Polkadot’s DOT Closes Below $1 as OpenGov Weighs dotUSD Fix

Polkadot’s Technical Fellowship identified a bug that cut dotUSD’s recorded supply on Asset Hub, while DOT’s Oct. 27 UTC daily close fell below $1 and OpenGov considered a correction.

Polkadot (DOT) recorded a UTC daily close of $0.999844 at 7:59 p.m. ET (23:59 UTC) on Oct. 27, about 13% below its Oct. 20 UTC daily close of $1.15.

In a separate development Monday, Oct. 26, the Technical Fellowship identified an XCM bug affecting dotUSD supply accounting on Asset Hub. About 4.06 million dotUSD were removed from recorded supply even though the tokens remained in a DOT/dotUSD liquidity pool. The Fellowship estimated that arbitrage traders targeting the resulting price imbalance reduced the Polkadot Treasury’s liquidity position by $1.3 million.

The Fellowship said it fixed the bug and moved affected assets to a controlled account. “It did not affect user wallets or funds. No action is required,” bkchr, author of the incident post, wrote.

OpenGov referendum 1961, submitted Oct. 27, would recalculate dotUSD supply from existing balances without changing user balances. It also proposes restoring earlier weights for parts of Snowbridge on Bridge Hub. The proposal says incorrect weights from a previous runtime upgrade put the bridge on hold. The referendum remained marked “Deciding” on Wednesday, Oct. 28.

OpenGov referendum 1960, which approved runtime 2.5.1, is marked Executed. The runtime was released Oct. 24 at 3:52 p.m. ET (19:52 UTC). Polkadot moved account balances from the Relay Chain to Asset Hub on Nov. 4, 2025, and staking and governance are now handled there.

Referendum 1961 would address its recorded supply and separate Snowbridge settings on Bridge Hub.