March 2026 marks a period of major, interconnected changes for the Polkadot network. This short post aims to recap and summarize these changes, but we urge anyone unfamiliar to read the detailed linked resources for all the information.
DOT Supply Cap and Issuance Changes
On September 14, 2025, the Polkadot community approved an on-chain Wish for Change (WFC) governance proposal that set a hard cap on the DOT token supply at 2.1 billion DOT.
As a result, the first issuance reduction will take place on March 14, 2026 (Pi Day). At that time, annual issuance will be reduced from 120 million DOT to 55 million DOT per year, and every two years thereafter it will be reduced by 13.14% of the remaining supply to be minted, gradually converging toward the 2.1 billion DOT cap.
Dynamic Allocation Pool (DAP) and Staking: Phase 1
Accompanying the new issuance model, a proposal for a Dynamic Allocation Pool (DAP) and a new approach to staking, budget allocation, and network security was put forth. On January 28, 2026, the community approved Phase 1 of the implementation of the DAP through another WFC referendum.
Phase 1 will include the following changes.
Changes pertaining to the DAP
These changes will be introduced with the 2.1.0 runtime upgrade, expected to go live on Polkadot on March 12, 2026.
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A basic version of the DAP pallet and a permanent account that can hold DOT
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Treasury burns will stop and instead the DOT tokens will be sent to the DAP
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Validator slashes will also be directed to the DAP
Staking changes
These changes will be introduced through another referendum that will update on-chain parameters. The timeline isn’t fixed, but they’re expected to be enacted 1-2 weeks after the runtime upgrade.
For validators
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Validators will be required to have a minimum self-stake of 10,000 DOT that is slashable
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A minimum commission of 10% will be introduced
Validators that don’t have at least 10,000 DOT in self-stake when the minimum is introduced it will be possible for anyone to permissionlessly chill them.
So, to avoid any unpleasant surprises, we urge all validators to begin preparations now to meet the 10,000 DOT self-stake before it is enforced on-chain.
Session key management
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With the 2.1.0 runtime upgrade on March 12, 2026, validators will be able to set session keys on Asset Hub using the `stakingRcClient` pallet.
- In the beginning, validators will be able to set the session keys on the Relay Chain too, as it is now, but eventually this will be deprecated.
StakingOperator Proxy Type
The introduction of the 10,000 DOT minimum self-stake may pose challenges for staking provider companies (“Operators”) that run validators for institutional stakers (“Stakers”), as they may be unable or unwilling to supply the required self-stake themselves.
To address this, Polkadot will introduce a new on-chain proxy type: the StakingOperator proxy. In this setup, the Staker controls the account that appears on-chain as the validator, which holds the self-stake. That account can have a StakingOperator proxy, which has a narrow set of permissions, controlled by the Operator (i.e. the company running the node). .
This mechanism enables Operators to run validators on behalf of Stakers in a fully non-custodial way.
The StakingOperator proxy type will become available with the 2.1.0 runtime upgrade, expected on March 12, 2026. Operators and their institutional clients should take advantage of the time delay until the minimum self-stake is enforced, if they wish to set up their validators using the StakingOperator proxy.
To learn more about how to use the StakingOperator proxy type, please refer to the accompanying documentation.
For nominators
Once the vast majority of active validators have the minimum self-stake a new referendum will be proposed to apply the following changes for nominators:
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Nominators will be unslashable
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Unbonding time for nominators will be drastically reduced from 28 days to 24 to 48 hours, depending on the timing of the unbonding.
A timeline for these is difficult to estimate as they depend on the behaviour of the majority of validators, but they should be reasonably expected to happen in April, 2026.
Beyond Phase 1
For an overview of the next steps that the community will be asked to ratify, we urge validators, nominators and all stakeholders to read the DAP roadmap and the DAP proposal. They involve some breaking changes to how staking will work, and below are the key points for Phase 2:
Phase 2 (ETA Q2-Q3 2026)
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Full DAP implementation
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Separate budget for validators and nominators
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Validators make three types of rewards:
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DOT rewards linearly vested over a year, dependent on the self-stake amount
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Stablecoin reward for operational costs
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Self-stake is part of the total stake and also receives nominator rewards on top of the vested rewards
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Proposed optimal self-stake T = 30,000 DOT and cap C = 100,000 DOT (i.e. max self-stake that generates rewards). The suggested target APY is 30% if all validators bond 30k DOT, and 9% if everyone bonds 100k DOT.
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Proposed reward for operations is $2000 per month per node, paid in stablecoins.
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Both these rewards are proportional to era points accumulated
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There is no more validator commission
The proposals and details of Phase 2 will need to be ratified by OpenGov and may change before Phase 2 is implemented, especially the numbers.
Timeline
In short the expected timeline of events is as follows:
March 12, 2026
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Runtime upgrade to 2.1.0 that includes:
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Basic version of DAP
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Treasury burns and slashes directed to DAP
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StakingOperator proxy type
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Session key management enabled on Asset Hub
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March 14, 2026
- Issuance reduction
Mid to Late March, 2026
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Validator minimum self-stake of 10,000 DOT
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Validator minimum commission of 10%
April, 2026
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Nominators become unslashable
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Nominators can unbond in 24 to 48 hours
The details of these implementations and the dates may change. We’ll update this post as these become more crystallized.