Polkadot slips to $0.9777: four times as weak as the field

Polkadot traded at $0.9777 overnight into Wednesday, below one dollar for the first time since September 16. On Wednesday morning Polkadot is back at $1.009, up 1.56 percent over 24 hours. Over the week a loss of 13.27 percent remains, and that is the real finding: no other large coin has lost anything close to that over these seven days.

It is also documented that since October 24 new network software has been running on the Asset Hub, where by our own measurement 99.99 percent of all DOT sit. Our assessment of how much of the price slide this rebuild accounts for follows further down in a section of its own; the figures come first.

Seven consecutive lower daily closes

The slide is not the move of a single day. According to CoinGecko daily data, which we retrieved on Wednesday morning, DOT has closed lower on seven consecutive days since October 20:

• October 20: $1.1519
• October 21: $1.1505
• October 22: $1.1442
• October 23: $1.1113
• October 24: $1.0847
• October 25: $1.0480
• October 26: $1.0274
• October 27: $1.0102

From the high on October 20 to the low overnight into Wednesday that is 15.1 percent. Market capitalisation therefore stands at $1.725 billion, rank 57 by market value. For comparison: in November 2021 DOT stood at $54.98. From that high it is 98.2 percent short.

13.3 percent in a week, the rest of the field loses 3.2

We set the weekly change of the eight next-largest coins alongside it, all at the same retrieval time:

• XRP: minus 0.38 percent
• Dogecoin: minus 1.81 percent
• Bitcoin: minus 2.10 percent
• Shiba Inu: minus 3.14 percent
• Ethereum: minus 3.32 percent
• Solana: minus 3.57 percent
• Chainlink: minus 4.33 percent
• Cardano: minus 7.45 percent
• Polkadot: minus 13.27 percent

The mean of those eight excluding DOT is minus 3.23 percent. Polkadot is therefore losing a good four times as much. Even Cardano, the second-weakest value in the field, reaches only a little more than half of the DOT loss. General altcoin weakness thus explains part of the move but not its size. Something has to be added that affects DOT alone.

Runtime 2.5.1 runs on the Asset Hub, not on the Relay Chain

The runtime is the rulebook of a blockchain, meaning the program code that determines which entries are valid and what a transaction costs. At Polkadot it is swapped out by vote, without users having to install anything. Version 2.5.1 was released on October 24, 2026 at 7:52 p.m. UTC; the predecessor 2.5.0 dates from September 5.

On Wednesday morning we queried the network's nodes ourselves and measured the following state at Asset Hub block 22,396,319:

• Asset Hub: version 2005001, meaning 2.5.1
• Bridge Hub: version 2005001, meaning 2.5.1
• Relay Chain: version 2005000, so still 2.5.0

Two of the three network components carry the new version, the third does not. That is not a fault but the consequence of the division of labour Polkadot is currently carrying out. It does mean, though, that the part holding the balances is the one running fresh code.

99.99 percent of all DOT sit on the Asset Hub

The same query returns the issued quantity per component. Measured on Wednesday morning:

• Asset Hub: 1,709,441,558 DOT
• Relay Chain: 244,923 DOT

That puts 99.9857 percent of the supply on the Asset Hub and 0.0143 percent on the Relay Chain. Five days ago, in our piece on the JAM rebuild of the Relay Chain on October 23, we still counted 239,153 DOT on the Relay Chain and 1,708,713,905 DOT on the Asset Hub. In five days roughly 727,650 DOT have therefore been added, around 145,500 a day. At the current price that corresponds to some $146,800 of new supply daily, which against daily turnover of $94.3 million is 0.16 percent. Arithmetically, new issuance does not carry the slide.

The other side of that figure matters more. Anyone holding DOT today holds it, with near certainty, on the Asset Hub. A software change there is therefore no longer an event on a branch line, as it would have been before the migration; it touches the bookkeeping of every single account. That is the distinction most market reports this week do not draw.

Four changes in version 2.5.1

The release note names four points in essence: fixes to Snowbridge and to XCM, meaning the connections to the outside and between the network parts; an updated version of the Individuality components, with which Polkadot aims to tell real people apart from multiple accounts; an adjusted configuration of the Members Subscriber together with a data migration from version V0 to V1; and benchmark weights carried over from the Paseo test network.

The last point is the one at which an attentive reader pauses. The weights determine what a transaction costs in fees and how much fits into a block. According to the release note these values were taken over from the test network and not re-measured on the Polkadot runtimes. In the release process the item "update weights" also stands as an open task. That is neither a defect nor a security hole. It only means that the fee calculation currently rests on measurements from a different environment.

The open item: floating-point code in the program package

On October 25, a day after the release, a developer from the Polkadot Fellowship opened an open entry in the code repository: the finished program package of version 2.5.1 for the Asset Hub contains floating-point instructions. It came to light during preparation for formal verification, meaning the mathematical proof that the code behaves identically on every node.

Why floating point is a problem here can be said in two sentences. A blockchain has to arrive at an identical result on every machine, otherwise the block is rejected. Floating-point arithmetic can deviate minimally depending on the processor, which is why it is unwanted in this code.

The developer's own assessment belongs with it, and it is more restrained than the heading of the entry sounds: the finding shows that such code is present in the package, not that ordinary calls execute it. The function affected is one needed when setting up a network from scratch, not in ongoing operation. The proposal is to take that part out of the package. At our check on Wednesday morning the entry was open.

For holders that means there is no documented damage and no indication of lost balances. There is an open item in the quality assurance of precisely the version that carries the supply. If you only hold DOT at an exchange, you need draw nothing from it. If you self-custody, you have homework.

