How to participate in Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction on Binance
Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction is a recent event that has attracted the attention of various crypto participants and investors. Especially, this event usually has a beneficial effect on the price of DOT.
So, what is Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction? What does its process look like? How can we participate in this event? This article will provide you with the answers to these questions.
What is Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction?
Polkadot (DOT) Parachain Slot Auction is a parachain auction, whereas projects bid to earn a Parachain slot. This is due to the fact that Polkadot is an “Internet of blockchains”, whereas blockchain developers build dApps on a whole blockchain instead of smart contracts, bringing better freedom and optimization.
The reason why there exist such auctions is that theoretically, there are only 100 Parachains in total. Therefore, in order to be a part of the Polkadot ecosystem, projects have to participate in a Candle auction that lasts over 1 week, for a Parachain slot that can be renewed to a maximum of 96 weeks, divided into 8 12-week lease periods.
The process of a Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction on Binance
Currently, a DOT Slot Auction is ongoing on Binance (www.binance.com/en/dotslot). The process goes on with 4 steps:
Warm-up Period
There is a 7-day warm-up period on Binance.
$30M USDT worth of rewards will be used to incentivize users to join the auction. Based on their voting power, they will receive the corresponding rewards. The staked DOT in this period will be locked up directly to the next period.
Auction Period
This is the main period in a DOT Slot Auction, where bidding actions start happening for 7 days.
Binance supports the first 5 rounds of DOT Slot Auctions. After each round, the winner will be announced, and the projects that didn’t win will continue to participate in the next round.
Reward Distribution
After the Auction Period is over, projects that win the slot auction have the right to use the Polkadot slots for a maximum of 96 weeks.
If the project you support has won a Parachain slot, you will receive 100% of your voting power and your DOT will be locked up until the end of the Lease Period, after which the corresponding DOT will be returned to your Binance Wallet in approximately 3 days.
If the project you support does not win in any auction rounds, you will still be able to receive the Binance Extra Bonus rewards in the Warm-up Period (if you participated in).
Auction Ends
After the Auction ends, as your DOT will be locked up for a really long time (96 weeks maximum), you will have the option to swap your staked DOT to BDOT - a tokenized asset representing your staked DOT on a 1:1 basis. This will open more liquidity and capital efficiency, as staking your DOT for such a long time is an opportunity cost.
This convert feature will become available within 45 days after the auction period ends.
How to participate in Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction on Binance
Step 1: Go to Binance website: https://www.binance.com/en
Create an account, or log in if you already have one.
Step 2: Select Finance ⇒ Binance Earn.
Step 3: Scroll down, find “DOT Slot Auction” and click “Go to DOT Slot Auction”.
Featured DOT Projects
In this auction round, there are a total of 9 projects.
Moonbeam
Moonbeam is an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on the Polkadot network that makes it easy to build natively interoperable applications. This Ethereum compatibility allows developers to deploy existing Solidity smart contracts and dApp frontends to Moonbeam with minimal changes.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 100,000,000 GLMR.
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 2,750 MOVR.
Clover Finance
Clover Finance is a substrate-based blockchain infrastructure platform that focuses on cross-chain compatibility for DeFi applications and interoperability between different blockchains.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 200,000,000 CLV.
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 8,000,000 CLV.
Astar Network (Plasm Network)
Astar Network (formerly known as Plasm Network) is a multi-chain dApp hub on Polkadot, supporting Ethereum Virtual Machine, WebAssembly, Layer-2 solutions and multiple Layer-1 blockchains.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 1,050,000,000 ASTR.
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 70,000,000 ASTR.
Litentry
Litentry is a Decentralized Identity Aggregation protocol across multiple networks, which features a DID indexing mechanism and a Substrate-based credit computation network.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 20,000,000 LIT
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 500,000 LIT
Manta
Manta Network is the on-chain privacy solution for crypto assets built from the first principle. Manta will be the privacy-preservation platform for all Web3 applications.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 120,000,000 MA
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 6,000,000 MA
Bifrost
Bifrost is the Polkadot Ecological DeFi basic protocol, which is also one of five Kusama Parachains in the first batch. It is committed to becoming an infrastructure for pledged assets to provide liquidity.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 11,000,000 BNC
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 375,000 BNC
Efinity
Efinity seeks to be an NFT superhighway built on Polkadot that seeks to build the global infrastructure for NFT transfers that promotes interoperability among blockchains, developing features specific to NFT transactions, and solving existing high gas fee and network congestion issues.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 200,000,000 EFI
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 1,500,000 EFI
Parallel
Parallel Finance is a decentralized money market protocol that offers lending, staking, and borrowing in the Polkadot ecosystem. Depositors can lend and stake simultaneously to earn double yield on their staked assets, and borrowers can collateralize to borrow.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 1,000,000,000 PARA
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 500,000 USDC
Acala
Acala is the decentralized finance network and liquidity hub of Polkadot. It’s a Layer-1 smart contract platform that’s scalable, Ethereum-compatible, and optimized for DeFi with built-in liquidity and ready-made financial applications.
- Total Lease Lock-up Rewards: 150,000,000 ACA
- Warm-up Bonus Rewards/APY: 70,000 ACA
FAQ about Polkadot Parachain Slot Auction
What rewards can I earn if I participate in the DOT Slot Auction?
You will receive the Binance Extra Bonus provided by Polkadot Parachain projects during the Warm-up Period (approximately 30 million USD of rewards), and 100% of all rewards from your favored projects during the Auction Period and Lease Period.
How is the Warm-up Period APY calculated?
Earnings during the warm-up period are calculated every hour, and your rewards within the hour are calculated according to the proportion of the number of DOTs you have staked in the total number of DOTs in the project.
APY is updated every hour, and the currently displayed APY is the APY of the last hour. No APY is displayed in the first hour of open voting.
What is BDOT? If I sell my BDOT, will I keep receiving the voting rewards of my favored projects?
BDOT provides liquidity to users. It is a tokenized asset representing your staked DOT at a 1:1 ratio. Binance activates the "convert to BDOT" feature within 45 days when the total auction period ends, whereas you can choose to convert or not.
If you sell your BDOT during the lock-up period, you will continue to receive the voting rewards from your favored projects. However, when the slot lease expires, you can swap BDOT to DOT in accordance with the amount of your BDOT holdings at the time of the swap.
Why would my DOT votes fail? If my votes fail, will I receive the voting rewards?
Voting is done on-chain. However, there are certain exceptions, such as voting delays or failures.
If any of your DOT or partial DOT voting has failed, your DOT are expected to be returned to your spot wallet within two days, and you will not receive any voting benefits or rewards.
Why can’t I withdraw my reward tokens from Binance?
As some Parachains are still in the early development stage and haven’t launched, you aren't able to receive reward tokens yet. After the projects successfully bid for the slot and launch their respective Parachains, you can receive the rewards when Binance fully integrates the networks.
It may take some time for the withdrawal functions to be enabled too. According to the expected launch time given by the projects, Binance will support all bonus reward token withdrawals before June 30, 2022. If the project's mainnet launch times are postponed, Binance will also postpone the token withdrawal time.
Does it mean the native tokens of these parachain projects listed on the DOT Slot Auction page will be listed on Binance?
No. For the trading and listing of tokens of the Polkadot (DOT) Slot Auction parachain projects on Binance, they will go through the same strict listing review process as Binance does for any other coin/token.