Network participants process transactions and receive fees from users (supply-side fees).

Polkadot is a security & interoperability platform for blockchains and applications. Polkadot was founded by Gavin Wood and launched in 2020.

DOT holders own and govern the protocol. They currently take a cut of the total transaction fees paid by users (revenue). Polkadot’s investors include Polychain, IOSG Ventures, Hashkey, etc.

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# Polkadot Treasury net flows Methodology

## 1. Overview

Treasury net flows measures the daily change in the total USD value held in Polkadot ecosystem treasury addresses. This metric tracks the net inflow or outflow of funds to/from treasury accounts across the Polkadot relay chain, HydraDX, and Polkadot AssetHub. The calculation determines whether the treasury is growing (positive net flows) or shrinking (negative net flows) on a daily basis by computing the difference between consecutive days' total treasury balances.

## 2. Data sources

The calculation relies on several types of blockchain data and external feeds:

- **Treasury balance records**: Daily account balance snapshots from Polkadot relay chain treasury addresses containing `free` and `reserved` DOT balances
- **HydraDX account balances**: Account balance data from HydraDX liquidity pool records for specified treasury addresses, including both `free` and `reserved` balances across multiple token types
- **AssetHub treasury balances**: Native DOT balance records and non-native token balance records from Polkadot AssetHub treasury addresses
- **Block timestamp data**: Block timestamp records from Polkadot relay chain, HydraDX, and AssetHub to establish daily time boundaries
- **End-of-day price feeds**: DOT price data for native token USD conversion and token price feeds from HydraDX for non-native asset conversion
- **Token metadata**: Token decimal specifications, symbols, and asset ID mappings between AssetHub and HydraDX systems

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Relay chain treasury balance extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract and normalize DOT treasury balances from the Polkadot relay chain
- **Logic**: Query treasury balance records from predefined relay chain treasury addresses, join with block timestamp data to establish daily boundaries, and normalize raw DOT amounts by dividing by 1e10 (DOT decimals). The process takes the final balance record for each day to capture end-of-day treasury positions.
- **Key fields**: `address` (treasury account), `free` and `reserved` balances (raw DOT amounts), `block_number` (for timestamp linkage), `timestamp` (daily aggregation boundary)

### Component B: HydraDX treasury balance extraction  
- **Purpose**: Extract treasury balances for multiple token types from HydraDX chain
- **Logic**: Query HydraDX account balance snapshots for specified treasury addresses, sum `free` and `reserved` balances for each token type, and normalize by token-specific decimal factors from token metadata. Daily aggregation uses row numbering to select the latest balance per address-token-day combination.
- **Key fields**: `address` (treasury account), `token_id` (asset identifier), `free` and `reserved` balances (raw amounts), `block_number` (for timestamp joining)

### Component C: AssetHub treasury balance extraction
- **Purpose**: Extract both native DOT and non-native token balances from Polkadot AssetHub treasury
- **Logic**: Process two separate balance types - native DOT balances normalized by 1e10 decimals, and non-native token balances normalized by token-specific decimals from metadata. Both processes join with AssetHub block data for daily aggregation and use row numbering to get latest daily balances.
- **Key fields**: For native: `free` and `reserved` DOT balances; For tokens: `token_id` (asset identifier), `balance` (raw amount), `decimals` (normalization factor)

### Component D: Native token USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Convert all native DOT treasury balances to USD values
- **Logic**: Take normalized DOT balances from relay chain and AssetHub (tagged as `native` token type), join with end-of-day DOT price feeds based on timestamp matching, and multiply balance amounts by USD prices. The conversion uses Polkadot relay chain as the price reference for all DOT balances.
- **Key fields**: `treasury` (normalized DOT balance), `price_usd` (end-of-day DOT price), result is USD-denominated treasury value

### Component E: Non-native token USD conversion
- **Purpose**: Convert HydraDX and AssetHub non-native token balances to USD
- **Logic**: Filter for non-native tokens from HydraDX treasury balances, map AssetHub token IDs to corresponding HydraDX asset IDs using token mapping table, join with HydraDX end-of-day price feeds, and multiply normalized balances by USD prices. AssetHub tokens require mapping since price feeds are sourced from HydraDX.
- **Key fields**: `token_id` (original asset ID), `token_address` (mapped HydraDX asset ID), `treasury` (normalized balance), `price_usd` (end-of-day token price)

### Component F: Treasury aggregation
- **Purpose**: Combine all USD-converted treasury balances into total treasury value by chain and day
- **Logic**: Union native and non-native USD treasury values, group by timestamp and chain, and sum all treasury amounts to get total daily treasury value per chain. This creates the base treasury metric used for net flows calculation.
- **Key fields**: `timestamp` (daily boundary), `chain_id` (Polkadot ecosystem chain), `treasury` (total USD treasury value)

### Final aggregation
- **Combining components**: The treasury aggregation produces daily total treasury values per chain, which are then processed for net flows calculation
- **Currency conversion**: All balances are converted to USD using end-of-day prices - DOT prices for native balances and HydraDX prices for non-native tokens
- **Time aggregation**: Daily boundaries are established by truncating timestamps to day level, with latest balance per day selected using row numbering
- **Final calculation**: Net flows are calculated using a LAG window function that computes the difference between today's treasury value and the previous day's treasury value, partitioned by `chain_id` and ordered by `timestamp`. Missing previous values default to zero, indicating the first day's balance as the initial flow.

*This methodology was automatically generated by Token Terminal's methodology analyzer.*

Daily net flow into and out of treasury balances.

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Treasury net flows

Treasury net flows

Competitive landscape

Chain breakdown