Polkadot stopped auctioning parachain slots and started renting blockspace

For years, securing a spot on the @Polkadot network meant winning a competitive, capital-intensive auction and locking large amounts of $DOT for a two-year lease. That model is now gone.

From Auctions to On-Demand Blockspace

Polkadot ended its parachain slot auctions on September 19, 2024, when the network enacted runtime upgrade 1.2.0. Existing leases were migrated to the new system automatically, and any leases that had not yet started were cancelled, with locked tokens refunded to holders. The change was a direct response to long-standing criticism of the auction model: costs were hard to predict, slot allocation timelines were unclear, and teams had to commit capital two years in advance at whatever $DOT price the market happened to set on auction day.

The replacement is called Agile Coretime, a flexible, market-driven model for acquiring computational resources on the network. Under the new system, builders can acquire blockspace on-demand or in bulk without significant upfront capital commitments, lowering the barrier for startups and smaller teams that previously could not compete in auctions.

How Coretime Works in Practice

Agile Coretime offers two purchasing formats. The first is bulk coretime, where a team buys access to a core for a fixed period of up to 28 days, represented as an NFT on the Coretime Chain. The second is instantaneous coretime, a pay-as-you-go option where teams purchase blockspace on demand, block by block, without any long-term commitment. Renewal orders take priority over new purchases, which shields active chains from sudden price spikes during periods of high demand.

Bulk coretime can also be split into smaller regions and resold on secondary markets, meaning a team running a lighter workload can divide its core allocation and sell unused portions to other projects. This creates a more efficient use of overall network capacity and gives $DOT blockspace a functioning secondary market for the first time.

The shift is part of a broader technical overhaul at Polkadot that also includes Asynchronous Backing and Elastic Scaling, which together allow parachains to dynamically access multiple cores in real time and handle traffic surges without congestion or new contract negotiations.

Sources:
Polkadot Wiki: Agile Coretime for Parachains
Parity Technologies: Polkadot Upgrade 2025
CryptoNews: Polkadot 2.0 Explained: Agile Coretime and What It Changes for Developers