Hey everyone, DJ from SubWallet and Dotinsights here. After three months of work following the suggestion from @kianenigma, our team has released Polkadot Staking Report H1 2023, the first comprehensive staking report for Polkadot. Our sincerest thanks to the Parity Data Team @Karim @pavla @gpestana, Subsquid, Polkaholic @sourabhniyogi @mkchungs and Polkawatch @rvalle for their help with data for this report 
Below are some of the highlights that we posted on our Twitter announcement thread:
- From Nov 1, 2022 to May 31, 2023, total DOT supply grew consistently from 1.25B to 1.32B while total DOT locked in parachain leases rose slightly from 120.01M to 121.43M. Total DOT staked experienced more fluctuations, starting at 638.13M (51.13% staking ratio) & ending up at 569.13M (43.14% staking ratio) with a few big changes in between:
- Most changes occurred due to whales unbonding.
- Two declines in mid-March and early-May were due to validator rotation.
- May 2023 marked 7 months of nomination pools on Polkadot and a celebration-worthy milestone: pools officially surpassed 10K total members on May 7 & 4M DOT in total stake the next day. On average, there were 52 new members and 22K DOT added to pools every day.
- Daily pool rewards also rose rapidly from 3.22 DOT on Nov 2, 2022 to a maximum of 2.83K DOT on May 22, 2023. However, pool rewards were marginal compared to nominator rewards, which mostly stayed in the range of 87.78K and 178.50K DOT.
- A look at each pool reveals that Talisman Pool 1 was the winner with 106.44K DOT all-time rewards. On average, the pool received 504.46 DOT per day & took up 49.09% of total pool rewards. Other pools in the top 5 were Amforc, decentraDOT, ParaNodes & SubWallet.
- Total validator count remained relatively stable between 917 and 990, yet total nominator count surged in Nov 2022 and reached a peak of 47,672 on Dec 5, 2022. Afterward, it gradually declined and settled at 44,241 on May 31, 2023.
- Since Nov 2022, the two most drastic drops in min total stake among active validators occurred on Nov 25, 2022 and May 4, 2023, which coincided with the two major declines in total stake. The Polkadot network went through its most vulnerable point on Dec 27, 2022, when min total stake came down to 1.24M DOT.
- In terms of nominators’ preferences, validators’ self-stake was one of the criteria nominators used when selecting validators. Data shows that nominators tended to back validators whose self-stakes were less than 10K DOT.
- Validator commission was another criterion. Unsurprisingly, nominators preferred validators with low commission in order to receive more rewards. On May 31, 2023, 167 validators with less than 15% commission received 21,299 out of 22,255 nominations, a notable 95.70%.
- The number of oversubscribed validators went through a remarkable 15-time decrease starting in mid-January, when max rewardable nominators per active validator doubled from 256 to 512 through Polkadot’s upgrade to runtime 9340. Only 0-3 validators were considered oversubscribed each day since Jan 14, 2023, compared to 15-45 validators priorly.
- From November 2022 to May 2023, minimum active nominator stake almost doubled from 187.35 DOT to 363.98 DOT. On average, a noticeable jump of 15.01 DOT occurred every 21 to 40 days.
- Fast unstake observed initial usage on Polkadot. An average of 4 unique accounts used this feature each day. Up to May 31, a total of 122.23K DOT was withdrawn via fast unstake.
For a complete read, please head to the Report. We appreciate all feedback & comment to better optimize the next issue 