I hope this forum post finds you in good health and the pursuit of wisdom.
I was thinking about the existential deposit and I can understand that it in some way helps with deseminating wallets that are not active with those that are. However, in the future when DOT goes to 400 USD, 1000 USD or even more, it will be difficult for certain parts of the world to deposit 400 - 1000 USD just to have the privilege of transacting on our network.
Do we have any plans on removing it when it comes to this or at the very least decrease it so people from all backgrounds - economical included - can participate on our network? Thank you!
ED is introduced to ensure the security of the network and therefore likely wonât be reduced on relaychain.
However, system parachains can have much lower ED. Features on relaychain will eventually all migrate into system parachains. This means in the future user donât need to transact on relaychain anymore and therefore high ED on relaychain wonât be an issue.
Also worth noting that 1 DOT existential deposit is a bit arbitrary and we use it for now as it is a good enough requirement, it can be changed with democracy via runtime upgrades to adapt to the price changes.
Lowering or removing the existential deposit could definitely help make the Polkadot network more accessible to a wider range of users. While itâs true that the deposit serves a purpose in discouraging inactive accounts, it could be a barrier for people in certain parts of the world where such an amount is a significant expense. As a Polkadot maximalist, I believe that we should strive to make the network as inclusive and accessible as possible, while also ensuring its security and stability. However, any changes to the deposit system would need to be carefully considered to avoid unintended consequences, such as an increase in spam or other malicious activity.
Thank you for your post on the Polkadot forum regarding the existential deposit. As you pointed out, the existential deposit is a mechanism that helps to weed out inactive wallets from the network. However, as the value of DOT continues to increase, it may become difficult for certain parts of the world to deposit the required amount just to transact on the network.
In my opinion, it is important to strike a balance between incentivizing active participation in the network and ensuring accessibility for all. While reducing or removing the existential deposit may increase participation in the short term, it may also lead to an increase in inactive accounts, which could pose a risk to the networkâs security and performance.
Instead of removing the deposit altogether, a more gradual approach could be taken to decrease it over time, as the value of DOT continues to increase. Additionally, exploring alternative mechanisms for incentivizing active participation, such as staking rewards, could also help to mitigate the burden of the deposit on users.
Overall, I believe that it is important for the Polkadot community to consider the long-term implications of any changes to the networkâs mechanics, and to work towards solutions that balance accessibility with network security and performance.
There is a general misconception in this thread, which is that the ED helps weed out inactive accounts. It does not. Itâs a deposit, not an activity tracker, that is required for an account to exist.
The ED weeds out small accounts (or âdustâ accounts). It says, âThis account is only worth keeping in storage if it has a certain amount of DOTâ. Why would an account not be worth keeping in storage? Well, every account in storage has adverse affects on other accounts in storage. Every time someone transacts, the system needs to find the account, read some information from it (like its current balance), do some computation (the transaction), and write a new value to the account (its balance after paying fees). If there are more accounts in the system, then looking up and operating on a single one takes more time.
Since time is a limited resource, more time per account means fewer accounts can be accessed in one block (within a 2 second time limit), means fewer transactions per second and higher transaction fees.
On the Relay Chain, this time accessing accounts also takes validators away from their primary task: validating parachains. So while lowering or removing the ED is a feel-good, easy âsolutionâ, it actually makes the user experience and performance for the entire network worse. If anything, we should increase the ED on the Relay Chain so that people donât use it. Of course thatâs not practical yet as long as staking and governance are there.
Now for the good news: Polkadot is not the Relay Chain, but rather a network of chains. On Statemint, the ED is 0.1 DOT, so if you do want an account with less than 1 DOT, send it over to Statemint and use that. Blockspace on parachains is much less sacred than on the Relay Chain.
@joe What would be the exact OpenGov referendum process to have the community vote on lowering the ED from 0.1 DOT to 0.005 DOT on Assethub?
This hasnât been updated in nearly two years, and now with
(a) RFC #32 Minimal Relay Chain
(b) assetconversion pallet finally coming to AssetHub
I think we should to battletest AssetHub on Polkadot with the same kind of level of DotOrdinals activity as this by bringing on new users here in large numbers, following what you said here earlier:
Iâm unclear why an RFC process would determine this rather than an OpenGov referendum. Can you explain?
The original 0.1 DOT was clearly semiarbitrary as would be 0.005 DOT â the latter just makes it more accessible. What is the security/storage math required to determine a reasonable value to lower the ED to, e.g. airdrop the entire DOT holders an XYZ token on AssetHub, where we wish to battletest DOT/XYZ swaps with assetconversion?
XYZ could be USDC or USDT (sufficient) or some crazy memecoin DED (not sufficient). Lowering this ED and getting massive liquidity for the central case of DOT/USDC and DOT/USDT [or a DOT/DED fun coin] would bring significant growth to AssetHub usage now and very much worth it!
I have also discussed this with some members of the ecosystem. The original 0.1 DOT was not completely arbitrary :P. It was set at a time when we estimated about 10 live parachains, and that each parachain would thus represent some chunk of work in the network. The idea was always that as we got more parachains we could probably lower the ED to something like 1/50th or 1/100th.
As youâve noted with other deposits, these have already been moved to 1/100th of the Relay Chain formula.
I would be in favor of a change to an ED of 0.01 DOT on Asset Hub, and will open a PR to the Fellowship runtimes.
The ED exists to prevent dust accounts from bloating the state of the blockchain, which would affect the performance and security of the network. However, I think there are other ways to achieve this goal without excluding potential users. For example, the ED could be dynamically adjusted based on the price of DOT, the number of active accounts, and the size of the state. Alternatively, the ED could be waived or subsidized for certain categories of users, such as newcomers, validators, or developers.
I hope that the Polkadot community and the developers will consider these suggestions and find a solution that balances the needs of the network and the users. Polkadot is a promising project that aims to enable interoperability, scalability, and innovation in the blockchain space. I believe that lowering the ED would make Polkadot more accessible and inclusive for everyone
I would like to revive this discussion. We really need to reconsider all of this. It currently costs $11 for someone to create an account on the Polkadot relay chain and it is likely to get more expensive from here on out in this current market. This will be a meme if/when DOT gets to $50. IDK if people realize but account rent on Solana is crazy cheap because storage is cheap.
This is crazy friction to most people. We need to cut fees all around, the Treasury has plenty of money, subsidize these costs. TBH, Asset Hub should be .000001 DOT and it should be .00001 DOT ED on the relay chain.
We talk about how well Polkadot did during all those inscriptions but a dust attack would take it down? This feels like pearl clutching, we need to FAFO.
