Polkadot enacts referenda 1909 & 1910: 10k DOT self-stake, unslashable nominators

Polkadot's OpenGov enacted two staking-system referenda on July 6, 2026. Referendum 1909 mandates a 10,000 DOT self-stake floor for validators, resets commission to zero and lets anyone chill under-collateralised validators. Referendum 1910 eliminates nominator slashing and cuts the unbonding period from 28 days to roughly two. The changes hit the base staking pallet on the Polkadot relay chain and reshape both sides of the validator/nominator contract.

The enactment thread is on the Polkadot Forum. The unbonding mechanic is spec'd in RFC-0097 from the Polkadot Fellowship.

What passed

Referendum 1909 — validator side. Every validator must now hold at least 10,000 DOT of their own stake to remain in the active set. Commission — historically the lever validators used to split nominator rewards — is reset to zero across the network. In its place, a new mechanism pays validators from a fixed allocation weighted by each validator's self-stake, redirecting incentives from "harvest nominator flow" to "put your own coins on the line." A permissionless chill call lets any account remove a validator that has fallen below the self-stake threshold or the associated performance floor, described in the referendum text as a chill threshold reduced to 32%.

Referendum 1910 — nominator side. Nominators — the DOT holders who back validators without running one — no longer face slashing when their chosen validator misbehaves. Slashing continues to apply to validators themselves. Alongside that, the fixed 28-day unbonding period is replaced by the queue-based scheme from RFC-0097: when the queue is empty, unbonding completes in roughly 2 days (28,800 blocks); the wait scales up toward the old 28-day ceiling only when a large share of stake is exiting at once. The RFC's projected average is about 2.67 days.

Multiple secondary reports, including Yellow.com and Coinpedia, cite a ~99.9% Aye margin on Referendum 1909; both referenda cleared their thresholds under Polkadot's OpenGov rules and enacted on July 6.

Why the redesign

Polkadot's staking has run largely unchanged since launch: nominators picked validators, both sides shared slashing risk, and unbonding held funds hostage for 28 days as a security backstop. Three problems built up.

First, nominators had to price validator risk without any tools to hedge it — a single misconfigured node could burn a passive holder's stake. Second, the 28-day unbonding made DOT structurally less liquid than staked ETH (about 7 days on the beacon chain unstake queue) or staked SOL (a few epochs, ~2–3 days), pushing capital toward chains with faster exits. Third, the commission model incentivised validators to run on razor-thin self-stake and monetise nominator flow instead — the opposite of the "skin in the game" that proof-of-stake nominally rewards.

The Fellowship's answer, spec'd across RFC-0097 (unbonding queue) and the on-chain proposals that became 1909 and 1910, unwinds all three. Self-stake becomes the primary reward vector. Nominators become depositors rather than co-signers. Unbonding scales dynamically with actual exit pressure rather than sitting at a fixed 28-day worst case.

Numbers

- Validator minimum self-stake     : 10,000 DOT (per Ref. 1909)
- Validator commission cap         : reset to 0% network-wide
- Chill threshold                  : 32% self-stake floor triggers permissionless chill
- Old unbonding period             : 28 days (403,200 blocks)
- New unbonding (empty queue)      : ~2 days (28,800 blocks)
- New unbonding (projected avg)    : ~2.67 days (RFC-0097 modelling)
- Nominator slashing               : eliminated (Ref. 1910)
- Reported vote margin (Ref. 1909) : ~99.9% Aye (secondary reporting)
- Enactment                        : July 6, 2026 via OpenGov
- Spec                             : polkadot-fellows.github.io/RFCs/approved/0097-unbonding_queue.html

Impact

Nominators. The cleaner sell — no slashing exposure, ~2-day exit under normal conditions. The trade-off is that removing nominator slashing weakens one of the game-theoretic pressures that historically pushed nominators to police their validators; that policing role now falls to the permissionless chill mechanism from 1909 and to whatever off-chain reputation systems the ecosystem builds around it.

Validators. The 10,000 DOT floor prices out validators who were running on borrowed nominator stake with minimal skin in the game. Zero commission plus a self-stake-weighted reward pool means the ROI on running a node scales with your own DOT deposited, not with how much delegated stake you attract. Small operators without capital lose a business model; capitalised operators gain relative income.

Staked-DOT products. Liquid-staking providers built for a 28-day unbonding — Bifrost, LDOT, Acala's LDOT, stDOT — see the primary reason for their existence (turning locked stake into a liquid token) partially collapse. Passive nominators can now unstake in two days without a wrapper. Expect fee compression across LST products or a pivot to yield-strategy roles.

Kusama. Polkadot's canary chain typically shipped these mechanics first. The unbonding queue was tested on Kusama per the RFC-0097 rollout plan; the July 6 enactment brings the Polkadot relay chain in line.

What to watch

1. Queue behaviour under exit pressure. RFC-0097's dynamic scaling only stays close to the 2-day floor while the queue is light. A coordinated unstake — either an incident-driven bank run or a validator rotation event — could push the queue toward its 28-day ceiling for anyone who joins late.
2. Validator set turnover. How many current validators fall below the 10,000 DOT floor and are chilled off in the first weeks; how quickly the active set stabilises around better-capitalised operators.
3. Nominator net flow. Whether the shorter unbonding brings passive DOT into staking from CEX/DEX free float, or accelerates rotation out toward other stake destinations.
4. LST unwind or pivot. Bifrost / Acala / stDOT product decisions in the next month.
5. Fellowship follow-ups. RFC-0097 was framed by its authors as "an initial step." Follow-on proposals could tighten or loosen the queue parameters if the July 6 baseline underperforms.

Context

Polkadot's staking overhaul lands in a year of staking-mechanic reshuffles across chains: Solana's Alpenglow consensus change moving through validator adoption; Ethereum's Pectra unstake-queue tuning after activation; Cardano's ongoing DRep-driven parameter changes. The direction of travel is consistent — shorter unbonding, cleaner slashing surfaces, better-priced validator skin-in-the-game — with each chain converging on the same handful of primitives from different starting positions.

For Polkadot specifically, 1909 and 1910 close out a design chapter that has been open since Referendum 1890 (May 2026) first floated the 10,000 DOT self-bond and the associated commission reset. The Fellowship's rollout notes, on the approved RFCs list, position further staking-pallet work as ongoing rather than finished.