterparties. The plan is to introduce a dynamic fee model that charges a small share of the slippage saved (e.g., taking ~15% of the saved slippage so users still keep ~85% of the benefit), with fees after OPEX used for buybacks. They also discuss how this matters even more if the subnet cap rises and liquidity gets thinner across more subnets.