11-30-2021, 04:41 PM
PSA: Always keep at least 1 DOT in your Polkadot wallet or you will lose everything!
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Polkadot is a bit strange in many ways and most of it is not explained in a way that is obvious to non-programmers.</p> <p>(For example, I could not figure out why I couldn't see my funds in my wallet until someone explained to me the difference between polkadot. js the app/site and polkadot. js the extension. This was not explained in the official documentation, which shows how to set up the extension, but doesn't mention that it is not a full wallet, like MetaMask, Phantom, Temple, etc.)</p> <p>But the "feature" of reaping deserves special attention and should be understood by anyone (potentially) involved in the DOT ecosystem:</p> <p>If you have less than 1 DOT in a wallet all the coins in that wallet will be burned and gone forever.</p> <p>This means that if you have alt-coins in that wallet as well as some DOT and you decide to send that DOT to an exchange for trading, you will lose all your alt-coins, no matter what they are worth. Unless you leave at least 1 DOT behind.</p> <p>Just something to be aware of.</p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong>: A few commenters have pointed out that I may be wrong regarding the burning of coins other than DOT (or KSM, when on Kusama) and that only the DOT (KSM) gets burnt, whereas other coins can be retrieved once the account has been activated again. I cannot confirm this, as I have not tried it out and the official documentation is not super clear on this, in my opinion.</p> <p>In <a href="https://support.polkadot.network/support/solutions/articles/65000168651-what-is-the-existential-deposit-">this</a> document it says:</p> <p>"On the Polkadot network, an address is only active when it holds a minimum amount, currently set at 1 DOT (and 0.0000333333 KSM on the Kusama network). This minimum amount is called the Existential Deposit (ED). (...)</p> <p>If you are sending all (or almost all) of your funds out of an account, which will result in the remaining balance going under the ED, the account will be reaped and any remaining funds will be burned</p> <p>An account can be reactivated anytime, however, this will not bring back any previously burned funds"</p> <p>This, in combination with information I got on Discord, made it sound like the only currencies that can serve as ED are DOT and KSM, but that <strong>everything</strong> gets burnt when the DOT balance drops below the ED. If that is not the case I am happy to be corrected. But I do think that this should be made much clearer in the way the documentation is written.</p> <p><strong>EDIT 2</strong>: So it seems I was quite wrong. I still stand by my opinion though that these things are not very clearly explained in the Polkadot ecosystem. I did google the issue and read the official documentation, which others clearly also understood in the same way that I originally did. But I probably still should not have been as confident in my understanding as I was.</p> <p>I would like to quote a comment from <a href="/r/IamJokerFace">r/IamJokerFace</a> here:</p> <p>"I suggest you not use the word "alt" in the post as it has confused a lot of people here thinking coins outside of the Polkadot ecosystem like ETH are also affected. Parachain tokens are stored on separate addresses from the Polkadot address because parachains themselves are blockchains with different tokenomics. So you are wrong in your post when you stated that tokens will be burned if the Polkadot's address goes below ED; only the residual <1 DOT inside the Polkadot address will be burned and parachain tokens on different addresses will not be affected. You can transfer your parachain tokens from your parachain addresses without needing the Polkadot address so the most you would lose from going below the existential deposit is 1 DOT. It is good that you brought the attention to the ED though. Every other post on <a href="/r/dot">r/dot</a> and <a href="/r/polkadot">r/polkadot</a> is about DOT disappearing because they didn't know about ED. I hope you make an edit directly explaining the part about how parachain tokens (not alts) are unaffected because that is completely wrong."</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MeiBanFa"> /u/MeiBanFa </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/r4z9wx/psa_always_keep_at_least_1_dot_in_your_polkadot/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/r4z9wx/psa_always_keep_at_least_1_dot_in_your_polkadot/">[comments]</a></span>Kind Regards R
<!-- SC_OFF --><div class="md"><p>Polkadot is a bit strange in many ways and most of it is not explained in a way that is obvious to non-programmers.</p> <p>(For example, I could not figure out why I couldn't see my funds in my wallet until someone explained to me the difference between polkadot. js the app/site and polkadot. js the extension. This was not explained in the official documentation, which shows how to set up the extension, but doesn't mention that it is not a full wallet, like MetaMask, Phantom, Temple, etc.)</p> <p>But the "feature" of reaping deserves special attention and should be understood by anyone (potentially) involved in the DOT ecosystem:</p> <p>If you have less than 1 DOT in a wallet all the coins in that wallet will be burned and gone forever.</p> <p>This means that if you have alt-coins in that wallet as well as some DOT and you decide to send that DOT to an exchange for trading, you will lose all your alt-coins, no matter what they are worth. Unless you leave at least 1 DOT behind.</p> <p>Just something to be aware of.</p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong>: A few commenters have pointed out that I may be wrong regarding the burning of coins other than DOT (or KSM, when on Kusama) and that only the DOT (KSM) gets burnt, whereas other coins can be retrieved once the account has been activated again. I cannot confirm this, as I have not tried it out and the official documentation is not super clear on this, in my opinion.</p> <p>In <a href="https://support.polkadot.network/support/solutions/articles/65000168651-what-is-the-existential-deposit-">this</a> document it says:</p> <p>"On the Polkadot network, an address is only active when it holds a minimum amount, currently set at 1 DOT (and 0.0000333333 KSM on the Kusama network). This minimum amount is called the Existential Deposit (ED). (...)</p> <p>If you are sending all (or almost all) of your funds out of an account, which will result in the remaining balance going under the ED, the account will be reaped and any remaining funds will be burned</p> <p>An account can be reactivated anytime, however, this will not bring back any previously burned funds"</p> <p>This, in combination with information I got on Discord, made it sound like the only currencies that can serve as ED are DOT and KSM, but that <strong>everything</strong> gets burnt when the DOT balance drops below the ED. If that is not the case I am happy to be corrected. But I do think that this should be made much clearer in the way the documentation is written.</p> <p><strong>EDIT 2</strong>: So it seems I was quite wrong. I still stand by my opinion though that these things are not very clearly explained in the Polkadot ecosystem. I did google the issue and read the official documentation, which others clearly also understood in the same way that I originally did. But I probably still should not have been as confident in my understanding as I was.</p> <p>I would like to quote a comment from <a href="/r/IamJokerFace">r/IamJokerFace</a> here:</p> <p>"I suggest you not use the word "alt" in the post as it has confused a lot of people here thinking coins outside of the Polkadot ecosystem like ETH are also affected. Parachain tokens are stored on separate addresses from the Polkadot address because parachains themselves are blockchains with different tokenomics. So you are wrong in your post when you stated that tokens will be burned if the Polkadot's address goes below ED; only the residual <1 DOT inside the Polkadot address will be burned and parachain tokens on different addresses will not be affected. You can transfer your parachain tokens from your parachain addresses without needing the Polkadot address so the most you would lose from going below the existential deposit is 1 DOT. It is good that you brought the attention to the ED though. Every other post on <a href="/r/dot">r/dot</a> and <a href="/r/polkadot">r/polkadot</a> is about DOT disappearing because they didn't know about ED. I hope you make an edit directly explaining the part about how parachain tokens (not alts) are unaffected because that is completely wrong."</p> </div><!-- SC_ON --> submitted by <a href="https://www.reddit.com/user/MeiBanFa"> /u/MeiBanFa </a> <br/> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/r4z9wx/psa_always_keep_at_least_1_dot_in_your_polkadot/">[link]</a></span> <span><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/r4z9wx/psa_always_keep_at_least_1_dot_in_your_polkadot/">[comments]</a></span>Kind Regards R