Polkadot is a blockchain network that connects many separate blockchains, called parachains, and secures them all with one shared set of validators, so they can exchange tokens and messages. DOT is its native token, used for fees, staking and governance. Since November 2025, DOT balances and staking have lived on Polkadot Hub, which also runs smart contracts.
What is DOT used for?
DOT pays transaction fees, is staked by validators and nominators to secure the network, is used to vote on referenda in OpenGov, and buys coretime, the processing time that parachains run on. Every account must also keep at least 0.01 DOT, the existential deposit.
How many DOT are there, and is there a maximum supply?
About 1.7 billion DOT exist as of October 2026, and the supply is capped at 2.1 billion. The cap was approved by Referendum 1710 on 14 September 2025. On 14 March 2026 annual issuance fell from 120 million to about 55.8 million DOT, and it is reset lower every two years, so the supply moves ever closer to the cap. The live circulating supply is shown in the market data on this page.
What is Polkadot Hub, and did my DOT move?
Polkadot Hub is where DOT balances, staking, governance and smart contracts live. On 4 November 2025 they moved there from the Relay Chain automatically: addresses stayed the same and holders did not need to do anything. If a wallet shows a zero balance, it has probably not been updated for the Hub. The migration also cut the minimum account balance from 1 DOT to 0.01 DOT.
How does Polkadot connect different blockchains?
Chains on Polkadot, called parachains, have their blocks checked by Polkadot's shared validators on the Relay Chain, so they all get the same level of security. They send tokens and instructions to each other using XCM, a common message format. Bridges such as Snowbridge connect Polkadot to outside networks like Ethereum.
Can you build smart contracts and DeFi apps on Polkadot?
Yes. Since 27 January 2026, Polkadot Hub has run smart contracts directly, with an EVM that runs Solidity contracts written for Ethereum and with PolkaVM, Polkadot's own engine. Apps can also run on parachains, several of which focus on DeFi. Smart contracts can contain bugs, so only use apps you trust.
What is Polkadot 2.0?
Polkadot 2.0 is the name for three upgrades, all live by September 2025. Async backing (May 2024) halved parachain block times to 6 seconds. Agile coretime (September 2024) replaced parachain slot auctions and crowdloans with coretime bought in bulk or on demand. Elastic scaling (September 2025) lets one chain use several cores at once to process more.
What is JAM?
JAM (Join-Accumulate Machine) is the planned successor to Polkadot's Relay Chain, described by Gavin Wood in the JAM Gray Paper in April 2024. It is designed as a general computing platform on which parachains would be one service among others. As of October 2026 JAM is not live and has no launch date; independent teams are building it, funded by a 10 million DOT prize.
What is the difference between Polkadot and Kusama?
Kusama is Polkadot's sister network, launched in 2019. It runs the same technology with faster governance and lower stakes, so new features usually go live there first. Its token, KSM, is separate from DOT, and Kusama addresses and assets are not interchangeable with Polkadot's.
How do I store DOT?
Use a self-custody wallet that supports the Polkadot network and Polkadot Hub, and back up its recovery phrase offline. Native DOT addresses start with 1. The Bitcoin.com Wallet does not support the Polkadot network: it holds DOT only as Binance-Peg DOT, a BEP-20 token on BNB Smart Chain, which cannot be sent to a Polkadot address.
What is Polkadot?
Polkadot is a blockchain network built to connect many blockchains and secure them together. Instead of each project recruiting its own validators, the chains that plug into Polkadot, called parachains, are checked by one shared set of validators and can pass messages and tokens to each other. That is why Polkadot is often described as a "layer 0": it sits underneath the chains built on it. Our guide to blockchain layers explains the terms.
DOT is the network's native token. It pays transaction fees, it is staked to secure the network, it is used to vote on every change to the protocol, and it buys the processing time that parachains run on. Since November 2025, DOT balances, staking and governance have lived on Polkadot Hub, and since January 2026 the Hub has also run smart contracts, including contracts written for Ethereum.
Polkadot at a glance
Item
Detail
Type
Multichain network with shared security ("layer 0")
Native asset
DOT
Created by
Gavin Wood, with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban (whitepaper 2016)
Mainnet launch
26 May 2020; DOT transfers enabled 18 August 2020
Consensus
Nominated proof of stake, 600 active validators
Block time
6 seconds on the Relay Chain, about 2 seconds on Polkadot Hub
Supply
About 1.7 billion DOT; hard cap of 2.1 billion
Smallest unit
Planck (1 DOT = 10^10 planck)
Where balances live
Polkadot Hub, since 4 November 2025
Governance
OpenGov: on-chain referenda open to every DOT holder
Sister network
Kusama (KSM)
How does Polkadot work?
