Polkadot’s $245M Treasury Will Last 2 Years at Current Spending Rate

• Polkadot spent $87 million worth of DOT on various activities in the first half of this year, with marketing and outreach activities accounting for the largest portion of spending, totaling over $36 million.

• The treasury has just over $245 million worth of DOT tokens left for spending, estimated to last for two years at current prices.

• Concerns in the ecosystem about the usage of the Treasury are increasing.

Polkadot, one of the crypto industry’s earliest Ethereum rivals, spent $87 million worth of DOT on various activities for the first half (H1) of this year, community representatives for the blockchain published in a treasury report over the weekend.

The treasury has just over $245 million worth of its DOT tokens left for spending, an amount community members estimate will last for two years at current prices. H1’s spending is a more than 125% jump from the nearly $25 million spent in the second half of 2023.

Marketing and outreach activities accounted for the biggest chunk of spending, with over $36 million spent on advertisements, events, meetups, conference hosting, and other initiatives. These efforts were intended to attract new users, developers, and businesses to the ecosystem.

Software development costs were the second-largest money sink, with over $23 million used to build services, such as wallets and toolkits to support developers. Some $15 million was spent on liquidity provision and incentives on Polkadot-based trading platforms.

A detailed breakdown of each transaction has been published on a publicly-viewable spreadsheet.

As such, community members expressed concerns about the large amount of spending on various activities and the possibility of running out of liquidity.

“The Treasury has about 32m DOT (200m USD) in liquid assets available within the next year. At a current net loss of 17m DOT (108m) USD per year, this leaves about 2 years of runway left if the DOTUSD rate stays the same,” the report said.

“The volatile nature of a mostly DOT-denominated treasury makes it hard to predict the future, but concerns in the ecosystem about how the Treasury is used are increasing,” it added.