Time to Claim Your DOT
This claims process only applies to DOT (old) that were purchased in the form of DOT Allocation Indicators on Ethereum before June 30, 2020.
If you bought your DOT tokens more recently or from another source, this process does not apply to you. You do not need to claim. If you have any questions about DOT, please contact us at support.
If you have not yet claimed your DOT, you must claim and attest
If you have already claimed your DOT, you will only need to attest
Generate a Polkadot Address
There are several ways to generate a Polkadot address
If you have any problems, please contact the Polkadot Address Generation Help channel on the Web3 Foundation’s Element Server or visit our Support Page.
What Will Be Generated
A key concept to understand is that you are actually generating two keys
(strings of characters), one public
(the address) and one private
(your seed). A useful analogy is a mailbox at the post office. Anybody with your address can send you mail or put mail in your mailbox, but you need your private key to open your mailbox and move your mail. Similarly, anybody with your Polkadot address can send you DOT, but to do anything with the DOT in your account, you will need to have your seed (or an application in which you have already entered it).
Your Polkadot address can be shared publicly, but you should never reveal your seed. If somebody has your address, they could send you DOT or associate your real-world identity with on-chain actions. However, this information will not allow them to harm your account or do anything in your name.
If somebody has access to your seed, they have complete control over your account! This means that they can do anything that you could do, including transfer all of your DOT to a different account. Neither Web3 Foundation nor anyone else will be able to recover your DOT in such a situation.
We recommend that you do not store your seed anywhere on a digital device that can be connected to a network. It should be written down on paper and only entered when necessary. It should never be shared with anybody — again, if anyone has access to your seed, they will have complete control over your account.
Claim Your DOT
If you participated in a previous DOT sale and received your DOT allocation indicator tokens, you can now claim your DOT, i.e. connect the address where your DOT indicators have been stored on Ethereum with a native Polkadot address. The claims process will ensure that your DOT allocation is denoted in Polkadot's genesis block.
Verify Your Claim
FAQs
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Why do I need to claim and is there a deadline? keyboard_arrow_right
When you made your initial purchase, you obtained the “right” to a certain number of DOT. However you did not yet have access to or the ability to transfer them, since the network was not live yet. The claims process exists to transform that right — your Allocation Indicator tokens on Ethereum — into actual DOT on the Polkadot blockchain.
As part of this claims process you first need to create a Polkadot address, and then prove that you are both the owner of the Ethereum address and the owner of the Polkadot address. After proving that you have access to the DOT allocation linked to the Ethereum address, the correct number of DOT will be allocated to your address on the Polkadot blockchain.
There is no deadline to claim. Now that the Polkadot network is live, the claiming process will work indefinitely.
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I already claimed my DOT. Where can I see my balance? keyboard_arrow_right
You can view your balance at https://polkadot.js.org/apps/#/accounts (make sure the network is switched to Polkadot live). You may need to enter your account address before you can see it.
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I claimed my DOT before Polkadot went live, but still see zero balance! keyboard_arrow_right
There's one more step that has been added since you claimed your tokens, which is the attestation. Since you already claimed, you only need to do this one step in order to see your balance: Make the attestation.
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Can I claim my DOT using a third party? keyboard_arrow_right
We do not recommend using third-party applications or processes to claim your DOT, other than those explicitly named here (e.g. Coinbase Custody).
Making a claim using a third-party process can lead to the loss of your allocation, therefore we cannot recommend using any third-party applications to do so. Manually claiming and attesting, as detailed in our claims process, is the only way to be certain you will receive your allocation.
Please don't hesitate to visit our support page if you have any questions.
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Can I claim my DOT to two different Polkadot addresses? keyboard_arrow_right
No – one Ethereum address can map to only one Polkadot address.
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Can I claim multiple Ethereum accounts to one single Polkadot address? keyboard_arrow_right
Yes. Just follow the same procedure for each Ethereum account, always sending the transaction to the same Polkadot address.
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When can I sell or transfer my DOT? keyboard_arrow_right
Transferability of DOT doesn't happen until after sudo is removed and governance enabled. You can review the different phases here: https://polkadot.network/launch-roadmap
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Once I claim my DOT, can I start staking them? keyboard_arrow_right
Yes, you can begin staking them immediately.
What you can do during the PoA phase is signal your intent to validate on Polkadot if you’re intending to be a validator.
Once enough validators signal their intention to validate, Polkadot can move to the next phase.
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In the future, will I still be able to view my account on Polkadot via Ethereum? keyboard_arrow_right
No. The Ethereum network was just used as a placeholder for your allocation. Now that the Polkadot network is live, you can use the Polkadot extension or other Polkadot tools to view your account information.
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I bought an IOU for DOT from somebody else and now I can’t contact them / they are not giving them to me. keyboard_arrow_right
Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do. We only have a legal agreement with the person who bought the DOT.