Understanding The Upcoming Polkadot Crowdloan Unlocks
TL; DR — Get ready for the crowdloan unlocks on January 16th and April 9th, 2024. This round includes Centrifuge, Interlay, Nodle, HydraDX, Phala Network, and more. On the Talisman Portal, you will be able to conveniently redeem your DOT, and earn up to 17% APR by staking directly on our staking dashboard.
How did we get here?
Time flies, doesn’t it? Yes, it has really been two years since the Polkadot Crowdloan auctions began in the fall of 2021. An innovative approach to achieving block space on Polkadot’s layer-0 infrastructure, Crowdloans were designed as financial incentive mechanisms for projects to use their Polkadot parachain slot wisely and effectively. DOT hodlers, in turn, were given the opportunity to lease their DOT to their projects of choice in return for token rewards. These lease periods typically lasted 96 weeks, at which point the DOT would be released back into the hands of hodlers. Well, that time has come.
So what do we do with our DOT now? I’m glad you asked. We’re here to take you through the process of how to redeem your DOT, keep you up to date on the latest unlock events, and outline some options on what to do with it now that the first batch of Crowdloans are wrapping up.
New rounds of unlocks are coming up soon
Over 100 million DOT (at the time of writing around 875 million USD) is being released into the wild now. This began back on October 24th with the first wave of unlocks coming from the five winners of the first round. Topping that list was the behemoth Moonbeam Crowdloan, which had over 35 million DOT in its coffers. Rounding out that first round were Acala with 32 million, and Parallel Finance, Astar, and Clover Finance all with around 10 million each. There was a lot of speculation over how this 100 million DOT unlock might affect the markets, but the impact so far seems to have been minimal at best.
The next rounds of unlocks to keep an eye out for occur on January 16th and April 9th, 2024. The January unlock includes Efinity, Composable, Centrifuge, Interlay, Nodle, HydraDX, Equilibrium, and Phala Network. In April, we have Polkadex, Litentry, Unique Network, OriginTrail, Bifrost, Coinversation, and Totem Kapex. The amount of DOT being unlocked here totals around 31.9 million.
A good comprehensive resource for checking the Crowdloan unlock schedule and other pertinent information can be found here at parachains.info.
Redeeming your DOT
Depending on the project you contributed to, your DOT might be restored to your balance automatically, or might need to be manually redeemed. You can conveniently track which parachains you’ve contributed to using the Talisman Portal. You can see your locked (or unlocked) balances at a glance in the Portfolio view, and for more detailed info, just click into the Crowdloans section of the app.
If you don’t see your DOT automatically restored after the unlock date for each respective parachain, it is possible you will need to manually redeem it. Manual redemption can be done using the Talisman Portal, polkadot.js, or on the parachain site in some cases. In the case of Talisman portal, you will be presented with an easy-to-access withdrawal button on your participated Crowdloans list.
If you used a centralized exchange like Binance or Kraken to participate in the Crowdloans, you’ll need to check with them on when and how your DOT can be redeemed. You can also view general historical info on past Crowdloans in the Crowdloans section of the Talisman Portal.
Put your recently unlocked DOT to work
Now that you have your recently returned DOT, it’s time to put these assets to work! There are a multitude of options, some of which you can perform directly in Talisman.
The simplest and most tried-and-true option? Stake your DOT directly in Talisman Portal. Current rewards for staking DOT are around 17% APR. This can be done directly within the Talisman Portal using the Staking feature.
For the more adventurous out there, there are several options for earning additional APY on Polkadot DeFi platforms such as Acala, Astar, and even Moonbeam. Within DeFi platforms like these, you can provide liquidity via pools, enjoy enhanced APY for staking, and even participate in what are known as Liquid Staking Derivatives. More info on some of these more advanced options can be found here.
DOT can also be used to participate in Governance, and have your voice heard on initiatives taking place with the Polkadot ecosystem. To get involved, you can head over to the Polkadot Governance Portal and take a look at some of the recent topics being discussed there.
Polkadot 2.0 on the horizon
While technically still in effect, the Crowdloan method of renting out blockspace on Polkadot will be phased out in the not-too-distant future with the introduction of Polkadot 2.0. Polkadot 2.0 will take a more dynamic approach to the utilization of blockspace and compute by parachains with a new mechanism known as Agile Coretime. More info on that here.
There are still some parachains out there looking to renew their leases until these new changes take effect, but for the average user it might make more sense to utilize your DOT in many of the ways listed in the section above in the meantime.
The beauty of Polkadot is that it is constantly evolving. The Crowdloans were a groundbreaking experiment for the unique tech stack that is Polkadot, with mixed results, but innovative nonetheless. Talisman will always be the place to go for updates on the future of Polkadot, and the best tool for participating in any upcoming events within the protocol. Stay tuned.
About Talisman
Talisman is a web3 wallet that unlocks a universe of applications in Ethereum and Polkadot. The Talisman browser extension allows you to safely store, send, receive assets, and connect to applications.
Talisman is non-custodial, audited, supports Ledger devices and is also Ethereum compatible, letting users store, manage and transact with Ethereum and Polkadot dapps.
