$DOT Recently, the Polkadot community has discussed the extremely low transaction volume on the Relay Chain, with only around 5 small transactions in the past few days, raising some doubts and debates.

Since its launch in 2020, the Relay Chain has carried too much: consensus, security, cross-chain coordination (XCM), while also handling daily user operations—DOT transfers, staking, governance voting, treasury expenditures, and more.

This has led to the Relay Chain being prone to congestion, high gas fees, and uneven block utilization, affecting the stability of the core security layer.

The community and the Parity team have long planned to "slim down" the Relay Chain by removing non-core functions, allowing it to focus on being a "security base."

After the migration of Asset Hub in November 2025, the Relay Chain will intentionally "slim down," leaving only core functions such as shared security, finality, and XCM cross-chain coordination. Daily transfers, staking, governance, and treasury will all be moved to the Polkadot Hub.

So, although the Polkadot Relay Chain appears very quiet, this is not a dead chain, but rather a normal state after the upgrade.