The Polkadot Community Foundation (PCF) has filed a governance mandate that would designate dotUSD as the DAO's favored stablecoin. The proposal, listed as Referendum 1954 on Polkadot's "Wish for Change" track, comes from same on-chain account, 16kZ…uDMf, that submitted Referendum 1944, the measure that took the token live. It arrives just a few days after dotUSD's mainnet debut. Stablecoins — tokens designed to hold a fixed value, typically against the U.S. dollar — serve as the common quoting and settlement unit across on-chain markets, which is why the choice of a favored coin carries weight across an entire ecosystem.

The token is backed entirely by Tether's USDT — not by the DOT collateral that the stablecoin program's own long-term pitch calls for.

dotUSD reached the mainnet on October 8 after winning more than 98% of votes in support. According to Polkadot's Subsquare governance records, it launched with 4.3 million DOT.

Priority for a coin still minted one-for-one against USDT

In its first phase under Referendum 1944, users can mint dotUSD at one dollar of USDT per dollar of dotUSD, up to a cap. The reserve is made up of Tether's token — the largest stablecoin in circulation — which means the live version carries no DOT collateral, no oracle, and no liquidation system.

That setup sits uneasily beside the mandate's own rationale. The filing warns against relying on tokens backed by centralized stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle — the issuers of USDT and USDC, respectively — and points out that centrally controlled tokens can be frozen by their issuer, which could throw the entire operations of a platform that depends on them into jeopardy.

A DOT-collateralized build, modeled on Liquity v2's BOLD, is envisioned under the program but has no launch date.

The mandate calls for "dotStables," permissionless stable-value derivatives meant to be backed by DOT, with dotUSD as the flagship instrument. It says the DAI may subsidize and support one such instance and treat it "with primacy." That would not strip other issuers of their permissions, but it would place them in a secondary position. Where a single reference currency helps liquidity, the proposal wants dotUSD used first. Like the launch vote, the mandate's fate rests with token holders on-chain, so the referendum's progress serves as the first checkpoint for the policy.

DOT itself traded around $1.17 after the launch, up about 6.1% on the day, and currently trades around $1.23, down 3.5% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

On-chain incentives in place of influencer deals

The mandate also seeks a change of direction for Polkadot's marketing operations. It says growth spending should run through on-chain logic rather than outside firms, and that it should reach individual, verified humans under a per-person algorithmic cap. Polkadot pays for ecosystem activity out of an on-chain treasury, and routing growth spend through on-chain logic would make individual payments visible and rule-bound rather than contracted to outside firms.

The language reads as a rebuke of the network's recent spending. In the first half of 2024, Polkadot put about $37 million — 42% of its expenses — into marketing, out of nearly $87 million spent overall. Outlays included roughly $180,000 to brand a fleet of European private jets, $400,000 for an animated logo on CoinMarketCap, and close to $5 million directed to influencers.

Questions over the foundation making the call

The PCF, which is behind both the launch of dotUSD and the latest mandate, has also come under pressure to account for how it spends community funds. A June 2026 forum asked the foundation to publish a roadmap and a full accounting of treasury funds for the Polkadot App, a product first mentioned in 2024 that remained unavailable to general users for more than a year.

The PCF states that it acts only in an administrative capacity and does not issue, operate, or hold custody of dotUSD, DOT, or USDT.

What primacy means for Hollar and pUSD

Giving one DAO-backed stablecoin priority carries stakes for projects already competing on Polkadot. Hydration's Hollar, built on Aave's design, is treated as a third-party effort, according to Polkadot governance discussions. An earlier bid for a DOT-only native coin, pUSD, based on the Honzon protocol, was rejected in a vote in which only 18.6% backed it.

The mandate hands DAO-backed instances the platform's default position — a lever that could sideline competitors while the favored coin still runs on Tether. How the referendum lands, when the DOT-collateralized build gets a launch date, and whether the foundation answers the June 2026 accounting request are the concrete markers to watch next.

Source: Cryptopolitan