SEOUL — Upbit will temporarily suspend deposits and withdrawals of Polkadot (DOT) to carry out a planned wallet upgrade, the South Korean exchange said in a customer notice.
Per the exchange, the pause covers all inbound and outbound DOT transactions for the duration of the maintenance window. Trading of DOT pairs against other cryptocurrencies and the Korean won is expected to continue without interruption.
The notice did not include a fixed restart time. Upbit said services will resume once the upgraded wallet passes internal testing, a process that typically runs from a few hours to roughly one day.
The upgrade is intended to align Upbit's wallet stack with the latest Polkadot protocol changes. Polkadot, a proof-of-stake network designed around a relay chain and connected parachains, ships runtime upgrades on a recurring cadence, and listed venues must keep client software synchronized to avoid stuck transactions or compatibility breaks.
User balances are unaffected during the suspension, according to the notice. DOT held in Upbit accounts remains tradable in the order book and visible in user wallets. Only the on-chain movement of tokens to and from the exchange is paused.
The exchange advised customers who need to move DOT off-platform — including holders planning to self-custody on a hardware wallet, transfer to another venue, or participate in Polkadot's on-chain governance or nominator staking — to complete those transactions before the cutoff. Inbound transfers initiated after the pause goes live will not be credited until services resume.
Upbit, operated by Dunamu, is South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume and routinely processes wallet maintenance on listed assets. The exchange said it will publish the resumption time through its official notice channel and recommended that users monitor that page rather than third-party sources.
Polkadot's DOT token ranks among the larger proof-of-stake assets by market capitalization and is one of more than 200 digital assets listed on Upbit. The exchange did not flag any security incident, network fork, or unscheduled event as the trigger for the upgrade.
What it means: The pause is a routine operational step rather than a market event, but it removes one of Asia's largest fiat on- and off-ramps for DOT during the maintenance window. Holders who depend on rapid transfers for arbitrage, staking rotations, or governance votes should plan around the outage; longer-term holders have no action to take and face no direct exposure beyond temporary illiquidity at one venue.
Filed by the macro desk of MarketPR on Mon May 11. Source: MarketPR. Indicative figures are not investment advice.