# Polkadot Relay Chain Staking market cap Methodology

## 1. Overview

Staking market cap measures the total value of native DOT assets currently staked on the Polkadot Relay Chain. This metric reflects the amount of capital committed by validators and nominators to secure the network's Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism. It represents the total economic security of the network and is converted from native units to USD using end-of-day price feeds.

## 2. Data sources

- **Blockchain data**: `erasTotalStake` records from the `staking` pallet on Polkadot Relay Chain
- **External data**: End-of-day price feeds for the DOT asset

## 3. Step-by-step calculation

### Component A: Stake extraction and normalization

- **Purpose**: Retrieve the total amount of staked DOT from the relay chain's staking pallet
- **Logic**: Total stake values are parsed from the `erasTotalStake` storage records. These values represent the sum of all bonded DOT from both validators and nominators within a specific era. The raw native asset amounts are normalized by decimal precision to account for Polkadot's 10-decimal format.
- **Key fields**: `total_stake` representing the total bonded DOT per era

### Component B: Daily aggregation and deduplication

- **Purpose**: Consolidate era-based stake data into a daily time series
- **Logic**: Timestamps are truncated to a daily grain in UTC. In instances where multiple eras or stake updates are recorded within a single 24-hour period, the most recent record is selected to represent the staking market cap for that day. This ensures the metric reflects the most current state of the network at the close of each day.

### Component C: USD conversion and time-series continuity

- **Purpose**: Normalize values to USD and maintain a continuous historical record
- **Logic**: The daily native staked amounts are multiplied by end-of-day price feeds for the DOT asset. A fill-forward strategy is applied to the resulting dataset; this ensures that for any dates where on-chain stake updates are not present, the value from the most recent previous day is used to maintain a gapless time series.

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

Value of native tokens currently staked to secure a proof-of-stake network.

Staking market cap

Blockchains (L1)

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.

Polkadot Relay Chain

Staking market cap

Staking market cap

Chain breakdown