Polkadot [DOT] fees and staking decline – will these updates reverse the course

• Key metrics such as fees and bullish sentiment declined for Polkadot. 
• However, DOT’s funding rate and ecosystem growth looked optimistic.

Polkadot [DOT] has been failing to make investors happy with its price action. DOT was most likely in this situation because of the bearish market, which restricted most assets to register greens. According to CoinMarketCap, DOT’s price has declined by 7% in the last seven days. At press time, it was trading at $5.99 with a market capitalization of more than $7 billion. 

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Effects of the red chart were seen largely 

LunarCrush’s data revealed that bullish sentiments plummeted sharply last week and DOT’s altrank increased, suggesting bearish momentum.

Source: LunarCrush

The network’s activity also took a blow over the past few weeks. Fees on the Polkadot ecosystem have slightly declined, which suggested less usage of the network. The price decline also affected DOT’s staking negatively, as it fell from over $632 million to $609 million.

Source: Stakingrewards

Not everything was against Polkadot, though

However, it was interesting to note that despite the price drop, DOT’s network value registered a slight uptick. As per DeFiLlama, DOT’s TVL increased by 1.7% over the last 24 hours. However, it was no surprise, considering the network’s past, that DOT ranked first on the list of blockchains in terms of development activity. 

Code commits are a great indicator of blockchain project activity in terms of how active developers on a blockchain are in a given period ?‍?

To stay on top of the latest blockchain development trends, let's see which blockchain projects have been the most active in the last 7D… pic.twitter.com/Y1rzpn0rwh

— Polkadot Insider (@PolkadotInsider) March 27, 2023

Apart from these, a few other developments on the Polkadot ecosystem lent a helping hand to DOT and increased its network usage and price. The latest one was the launch of Stella Swap’s universal router on both Moonbeam Network and Polkadot.

Moreover, Unique Network staking went live on Polkadot.js. These developments can considerably help Polkadot attract new users to the network and improve its staking in the near term. 

Read Polkadot’s [DOT] Price Prediction 2023-24

Any possibility of DOT’s uptick?

Thankfully, a few metrics looked optimistic for DOT and gave hope for a trend reversal in the days to follow. DOT’s Binance’s funding rate recovered slightly, as evidenced by its 27 March data. The hike indicated an increased demand for DOT in the derivatives market, which could see a trend reversal soon. 

Source: Santiment