Polkadot Staking Review: Impressive Stats, What’s New & What’s Coming

Since the launch of the Polkadot Staking Dashboard and nomination pools↗, participation in native staking has skyrocketed. These additions transformed how to stake on Polkadot. DOT holders no longer have to rely on third-party, centralized staking services, instead, they can use a decentralized, non-custodial, and intuitive staking platform. What’s more, nomination pools offer on-chain pooling of staked DOT, lowering the minimum staking amount to 1 DOT, while the users remain in full control of their assets and keys.

The community quickly recognized the benefits of staking their tokens natively via direct staking and within pools, with approximately 45,000 users staking close to half of all DOT tokens in circulation this way. From the beginning, an incentive program↗ launched to secure a good selection of high-quality nomination pools were created. This worked; around 5,000 community members joined a pool since they launched in November ‘22, and there are currently 90 pools available to choose from.

Since the dashboard and pools were launched, many new features and upgrades have been added, and many more are currently being developed to make it easy for users to get DOT tokens for securing the network. For inspiration, check out the historical rate of DOT collected from staking displayed in the upgraded Staking Dashboard↗.

The latest updates to Polkadot’s staking system

In addition to security and decentralization, Polkadot is committed to providing secure blockspace through fair representation of users staking. To achieve this, the staking experience is constantly being simplified and improved, and many new features have arrived in the short time since the dashboard and pools launched:

Improved filtering makes it easier for nominators to pick validators

Users can now find the most trustworthy validators more easily and make more informed decisions in the selection process by using the updated validator filtering.

The bonding process has been simplified from two steps to one, and now accommodates global users. App-wide localization has arrived and the option to switch languages between English and Chinese.

Several new features have been introduced to help the community make better staking decisions, including a newly designed tips section, a real-time countdown timer showing how long is left in an era, and a status module providing a clear route through the main actions you can take.

The rate of DOT tokens collected from staking has now been adjusted for inflation.

To stay informed about data that may affect your stakes, updated network statistics can now be seen on the overview page. Most significantly, the rate of benefits from staking DOT tokens now reflects inflation-affected historical statistics.

Finally, some aesthetic updates have been made. Several changes have been made to the Staking Dashboard, including updated colors and statistics, and an easier-to-follow balance graph on the overview page. In addition to the highlights listed above, a complete list of upgrades can be found on the Polkadot Staking Dashboard GitHub↗ repository.

Improvements planned for Polkadot staking

Staking on Polkadot has made significant progress, but there is plenty more to come. Upgrades are being discussed on the Polkadot Forum↗. Here is a summary of what has been proposed so far.

Fast-unstake, a feature currently unique to Kusama that helps users access bonded tokens faster will be proposed for Polkadot staking. This would mean that validators can unbond quickly if they do not actively support any validators during the bonding period. Similarly, inactive nominators can quickly unstake their tokens if they change their minds after bonding, and if they don't actively support any validators, they can quickly unstake.

There is also the possibility of rebonding to a nomination pool. Usually, it takes 27 days to ‘unbond’ withdraw) tokens but if desired, it could be possible to remain bonded before the unbonding period expires. Additionally, the bond duration may soon appear in actual time rather than eras, so calculating bonding and unbonding times is a thing of the past. Participating in governance with DOT staked in pools so that this DOT can contribute to the decentralization of Polkadot while offering the possibility for users to have their say in how Polkadot operates has also been proposed.

Joining multiple pools simultaneously, with the same account, and the possibility of switching pools without having to wait for an unbonding period is also up for debate. Ideally, the staking benefits that participants will receive from participating in pools will be auto-compounding, meaning they can be claimed without permission whenever pool operators trigger a transaction. Last but not least, the community is discussing whether to extend the NPoS to allow Polkadot to attract even more direct nominators.

Join the community staking DOT, natively

With all these improvements in place and many more on the way, collecting DOT for helping secure Polkadot couldn't be easier and it’s possible with as little as 1 DOT. For the ultimate staking experience, visit the Staking Dashboard↗. You can manage nominations, pool memberships, and any DOT collected with this easy-to-use web app while keeping full control over your assets.

If you would like to learn more about staking first, everything is explained in great detail in the Polkadot Wiki↗ and Staking Tutorials over on the Polkadot YouTube channel↗. To keep up-to-date on the latest updates on staking, subscribe to the Polkadot newsletter↗.

Interested in developing for or building on Polkadot? Get in touch↗ for hands-on support.