An organization called coretimenegotiation (controlling a whale user Uzair) posted a message on the Polkadot forum a month ago, stating that they currently hold 74 of the 94 available cores in the Kusama network and 9 of the 18 available cores in the Polkadot network, making them the largest holder of core resources!
The purpose of the post is to promote in-depth discussions within the Polkadot community regarding Core functionality, market dynamics, and broader ecological impacts. They emphasize that this behavior is not to maliciously hoard Coretime or disrupt the market, as the current sale of core resources operates under a permissionless free market mechanism.
coretimenegotiation believes that the current documentation regarding core time (Coretime) on Polkadot is severely lacking, causing many ecological project teams to not understand the usage of cores, renewal mechanisms, and pricing logic. This information asymmetry leads to two direct consequences:
Resources are being inefficiently utilized, with some parachains renewing cores but having almost no on-chain activities;
New entrants cannot judge reasonable prices, leading to a long-term downturn or even collapse in the market (e.g., Kusama cores once fell to 0.0001 KSM).
To compensate for the lack of a secondary market, coretimenegotiation has begun to actively seek buyers and bargain. The initial purchase price for all the cores they hold is:
Kusama core: 0.0009 KSM
Polkadot core: 9.2 DOT
They hope to continue participating in transactions in the Coretime market until the price of cores reaches the valuation level they consider reasonable:
Kusama core target price set at 50 KSM
Polkadot core target price set at 3,500 DOT
The organization has repeatedly emphasized that the core resource market of Polkadot and Kusama should be free, open, and permissionless. The current price level is still significantly underestimated and hopes that ecological projects will actively contact them ([email protected]) to purchase Coretime!
Kusama core: First off-chain transaction reached 50 KSM
On April 24, they completed the first off-chain transaction for Kusama core - sold for 50 KSM, successfully extending Coretime for the Xode project! For transaction details, see: https://coretime-kusama.subscan.io/extrinsic/2582982-2
They indicated that multiple project teams have contacted them regarding core resources, and this transaction price has preliminarily validated their market valuation judgment. They are very eager to promote efficiency improvements in resource allocation within the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.
Polkadot core priced at 15,000 USD rejected?
Friends who follow PolkaWorld should remember the article we published on April 25 (What happened? Polkadot Coretime was actually speculated to 150,000 USD each?) Please note that the title was incorrect, the actual situation is 15,000 USD! Sorry, the editor got a bit emotional and just posted it...
Actually, the one asking for 1.5 million dollars is this organization!
They have continued to raise systemic concerns about the existing Coretime framework, particularly regarding the lack of a permissionless, trusted secondary market for the resale of core resources! Although the treasury has allocated funds to support RegionX in building a related market, they hold differing views on the specific implementation path - they advocate for deploying the Coretime secondary market on the Polkadot Asset Hub, or enabling smart contract functionality on the Coretime chain.
Due to the current lack of an available secondary market, they can only explore and discover through direct pricing mechanisms. On Kusama, they have set the reference starting price for each core at 50 KSM. Although this does not represent the psychological ceiling for all teams, it is a reasonable starting point in the absence of a broader price discovery mechanism. Additionally, the value of core resources on Polkadot should be significantly higher than on Kusama.
During the negotiation process for the renewal of Mythos and Xcavate cores, Parity developer Bastian quoted them 200 DOT per core. However, they believe this is just an initial bid and countered with a price of 3500 DOT (approximately 15,000 USD) per core - this quote is based on resource availability and timing factors, especially since the core resources of the Mythos chain are about to expire, their actual demand is very high.
After several rounds of bidding and bargaining, both sides were once close to reaching a preliminary agreement of 3,500 DOT / core (at that time approximately 15,000 USD). However, this quote was later withdrawn and replaced with 500 DOT. They believe this price does not match the value of Polkadot Core and did not agree to sell at that price.
Ultimately, Mythos and Xcavate received two months of Coretime for free under a public vote initiated by Parity! The team insists that 3,500 DOT is a reasonable valuation for each Polkadot core. If any team is willing to accept that price, they will immediately allocate the corresponding cores to their parachain!
In the interest of transparency and openness, the organization disclosed the bids received prior to this event.
Polkadot Network:
3,500 DOT (Bastian, later withdrawn)
3,000 DOT (Bastian)
750 DOT (Karim)
500 DOT (Bastian)
200 DOT (Bastian)
100 DOT (IronHash Systems, suspected to be a non-real team)
35,000 MYTH (Sourabh)
📄 Email records of this quote: 1. https://forum.polkadot.network/t/april-2025-coretime-purchase/12526/22?
2. https://forum.polkadot.network/t/april-2025-coretime-purchase/12526/23?
3. pastebin/nVxGYXEZ
Kusama Network:
50 KSM (Altair)
50 KSM (Xode)
10 KSM (Bastian)
0.1 KSM (0x5hmoo)
We believe that these bids show that the current core leasing prices of the two networks are still underestimated.
How to handle the remaining cores in hand? Sell them in packages together by registering parachains!
After widespread attention around the Coretime market mechanism and governance game, core holders coretimenegotiation announced their next phase of operational strategy, clearly stating that they will use their held cores to help new projects access the ecosystem. They firmly believe that Polkadot is a scalable blockchain platform, and their recent assessments of network performance have further solidified this belief!
They registered parachains on each relay chain and allocated unsold cores to these registered parachains, thus:
Supporting these chains for performance testing, showcasing advantages such as Polkadot's high TPS, data availability, low block time, and rent control.