An app that only knows the Relay Chain shows zero today

The migration of the balances has a practical consequence that holds regardless of the price. A wallet app still pointing at the Relay Chain finds almost nothing there today: 244,923 DOT across the whole network. In such cases the balance reads zero although the coins sit untouched on the Asset Hub. That is a display error in the app and not a loss, but it costs nerves and in a falling market invites rash decisions.

Three steps make sense today if you self-custody:

1. Check in your app which network it points at. If only the Relay Chain is listed and no Asset Hub, you need a current version or a second account for the Asset Hub.
2. Look at where the app came from. On October 21 the Polkadot Community Foundation reported four versions of a widely used browser extension as tampered with; 17,286 DOT flowed out in the process. What to do then is set down in our piece on the private key leak at Fearless Wallet. The core of it: with a compromised extension an update is not enough, the keys themselves are burned.
3. If your key sits on the same machine as your browser, a device without a network connection is the clean solution. How the models differ is set out in our comparison of hardware wallets.

A 28-day unbonding period before staked DOT can be sold

This point bites especially hard in a falling market, and many overlook it until it is too late. If you have staked DOT, you cannot reach it immediately. The network requires an unbonding period of 28 days, during which the coins neither earn a yield nor can be sold. How that period works out against the annual return of 2.77 percent most recently is calculated in our breakdown of Polkadot staking.

In this week's figures: anyone who had started unbonding on October 20 at $1.1519 could sell no earlier than November 17. What the price does by then nobody knows. Anyone responding to a 13 percent weekly loss with an unbonding request is effectively making their selling decision four weeks in advance, and the same applies on the way up. That period is the price of the yield, and it belongs in the calculation before you enter, not afterwards. If you take the period on deliberately, you should know beforehand what commission the validator deducts.

What a sale below cost triggers for tax

For investors in Germany the holding period is what counts on a sale. If more than twelve months lie between purchase and sale, the gain from private disposals is tax free under section 23 of the Income Tax Act. Below that, a threshold of 1,000 euros a year applies, and anyone who breaches it pays tax on the entire gain at their personal rate.

With a loss the logic reverses. A loss within the twelve months can be offset against gains from other private disposals in the same year, for instance a gain on another coin. Once the twelve months have passed the sale is tax free, which means the loss also drops out of the tax picture. If you are thinking about selling anyway, you should therefore know which side of that deadline your position sits on. We track the state of the political debate around that period at crypto holding period: status of the reform. This is not tax advice, and for larger amounts no article replaces a look from a tax adviser.

Buy or wait?

The question cannot be answered with a recommendation, but it can with the arguments on both sides. In favour of entering: supply has been capped at 2.1 billion DOT since March 2026 and by our measurement 390.3 million DOT are still outstanding, in steps that get smaller every year. Daily new issuance of around 145,500 DOT is small against daily turnover of $94.3 million. Anyone who believes in the architecture is buying a network whose supply is becoming scarcer rather than more plentiful.

Against it: precisely that cap has not given the price a single day of footing since October 20. Rank 57 by market value also means a thin market: at $94.3 million of daily turnover, even mid-sized sell orders move the price, downwards as well as upwards. And the competition for developers is real; in July 2026 Moonbeam, the best-known smart contract parachain, left the network for Base.

If you decide to buy, look for an exchange with a MiCA licence, at the total cost of spread and order fee, and at whether the provider permits a withdrawal to your own wallet. The terms are in our exchange comparison.

Our assessment of the link between the rebuild and the price

In the view of this editorial team the software change does not carry the price slide on its own, and anyone claiming so is confusing simultaneity with cause. The order of the data speaks for that: the slide began on October 20, version 2.5.1 appeared on October 24, when DOT already stood 5.8 percent below the weekly high. Four of the seven losing days fall before the release.

What the rebuild does explain is the size of the gap to the field. Polkadot is currently demanding more attention from holders, exchanges and app providers than any other large network: a migration of almost the entire supply to the Asset Hub, a new runtime on two of three components, an open review item in that runtime, and on top of that a key leak at a widely used extension on October 21. Each of these reports is manageable on its own. Together within two weeks they give a thin market with $94.3 million of daily turnover a reason to reduce risk. In our view that is where the difference lies between minus 3.2 percent in the field and minus 13.3 percent at DOT.

Against it stands one point we will not talk away: for the claim that investors sold because of the runtime there is no transaction data showing it. The events and the price path are documented, not the motives of the sellers. What can be checked instead is set out above.

DOT below the dollar mark: the supply sits on the Asset Hub

On Wednesday the price fell through the dollar mark for the first time in six weeks at $0.9777 and worked its way back to $1.009 by the morning. The technical position beneath it is clearly surveyed: almost the entire supply sits on a blockchain that received new code four days ago, the review of which is still running. Three steps follow from that:

1. Check your access. Open your wallet and see whether it knows the Asset Hub. If it shows a balance of zero, that is almost always down to the app and not to the coins. If the extension comes from an unsafe source, replace the keys, not the app; a device without a network connection from the comparison of wallet apps takes the problem out at the root.
2. Factor in the lock-up. If your DOT is staked, 28 days lie between the decision and the sale. Settle today whether you can live with that period, and compare the terms in the overview of staking platforms before you tie anything up again.
3. Look up your holding period. Check your exchange statement for when you bought. Whether a sale this week is tax free or a loss can be offset depends solely on the twelve-month line, not on the price. Which tools set out the holding periods cleanly for each purchase is in our overview of tax tools.

The next checkable milestone is the resolution of the open entry on version 2.5.1 and the question of when the Relay Chain follows from 2.5.0. Both can be followed in the release repository of the Polkadot Fellowship without waiting for an announcement.

(As of October 28, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)