Polkadot splits the work between a central chain that provides security and many chains that run applications.
The Relay Chain: the core of the network. It holds the validator set, finalizes blocks and checks the blocks of every connected chain, so they all share the same security. It no longer holds user balances; those moved to Polkadot Hub in November 2025.
Parachains: independent blockchains with their own rules, apps and often their own tokens. Each one rents processing time on Polkadot's validators, called coretime, instead of running its own validator set.
Polkadot Hub: the part of the network most users touch. It holds DOT balances, staking, governance, the treasury, stablecoins and other tokens, and smart contracts.
XCM (cross-consensus messaging): the shared message format that chains on Polkadot use to send tokens and instructions to each other. This is how Polkadot delivers cross-chain interoperability without a separate bridge between every pair of chains.
Bridges: to reach networks outside Polkadot, bridges carry assets across. Snowbridge has linked Polkadot and Ethereum since 2024, and a separate bridge links Polkadot and Kusama.
What is DOT used for?
Fees: every transaction pays a small fee. Fees are usually paid in DOT, although Polkadot Hub also accepts some other assets, such as USDT and USDC, for ordinary transactions. Smart-contract gas is paid in DOT.
Staking: Polkadot runs on nominated proof of stake. Validators run the nodes that produce and check blocks, and nominators back the validators they trust with their DOT. Both earn rewards. Validators must lock at least 10,000 DOT of their own and can lose part of it if they break the rules. Since July 2026, nominators are no longer penalized for a validator's mistakes and can unbond their DOT in about two days, while validators still wait 28 days. How to stake DOT is covered on our buy DOT page and in our guide to staking.
Governance: DOT holders vote on every proposal, from treasury grants to upgrades of the network's code.
Coretime: projects pay DOT for coretime, the blockspace their chain runs on.
Every account must also keep at least 0.01 DOT, the existential deposit (it was 1 DOT until November 2025). An account that falls below it is closed and the rest of its balance is lost.
DOT supply: the 2.1 billion cap
DOT launched with no maximum supply. New DOT was minted at roughly 10% a year, adjusted to encourage staking, and from late 2024 issuance was fixed at 120 million DOT a year.
That changed in 2025. On 14 September 2025, DOT holders approved Referendum 1710 with 81% of the vote, capping total supply at 2.1 billion DOT. The cap went into the network's code in January 2026, and the first cut took effect on 14 March 2026, lowering annual issuance from 120 million to about 55.8 million DOT. Every two years, issuance is reset to 13.14% of the gap between the current supply and 2.1 billion, so it keeps shrinking and the supply moves ever closer to the cap. The next step is due in March 2028.
About 1.7 billion DOT exist as of October 2026, and the live circulating supply is shown in the market data on this page. Since March 2026 the network also no longer burns DOT: fees, coretime sales and slashed DOT flow into a Dynamic Allocation Pool that pays staking rewards, and the treasury no longer burns unspent funds.
One thing to know when reading old prices: on 21 August 2020, DOT was redenominated so that one original DOT became 100 of today's DOT.
Polkadot Hub: balances, staking and smart contracts
On 4 November 2025, Polkadot moved its user activity off the Relay Chain and onto Asset Hub, the system chain at the heart of what is now presented as Polkadot Hub. Balances, staking, governance, the treasury, vesting, proxies and multisig accounts all moved in a migration that took about eight hours. Addresses stayed the same and holders did not need to do anything, but a wallet that was never updated for the Hub can show a zero balance. The Relay Chain kept the validators and the job of securing the network.
Smart contracts followed on 27 January 2026. Polkadot Hub runs two engines side by side: an EVM, so smart contracts written in Solidity for Ethereum can be deployed unchanged and Ethereum developer tools work with it, and PolkaVM, Polkadot's own engine based on the RISC-V instruction set. Until then, Polkadot itself ran no general-purpose smart contracts and apps had to live on a parachain. The same upgrade let the Hub use several cores at once, which cut its block time to about 2 seconds.
Polkadot 2.0: async backing, agile coretime and elastic scaling
Polkadot 2.0 is the name for three upgrades that changed how chains use Polkadot's capacity. All three were live by September 2025.
Async backing (May 2024): halved parachain block times from 12 to 6 seconds and gave each block more room.
