Polkadot [DOT] bulls confirm investors’ confidence- Here’s how

• Polkadot crowns the list of top blockchain protocols by development activity.
• DOT delivers a bullish week but is already exhibiting signs of a slowdown.

Polkadot’s native cryptocurrency DOT just concluded a bullish week during which it trailed the top cryptocurrencies. Despite that, its native network has not had much going for it this month.

How many are 1,10,100 DOTs worth today?

DOT exchanged hands at $6.45 at press time, a bit of a pullback from its weekly high. Nevertheless, the same price point represented a 20% premium from its weekly low or a 24% rally from its current 4-week low.

At press time, its price movement was in tandem with the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum, but unlike them, DOT was yet to achieve a new YTD high.

Source: TradingView

The latest price pivot may not be exceptional but it is a notable positive step for the Polkadot network. The latter has been relatively overshadowed by other networks and major developments in the pipelines.

Speaking of development, the latest GitHub data ranked Polkadot as the top blockchain network in terms of development activity.

GitHub Daily Development Activity:

#1: 710 Polkadot / Kusama
#2: 679 Cardano
#3: 572 Decentraland
#4: 497 Hedera
#5: 469 ChainLink
#6: 417 Aptos
#7: 404 Status
#8: 355 Internet Computer
#9: 341 Cosmos
#10: 330 Lido DAO Token pic.twitter.com/6QbR3eoE66

— ProofofGitHub (@ProofofGitHub) March 18, 2023

Polkadot has frequently been on the list and topped it multiple times so far this year. It highlighted a healthy confirmation that the network was still building after a few announcements related to protocol development.

At the time of writing, the development activity metric was at its highest point in the last two weeks. Similarly, DOT’s market cap surged back to its biweekly high. The last time it touched this mark was on 14 March.

Source: Santiment

Realistic or not, here’s DOT market cap in BTC’s terms

Also on the development front, Polkadot just announced the availability of Smoldot 1.0.0. The latter is Polkadot’s light client which can connect to several networks.

Smoldot @Polkadot's light-client just hit 1.0.0 and it now outperforms RPC! And with the Connect browser extension, there's not even a few seconds sync time on page load. Here it's used by several pages and for several networks including Westmint. Yup – works for parachains, too! pic.twitter.com/6phNWrViA0

— Gavin Wood (@gavofyork) March 17, 2023

The Smoldot light client is one of the projects that may underscore the aforementioned development activity. Nevertheless, it could be a small portion of the development project that currently underpins the robust development activity.

Are we likely to see more upside?

Well, DOT’s volatility declined significantly in the last two weeks. This may explain why it failed to rally to a new YTD high. Lower volatility may point towards limited price movement but it is worth noting that the volatility is starting to surge once again.

Source: Santiment

The volatility surge points towards a higher likelihood of a bearish retracement. The fall of investors’ confidence in the last seven days as indicated by the weighted sentiment metric further backs the bearish bias.