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The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation has added 21Shares’ Polkadot Staking ETF to its listings under the ticker TDOT, a step that formalizes the product’s place in the US exchange-traded fund ecosystem. The listing coincides with 21Shares rebranding the fund from its original name, the “21Shares Polkadot ETF,” to the “21Shares Polkadot Staking ETF,” a change that went live on August 27, 2026.
The name swap is less cosmetic than it sounds. Staking-forward branding signals to institutional allocators exactly what the product does: it holds DOT tokens, stakes between 40% and 95% of those holdings through network validators, and passes the resulting yield back to shareholders on a quarterly basis.
What the fund actually does
The staking yield currently sits at 2.04%, which is modest by crypto standards but meaningful when layered on top of any price appreciation in DOT. The fund charges a management fee of 0.30%, leaving most of that yield intact for shareholders.
Custodial duties are split across Anchorage Digital, BitGo, and Coinbase entities, a roster that covers the major institutional-grade crypto custodians operating in the US.
From seed capital to a smaller footprint
TDOT launched on March 6, 2026, on Nasdaq as the first US spot Polkadot ETF, seeded with approximately $11 million. As of late August 2026, assets under management have settled in the range of $7.5 million to $7.9 million.
The DTCC listing that prompted the current news cycle actually predates the fund’s March 2026 launch, with DTCC having registered the shares around October 1, 2025 as part of standard pre-launch operational preparation. The re-emergence of this listing in public discourse likely reflects renewed attention tied to the August rebranding rather than any new structural event.
The staking ETF trend and what it means for investors
TDOT is not a standalone experiment. 21Shares has applied the same staking-plus-ETF model to Ethereum under the ticker TETH, Solana under TSOL, and Sui under TSUI, with the August 2026 rebranding wave updating all four products to carry the “Staking ETF” label explicitly.
For investors, buying TDOT on Nasdaq requires no crypto wallet, no understanding of Polkadot’s nominated proof-of-stake mechanism, and no direct interaction with any blockchain. The yield arrives as a quarterly distribution, and the brokerage account handles the tax reporting.
With the DTCC listing confirmed and the rebranding complete, the next meaningful milestone for TDOT is whether the staking-forward positioning pulls AUM back toward and beyond its $11 million seed level.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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