Agile coretime (19 September 2024): replaced the two-year parachain slot auctions and the crowdloans that funded them. Projects now buy coretime in bulk or on demand, paying in DOT, and existing parachains were moved over automatically. On-demand coretime also replaced "parathreads", the pay-as-you-go parachains of the original design.
Elastic scaling (completed 8 September 2025): lets a busy chain use several cores at once, so it can process more transactions and produce blocks faster.
What is JAM?
JAM, short for Join-Accumulate Machine, is the planned successor to the Relay Chain. Gavin Wood described it in the JAM Gray Paper, first published in April 2024. Where the Relay Chain was built only to check parachains, JAM is designed as a general computing platform on which parachains would be one service among others.
JAM is not live. A prize of 10 million DOT funds independent teams writing their own JAM software, and the first milestone payouts began in September 2026. That month Parity, Polkadot's main development company, set out its plan: finish and audit version 1.0 of the Gray Paper, build a production JAM node and a service that keeps today's parachains running, and strip the Relay Chain down to the minimum. Moving balances to Polkadot Hub was an early step in that plan. No launch date has been set.
Polkadot vs Ethereum
Polkadot and Ethereum both run smart contracts on proof of stake, but they scale in different ways. Ethereum keeps one main chain and adds layer 2 networks, which post their data to Ethereum. Polkadot connects many specialized chains that all share its validators' security.
Polkadot was created by Gavin Wood, a co-founder of Ethereum and its first chief technology officer, together with Robert Habermeier and Peter Czaban. Wood published the Polkadot whitepaper in 2016. The Web3 Foundation, a Swiss foundation, sold the first DOT in October 2017, raising more than $140 million, and Parity Technologies built most of the software. Kusama, Polkadot's experimental sister network, launched in 2019, and Polkadot's mainnet followed on 26 May 2020.
No company runs Polkadot. Changes are decided by DOT holders through OpenGov, live since June 2023, which replaced an elected council and technical committee. Any holder can submit a referendum or vote on one. Proposals run in parallel on separate tracks, each with its own approval thresholds and timing. Voters can lock their DOT for longer, up to 224 days, to give their vote up to six times the weight. Once a referendum passes, the network upgrades itself without a hard fork. The treasury, controlled by the same votes, funds development and ecosystem projects. In March 2026 the Web3 Foundation scaled back its role, closing its grants program and handing other work to ecosystem teams.
Polkadot ETFs
The first US spot Polkadot ETF, 21Shares' TDOT, began trading on Nasdaq on 6 March 2026. An ETF gives you price exposure through an ordinary brokerage account, but you do not hold the DOT yourself, so you cannot stake it, vote with it or use it on the network.
Risks to know
DOT's price can move sharply and is far below its 2021 high. New DOT is still issued every year, at a falling rate, and holders who do not stake are diluted by those who do. Some well-known projects have left the network: Phala moved to its own Ethereum layer 2 in November 2025, and Moonbeam, its best-known Ethereum-compatible chain, moved to Base in July 2026. Bridges are a weak point: in April 2026 a flaw in a third-party bridge let an attacker create fake bridged DOT on Ethereum, although native DOT was not affected. Smart contracts can contain bugs, scams and phishing are common, and the staking rules have changed several times in 2026, so check the current terms before you stake. Finally, not every token called DOT is native DOT: Binance-Peg DOT on BNB Smart Chain, for example, cannot be sent to a Polkadot address. This page explains how Polkadot works and is not financial advice.
Buy, sell and hold DOT with Bitcoin.com
You can buy DOT with a card or bank transfer, and it is sent straight to a Polkadot address you control, so have one ready before you start. Before you sell, check which DOT you hold: our sell DOT guide sets out how to cash out native DOT and the BNB Smart Chain version, and what to do where a direct sale is not offered. To see what your DOT is worth in dollars, use the DOT to USD converter.
The Bitcoin.com Wallet does not support the Polkadot network and does not hold native DOT. It holds DOT only as Binance-Peg DOT, a BEP-20 token on BNB Smart Chain that tracks DOT's price. To hold native DOT, stake it or vote with it, use a self-custody wallet that supports Polkadot and Polkadot Hub, and keep your recovery phrase safe.
Capped at 2.1 billion DOT
No hard cap
Smart contracts
On Polkadot Hub (EVM and PolkaVM) since January 2026, and on parachains
On the main chain since 2015
Upgrades
Applied on-chain after a referendum, no hard forks
Planned network upgrades agreed by developers and node operators
