Polkadot to Run Final DOT Redenomination Vote with Real DOT Tokens

Blockchain interoperability protocol Polkadot is planning to run another vote in regard to the denomination of its native token, DOT.

Following a similar vote conducted on Polkadot’s “wild cousin” network, Kusama, in May 2020, the creator of Polkadot project, the Web3 Foundation, decided to reconduct the vote on Polkadot with real DOT tokens.

Announcing the news on July 13, Polkadot invited community members to participate in the poll, which will finally define whether to redenominate DOTs 1:10, 1:100 or 1:1,000 on Polkadot. According to the blog post, the poll is open now and will last for two weeks. All DOT holders and those who claimed DOTs on the mainnet, are invited to take part in the vote, Polkadot noted. Live vote results are available by the link with the Polkadot.js plugin.

A spokesperson for Polkadot confirmed to Cointelegraph that Polkadot mainnet has transitioned to a live Proof of Stake protocol with a public validator set. The network is about to enter the third phase of its launch roadmap, the activation of core governance functionality, the person added.

DOT holders will be offered four options in the vote

At the poll, network participants will be provided with four options for determining DOT’s denomination. Those options include “no change” alongside three split variants from the original sale. The “no change” option stipulates no alterations from the original 2017 sale definitions, which means that total allocations of DOTs will remain at 10 million tokens.

The three other options include a 10x, a 100x, or a 1,000x split from the original sale, which will increase a total number of DOT tokens from 10 million to 100 million, 1 billion, and 10 billion, respectively. The change will make the apparent DOT prices 10x, 100x, and 1000x lower, respectively, Polkadot noted.

Why is DOT redenomination needed?

The DOT redenomination vote was originally initiated in May 2020 in order to avoid using small decimals when dealing with DOT and to achieve an easier calculation system. According to the Web3 Foundation, the change would bring “the ability to deal with more ergonomic or human-readable units, like whole numbers rather than small decimals.”

The first referendum on the DOT redenomination was carried out in May, offering users to choose whether or not to redenominate DOTs on Polkadot in a 1:100 ratio. Announcing the vote results on May 14, Polkadot said that the Foundation decided to not sponsor the redenomination despite the referendum recording “very little dissent”. Concluding that the change will require one more final vote, Polkadot continued:

“Informally, had the referendum recorded very little dissent, it is likely that Web3 Foundation, in its central role over the initial network launch, would have stood behind the redenomination proposal. However, given the non-negligible amount of opposition, including from some within the ranks of Web3 Foundation and Parity, the Foundation decided that we cannot, in good faith, sponsor redenomination at present.”

In a July 13 Polkassembly thread, some DOT owners have already voiced their stance towards the offered change. While some users are supporting a 100x change, others still argue that “re-denomination creates a lot of fuss and confusion.”

A pro-redonimation user encouraged the 100x alteration, emphasizing that increasing the number of DOTs to 1 billion tokens will be easier for a “larger portion of the audience to calculate network valuation”. The community member, Ken Seiff at Blockchange Ventures, wrote:

“Great decision by Web3 to reconsider this. In general most token economies have billions of tokens and not 10mm. So it is likely users and investors will misunderstand the token value on a relative basis. [...] By changing to simple 1B tokens, it will be easier for a larger portion of the audience to calculate network valuation. I am strongly in favor of 100x for this reason.”

100x split option is the biggest supported option so far

According to live vote results shared by a spokesperson at Parity, the option “split of 100x” is leading the referendum to date as of press time. Specifically, the 100x split option has about 200,000 DOTs voted, while the 1,000x one has about 95,000 tokens. “No change” option has apparently been getting the least amount of support so far, having collecte about 40,000 DOTs, while a 10x split has about 55,000 tokens voted so far. The vote will officially end on July 27.