Polkadot 2.0 System Reboot: Who Can Seize This Value Re-evaluation Window?

Author: Yue Xiaoyu; Source: X, yuexiaoyu111

Polkadot 2.0 has finally launched. However, it seems that not many people in the community are paying attention to this.

During this cycle, the Ethereum ecosystem is still struggling, Solana is enjoying a meme coin frenzy, BNB is backed by various hot topics from the Binance exchange, while Polkadot seems to be forgotten in the corner of the old era.

Is no one really paying attention to the Polkadot ecosystem?

Polkadot is a microcosm of the public chain war era, reflecting the journey of the blockchain industry, and it is worth taking a look at what is happening in this ecosystem.

On November 6, 2025, Polkadot 2.0 officially launched, significantly improving performance. At the same time, AssetHub completed the migration of $4.5 billion in assets, setting a record for the largest on-chain operation in Polkadot's history.

On the other hand, the inflation rate has dropped to 7.78% and is on a locked downward path, with the proposal for a hard cap of 2.1 billion DOT entering the final vote.

This is not just an old tree blossoming with new flowers, but rather a system reboot.

So, Polkadot is not being ignored; it has simply shifted from a traffic narrative to an infrastructure narrative.

Let's take a closer look at this upgrade together:

What is Polkadot 2.0?

The core of Polkadot 2.0 lies in the three pillars:

Asynchronous Backing, Agile Coretime, and Elastic Scaling.

This transformation directly enhances the throughput and interoperability of parallel chains.

Performance optimization is the primary goal.

Secondly, the inflation rate reform of Polkadot further enhances the scarcity of DOT.

As early as February 2025, the inflation rate had dropped from 10% to 7.78% to enhance investor appeal.

The community proposal has taken a step further, planning to reduce the inflation rate to 3%-6% by 2026 and introducing a hard cap of 2.1 billion DOT.

The migration of AssetHub has been a recent focus: On November 4th, over 1.6 billion DOT (worth approximately $4.5 billion) was migrated from the relay chain to AssetHub, marking one of the most complex upgrades in Polkadot.

2. Which ecological application is the most worth paying attention to after the Polkadot upgrade?

First of all, we can see that the upgrade of Polkadot directly stimulated the demand for staking.

Bifrost is a dedicated liquid staking application chain in the Polkadot ecosystem.

Bifrost, as a non-custodial liquid staking solution, perfectly captures this dividend, allowing users to enjoy higher net returns without sacrificing liquidity.

Users can stake native assets (such as DOT) to receive vTokens (such as vDOT) on a 1:1 basis. These vTokens automatically carry rewards and can circulate freely within the DeFi ecosystem.

The biggest feature of vToken is that it can be minted on different chains. For example, the ASTR token can be supported for minting on Astar (parachain) and Soneium.

The vETH 3.0, which will be launched next month, supports direct minting on the Ethereum mainnet as well as Layer 2. Unlike Lido, which only supports minting on the Ethereum mainnet and then cross-chain to Layer 2.

Unlike traditional staking, Bifrost's non-custodial Omni-Chain design retains user control and supports more than 10 chains, including heterogeneous integration with Ethereum.

As a result, Bifrost's business has expanded from the Polkadot/Kusama single ecosystem to yield layer infrastructure.

3. Bifrost's Growth Flywheel

The Tokenomics 2.0 of Bifrost is a very important highlight:

On November 1st, the bbBNC (Buy Back BNC) mechanism officially launched, using 100% of the protocol's profits for the repurchase of BNC tokens, with 90% distributed to bbBNC holders.

In simple terms, you lock BNC for 3 months (at least 50 vBNC), the money earned from Bifrost → you use it all to buy back BNC, and then 90% will be distributed back to you.

This marks the transition of the project token from governance voting to profit sharing, with a minimum lock-up of 50 vBNC (for a duration of 3 months), and an annualized return rate of up to 43%.

This has become a buyback flywheel: protocol revenue → automatic buyback of BNC → burn or dividends → increase BNC scarcity → attract more staking.

The reduction in Polkadot inflation further amplifies this mechanism: the scarcity of DOT increases, driving up the staking TVL, which in turn increases Bifrost fee sharing, forming a positive feedback loop.

The reduction in DOT inflation will actually affect staking rewards, as the APY will decrease. However, it will also bring more opportunities to DeFi, attracting more DOT holders to choose Bifrost for staking, as there are more DeFi scenarios to amplify returns.

Compared to restaking protocols like EigenLayer, the decentralized dividends of bbBNC are more sustainable.

4. Summarize

Can the public chain ecosystem rise again? As long as we keep working, there will always be opportunities.

After the Polkadot upgrade, new opportunities are emerging, it is a window period for value reassessment.

Currently, in Polkadot, Bifrost is the one that can directly capture value in this upgrade.

We can continue to pay attention to these old public chain ecosystems.