Bitcoin Suisse Brings Polkadot Governance Voting and Cold Storage

Bitcoin Suisse says it’s now possible for DOT, KSM and CFG token holders to take part in governance voting while their tokens remain secure in cold storage within its popular Vault custodial service. 

Polkadot has proven to be one of the most popular blockchains around for institutional investors, with recent reports showing that DOT is one of the most widely-held assets among hedge funds. With so many institutional investors holding vast amounts of DOT, it makes sense that there has been big demand for Bitcoin Suisse’s Vault, which provides an easy way for customers to secure those assets. 

While Bitcoin Suisse provides a level of security that’s second to none, its service does have some disadvantages. The most critical one being that its customers have been unable to participate easily in Polkadot’s governance voting mechanism. In order to vote on proposals such as future network upgrades, token holders are required to remove their assets from cold storage first. Given the demands of institutional investors, that isn’t always possible. As a result, many have been excluded from Polkadot’s votes. 

Thankfully, that has changed with the latest update to Bitcoin Suisse Vault. As of today, clients who hold DOT, KSM and CFG tokens can now create an easy-to-use proxy account in seconds using any device, before participating in the voting process. They can vote on both community proposals and network upgrades, not only for Polkadot but also its canary test network Kusama, and all of its parachain projects. 

Community governance is a key element of any decentralized network, and so it’s essential that every token holder has a way to participate, said Kasper Jorgensen, CFO at the Web3 Foundation.

“On-chain governance is a key component within Polkadot, ensuring all decision-making processes of the network continue to be as decentralized as possible including decisions on forkless upgrades and treasury proposals,” he explained. “We’re pleased Bitcoin Suisse clients are now easily able to participate in the Polkadot governance process through the Bitcoin Suisse Vault.” 

It remains to be seen what kind of impact this will have on the future direction of Polkadot and its parachains, but certainly we can expect participation in its democratic decision-making process to increase. That’s because Bitcoin Suisse’s Vault service is incredibly popular among DOT token holders, providing institutional-grade cold storage custody for crypto assets ranging from BTC to ETH to TEZ and others. The Vault has notably been audited by Grant Thornton and Zühlke Engineering, as well as PwC and has also received an ISAE-3402 report. In other words, investors will be hard-pressed to find a more secure custodial service. 

According to Markus Perdrizat, head of custody at Bitcoin Suisse, enabling governance participation has been a key aim of the company for some time. “It is essential for us at Bitcoin Suisse to offer access to on-chain governance for the clients of our institutional-grade Vault solution, since this is a very fast-growing space,” he said. 

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice