This week in Polkadot: Founder returns, DOT inflation voting starts, platform tools upgrade.

Last week, the Polkadot ecosystem was bustling with activity, and the core developments are worth following.

Core Personnel Changes

Gavin Wood announced that he will resume the role of Parity CEO at the end of August, succeeding the current CEO Björn Wagner. The official reason provided is: the infrastructure has taken shape, market conditions are mature, and it is now necessary to combine strategic vision and execution to accelerate the next phase of growth.

This is not a routine adjustment for Parity—Wood's return as the founder of Polkadot signifies that the ecosystem is entering a new stage of development.

On-chain Voting Launch: Three Options for DOT Inflation Mechanism

Polkadot OpenGov has opened voting for DOT inflation proposals, with three options each focusing on different aspects:

Plan 1 (Hard Pressure)

• Max Supply: 2.1B DOT
• After March 14, 2026, the inflation rate will drop to 3.11%, and the staking yield will be 5.6%.
• Features: Most aggressive, largest reduction in inflation

Plan 2 (Growth Pressure)

• Maximum Supply: 2.1B DOT
• The inflation rate and staking yields both decreased by 50%, with an expected inflation of 5.03% and yields of 3.9% after 2026.
• Approximately 34 million DOT will be reduced every two years flowing to miners and directed into the ecological incentive pool.

Plan 3 (Soft Pressure)

• Maximum supply: 3.14B DOT (more issuance allowed)
• The inflation rate has dropped to 5.5%, and the staking yield is 10.6%.
• Features: the mildest, retaining more room for growth

These three proposals represent different ecological development philosophies: should priority be given to protecting the returns of stakers, retaining the ecological incentive budget, or maintaining supply flexibility?

Developer Tools Comprehensive Upgrade

The Polkadot Deployment Portal (PDP) has launched three major updates this month:

1. Containerized Infrastructure: Kubernetes support, rollup deployment environment with default industrial-grade fault tolerance and automatic scaling.
2. Runtime Visualization: Preview changes such as logic updates and Pallet adjustments in advance, support rollback, significantly reduce upgrade risks.
3. Automatic Renewal: Coretime automatically renews to avoid downtime due to resource expiration.

In simple terms: Previously, developers had to manually handle a bunch of operational details, but now the platform handles it automatically, allowing developers to spend their time on the product itself. This is beneficial for game rollups, DeFi protocols, and more.

Ecological Financing Advancement

Harbor Industrial Capital announced the second phase of its fund, with the amount undisclosed but substantial in scale. The first phase invested in well-known projects such as peaq and Mythical Games, while the second phase will focus on the Asian market and will have the Web3 Foundation as the first LP.

HIC's judgment is: Polkadot is on the eve of the “Cambrian explosion” - the Hub is about to go live, the JAM upgrade has not yet been priced in by the market, and there is huge potential in the RWA/gaming/government applications direction.

Key Point: Ecological financing should shift from “grants” to an “investment model” to allow commercial projects to grow rapidly under capital drive.

Side Branch Ecological Highlights

Astar Migration to Agile Coretime Officially abandoning the old parachain slot auction system, fully adopting Polkadot's Agile Coretime—“on-demand purchase of computing power” model. This means Astar no longer needs to lock up a large amount of DOT for periodic crowdfunding, but instead flexibly purchases the required block space. Lower costs, higher efficiency.

Bifrost and Hydration attract institutional users After the launch of Polkadot Hub, the pre-compile function will be opened, which will attract more developers to quickly deploy automated products and DeFi applications.

Polygon integrated Hyperbridge Polygon has integrated the Hyperbridge cross-chain bridge in the testnet, and the mainnet will soon go live, achieving seamless data and value interaction with the Web3 ecosystem.

A thought-provoking question

Gavin Wood stated at the Web3 Summit: Polkadot will launch a fully decentralized native stablecoin backed by DOT, issued through treasury proposals. At the same time, Circle is pushing USDC Arc, with Stripe and Paradigm developing the Tempo chain… the stablecoin issuers are becoming “bankified”.

Your choice is important – will you be a passive customer of a certain chain, or a participant with governance rights?

This week's actions from Polkadot indicate: founder's return, tool upgrades, accelerated financing, and synchronized ecological innovation. The platform is transitioning from “scale expansion” to “quality upgrade.”