Attract new projects to settle in
Sell these chains in packages to other projects with core needs
As of now, they have registered 6 parachains on Kusama (IDs: 3415–3420), with 5 allocated 12 cores each, and the 6th allocated 13 cores. They registered one parachain on Polkadot (ID: 3420), containing 9 cores. All these cores were legally purchased through a permissionless free market mechanism.
Additionally, the para manager accounts for these parachains are currently set as pure proxies, which allows for greater flexibility in future collaborations with potential buyers.
Ownership of the parachain can be transferred in the following ways:
Modify the pure proxy owner and their para manager permissions, and update the sudo keys together
Transfer cores to buyers through XCM Lease swap
Transfer cores to buyers through governance Lease swap
Regarding the packing price
For each Kusama parachain allocated 12 cores, they estimate the total packing sale price to be around 800 KSM, which includes:
Registration cost for parachain (1,000 USD) 12 cores (calculated at 50 KSM each) moderate profit
Currently, individual core sale requests are not accepted in Kusama, only packaged transactions are supported.
They purchased two new Polkadot cores again, each core costing 92.271 DOT
On May 9, they purchased two more Polkadot cores at the price of 92.271 DOT each - Core 64 and Core 65.
As of now, they hold:
11 out of 20 cores in the Polkadot network
73 out of 94 cores in the Kusama network
The current selling method for the Polkadot cores they hold is: (price can be negotiated)
Direct paraID allocation (valid until May 31, 2025)
Transfer of para manager account (corresponding to paraID 3420, carrying 9 cores, each core renewal cost approximately 9 DOT, ownership transferred through proxy control)
Therefore, they stated that compared to cores starting at 920 DOT, these cores starting at 92 DOT + renewable are obviously more cost-effective.
Oh my goodness! The latest selling price for Polkadot core is 2000 DOT!
On May 16, the organization announced again on the Polkadot forum that they had completed a sale of Polkadot core, with a transaction price of 2,000 DOT. Core 64 has been allocated to paraID 3415 after receiving payment.
Payment transaction link: https://polkadot.subscan.io/extrinsic/26028880-2
Core allocation transaction link: https://polkadot.subscan.io/extrinsic/1791677-2
Currently, paraID 3415 holds one renewable core. Below is the comparison of renewal costs shared by the organization, aiming to illustrate that purchasing now is far better than waiting for the next auction:
Under the current cost of 92.27 DOT, the renewal situation for this core is:
Initial purchase: 2,000 DOT
1st renewal: 95 DOT (cumulative: 2,095 DOT)
2nd renewal: 98 DOT (cumulative: 2,193 DOT)
3rd renewal: 101 DOT (cumulative: 2,294 DOT)
4th renewal: 104 DOT (cumulative: 2,398 DOT)
Please note: Their calculation method here is based on the Polkadot Wiki, where each core can support a maximum monthly renewal increase of 3% based on the initial core cost (i.e., 92.27 DOT), ensuring price stability.
In comparison, if they wait for the next round to purchase cores at a cost of 922 DOT:
Initial purchase: 922 DOT
1st renewal: 950 DOT (cumulative: 1,872 DOT)
2nd renewal: 978 DOT (cumulative: 2,850 DOT)
3rd renewal: 1,007 DOT (cumulative: 3,857 DOT)
4th renewal: 1,038 DOT (cumulative: 4,895 DOT)
Thus, they recommend teams to choose early purchases + controllable renewals, as this will bring significant long-term cost advantages.
The resources they are currently still selling include:
One Polkadot core (Core 65): Selling price 2,000 DOT (initial purchase cost is 92 DOT, renewable, see above renewal plan for details)
A Polkadot parachain containing 9 cores: can be transferred through the para manager proxy account to support elastic expansion, with each core renewal cost approximately 9 DOT; packing price can be negotiated.
Five Kusama parachains: each containing 12 cores, priced at 800 KSM each
One Kusama parachain: containing 13 cores, price to be determined.
A new proposal in Kusama aimed at opening up more cores
Recently, the parachain project Kreivo released a whitelist proposal, hoping to release all the cores of Kusama, thus increasing the available cores to 140! Since referendum #511 has expanded the Kusama validator set size to 700, designed for every 5 validators to correspond to 1 core, theoretically, it can now support 140 concurrent cores. The purpose of this new proposal is: to enable these 140 cores and release more operational resources for parachains.
The motivation behind this comes from the experience of the parachain project Kreivo: failing to renew the core in time led to only being able to 'manually produce blocks', severely affecting user experience. However, they did not request privileged core allocation but rather pushed for the system as a whole to release more cores, allowing all projects a fair opportunity to compete in the next auction.
Of course, the organization coretimenegotiation must have noticed Proposal 522 and definitely hopes that the proposal can pass!
However, this proposal currently has low support, only 43.1%, which also reflects broader community concerns, perhaps fearing that after all cores are released, coretimenegotiation will purchase all the Kusama cores. However, this is a free market; coretimenegotiation can purchase, and everyone in the community can buy! I'm quite curious about what will happen, haha~
Let's wait and see if this proposal will pass! https://kusama.subsquare.io/referenda/522
If you are curious about what coretimenegotiation will do next? You can follow the Polkadot forum: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/april-2025-coretime-purchase/12526/48?
Or follow PolkaWorld, we will continue to follow up!
