Polkadot-JS Guides about Claims

Polkadot-JS is for developers and power users only. If you need help using the Polkadot-JS UI, you can contact the Polkadot Support Team. For more user-friendly tools see the wallets, apps and dashboard pages.

Screenshots on this page are based on Polkadot, but note that the same process applies to Kusama.

If you participated in a previous DOT sale before 2020 and received your DOT allocation indicator tokens, you can now claim your DOT (and a proportional amount of KSM on the Kusama network). The claim process connects the address where your DOT indicators have been stored on Ethereum with a native Polkadot address and, if your ETH address is eligible, will pay the tokens to the DOT address.

To do this, you must sign a message on Ethereum containing the address of your Polkadot account. You can do this by using the Polkadot-JS UI Claims app. Ensure that you are connected to the Polkadot network (displayed in the upper-left-hand corner of the screen).

Third-party claim processes

Claiming using a third-party process can lead to losing your allocation; therefore, we cannot recommend using any third-party apps. Manually specifying your transaction data, as specified in our claims process below, is the only way to ensure you will receive your allocation.

Generate an Account

You will need to generate a Polkadot account to claim DOT. See the available wallets and extensions for more information about wallets and browser extensions you can use to create an account. In terms of hardware wallet support, you can use the Ledger devices or Polkadot Vault.

Claiming Tokens

The Polkadot-JS Claims app will guide you through the process of claiming the tokens.

Select Accounts

Select the account you would like to claim the DOT into and click the "Continue" button to proceed. Your screen should look something like this:

Select Account on Ethereum

Paste the Ethereum address with the DOT allocation indicator tokens and click the "Continue" button to proceed.

Sign Message on Ethereum & Claim

The hex-encoded string that follows the sentence: "Pay DOT to the Polkadot account:" is the hex-encoded public key of your Polkadot account, minus the 0x prefix.

Go to the "Sign & Verify Message" tab on the MyCrypto web application. MyCrypto is good to use if you have stored the key to the Ethereum account holding your DOT indicator tokens on a hardware device like a Ledger Nano. It also supports raw private keys, mnemonics, and the Polkadot Vault. After unlocking your Ethereum wallet, copy and paste the outputted sentence on the Polkadot-JS UI into the message box on the MyCrypto app. When you click "Sign Message" you will get a JSON output signature as shown below:

Copy and paste the JSON output of the signed message from MyCrypto into the input box on the Polkadot-JS UI and click "Confirm Claim."

At this point, if you are eligible, you will see a success message if everything went right and your DOT will now be in the account that you claimed to. Congratulations! You can now participate in aspects of the Polkadot network such as governance and staking.

Verifying your Claim

After you make an on-chain claim for DOT, your Your account balance should be updated immediately.