Total nodes in Bittensor and growth stop

The current amount of nodes in Bittensor is only 4096 nodes in network. This as they portray in their roadmap makes one wonder how will they ever grow to the point they are promoting. The whole selling point of Bittensor is a decentralized network without restrictions on who can join. This begs the question if the limitation of the nodes will stop Bittensor to grow and how will more people participate.

This was answered by Ala Shaabana, I summarized the answer


Bittensor capped on 40966 nodes in the network
Aims for controlled environment problem solution
The goal is State-of-the-art nodes
In future, Bittensor will grow nodes after validation of the network

This is a good approach for now as it will allow testing the working model of the network till the goal of the network is achieved. But I would love to get a better understanding of what that state of he art will look like. is there any network owned by a centralized system that is state of the art and is being used through AI?

How many TAO coins would be in the amount mentioned? Is the total amount of TAO also capped here or a percentage of them will be in the blocks that could be mined? Or perhaps all the blocks are allowed to be mined, if that is the case then how will the new people get a chance to mine XTO?

So my understanding is that Bittensor currently has a cap of 4096 nodes in the network. This is because they aim for a controlled environment where they can test and solve problems related to their goal of achieving state-of-the-art nodes. In the future, they plan to grow the number of nodes after the validation of the network. But It is unclear how many TAO coins will be included in the capped amount of nodes. It is possible that the total amount of TAO is also capped, and only a certain percentage of them will be available to be mined in the blocks.