Delivering Results: Nova Wallet StakeDOT Campaign & Super Simple Staking Release Impact

10 min readDec 1, 2023

Let’s Dive in!

On September 15th we released Nova Wallet v7.0 which introduced our Super Simple Staking feature to the world, making Nova Wallet the best app for staking DOT, AZERO, KSM and more! This update introduced our Super Simple 2-in-1 Staking flow, Nomination pools support in our native UI, staking hints and more!

We started to route users to the Nova Wallet nomination pool as well as including the Novasama validator as one of the 16 recommended validators by default. This change was applied on Polkadot, Kusama and Aleph Zero!

We also started our #StakeDOT campaign on 17th October to coincide with the 1st round of Polkadot crowdloan DOT being refunded to contributors! This campaign included a wide range of content including a brand new Polkadot in Action video, in depth Medium Article, Twitter Thread on the top reasons to #StakeDOT with Nova Wallet, a condensed YouTube Short and a short form video on Twitter!

Let’s take a look at how all of this impacted the Polkadot, Kusama and Aleph Zero staking landscape using cold hard onchain numbers! We will compare the dynamic of new on-chain stake from early September to the end of November 2023.

You can learn more about Nova Wallet’s Super Simple Staking here and join the more than 65,000+ users around the world!

What We Will Analyze

In this article we will take a look at the amount of new cumulative tokens (DOT/KSM/AZERO) staked using the 3 most popular Polkadot ecosystem wallets, as well as the amount of new DOT being used in popular Liquid Staking Derivative protocols since the start of September 2023.

We can evaluate these metrics to get a rough indication as to the utilization of each application, since each wallet defaults their users to stake with a specific nomination pool or include a specific validator, and each LSD platform presents their LSD token as one of their primary products. For each wallet users by default are put into a specific nomination pool, or stake with a specific validator. However, users of each wallet are able to customize which nomination pool or validators they stake with and don’t have to use the default — this applies to each wallet and as such we believe that this is a fair comparison.

We are able to assess these numbers since September 2023, as before that time Nova Wallet did not default users into our own nomination pools, nor include our validator in the default recommended validator selection.

The timing of this assessment is ideal as there were over 99 MILLION DOT unlocked from the first wave of parachain auction crowdloans on the 24th of October. This meant that a ton of users now had to make a decision on which platform they wanted to use in order to stake their DOT.

We will analyze the data from 3 networks; Polkadot, Kusama and Aleph Zero — since these networks are supported by these ecosystem wallets and include both nomination pool and direct staking with validators as staking options. This will give us a better understanding as to the adoption of each application in the context of the multichain world that we are all a part of.

Polkadot DOT Staking

Thanks to Nova Wallet’s Super Simple Staking, users don’t have to go through the stress of researching the differences between direct staking and pool staking, what a validator is or which staking option is best for them — Nova Wallet abstracts all of that away and provides a clean and seamless experience directing users to the staking option that best suits them.

Nova Wallet assigns users to pool staking if they are trying to stake below the minimum amount of DOT to consistently earn staking rewards, and if users try to stake more than ~558 DOT then they are directed towards direct staking feature due to its superior UX.

Now, by default, Nova Wallet assigns users to the Nova Wallet nomination pool for pool staking, and includes the Novasama Validator alongside the current 15 algorithmically best validators (that we call “recommended validators”). It is important to note that users can of course easily decide to change these parameters and stake with any other nomination pool, or select their own custom validators at any time. For other ecosystem wallets, this happens differently: Talisman supports only nomination pool staking and routes all users by default (regardless of the size of their stake) to Talisman Pool #1 and Talisman Pool #2. SubWallet supports both nomination pools and direct staking with validators, and routes users to the SubWallet nomination pool by default.

Let’s take a look at the amount of new DOT which has been staked with each wallets staking options since the start of September 2023.

We can see that Nova Wallet is firmly leading the charge in regards to the total number of new DOT which has been staked since the start of September 2023.

Now, let’s take a look at some other projects from the ecosystem which are providing users with one of the most popular features in web3 — Liquid Staking. We use data from the Dolpha platform to get information about Liquid Staking of DOT for Acala, Bifrost and Parallel Finance.

We can see that even when we compare Nova Wallet’s performance to these protocols that we are very close to Acala’s LDOT and head-to-head with Bifrost and their vDOT! However it is important to note that these Liquid Staking protocols benefitted massively from the first wave of DOT crowdloan unlocks on the 24th of October, where Liquid Crowdloan derivative tokens were redeemed for their underlying DOT and could be quickly converted to their Liquid Staking counterparts on those protocols. This is especially evident on Acala: which benefited greatly from this in conjunction with their Boosted Liquid Staking Euphrates platform.

Kusama KSM & Aleph Zero AZERO Staking

Remember! Nova Wallet is a multi-chain app, so we shouldn’t only focus on Polkadot DOT — let’s take a look at Kusama KSM and Aleph Zero AZERO staking performance for the same timeframe!

Kusama KSM Staking

Similarly to Polkadot DOT, Nova Wallet assigns users to the Nova Wallet nomination pool for pool staking, and includes the Novasama Validator alongside the current 15 algorithmically best validators (that we call “recommended validators”). It is important to note that users can of course easily decide to change these parameters and stake with any other nomination pool, or select their own custom validators at any time. For other ecosystem wallets, this happens differently: Talisman supports only nomination pool staking and routes all users by default (regardless of the size of their stake) to Talisman Pool #1. SubWallet supports both nomination pools and direct staking with validators, and routes users to the SubWallet nomination pool by default.

Let’s take a loot at the amount of new KSM which has been staked with each wallets staking options since the start of September 2023.

Despite the fact that we did not focus on Kusama KSM staking as part of our #StakeDOT campaign, it seems that the Kusama community greatly enjoyed our Super Simple Staking release just like the Polkadot DOT community did — the amount of new KSM staked to the Nova Wallet nomination pool and our Novasama validator is incredible!

Aleph Zero AZERO Staking

Aleph Zero has a very vibrant and active community! Let’s once again look at how each supported wallet directs users during their staking journey!

Aleph Zero AZERO staking is slightly different to Polkadot DOT and Kusama KSM — users can only select 1 validator to stake with, and not a selection of 16.

In a similar way to Polkadot DOT and Kusama KSM, Nova Wallet assigns users to the Nova Wallet nomination pool for pool staking — and for direct staking the Novasama Validator is the default option — once again it is important to note that users can of course easily change this validator selection at any time. Likewise they can select any other nomination pool at any time.

One of the other ecosystem wallets, Talisman, supports only nomination pool staking and routes all users by default (regardless of the size of their stake) to Talisman Pool #1.

To give another point of comparison, we have added the leading DApp in the Aleph Zero ecosystem — AZERO.ID — to our data selection and have included data from their nomination pool and validator for a fair comparison.

Whilst SubWallet does support both nomination pools and direct staking with validators, they do not host their own pool or validator on Aleph Zero, so we cannot accurately get data from them — as such they are excluded from this data set.

We can see that much like the Polkadot and Kusama communities, the Aleph Zero community enjoyed our Super Simple Staking feature immensely — leading to a constant and steady upwards trajectory for the amount of AZERO staked with the Nova nomination pool and validator.

What’s the recipe to success?

Why is Nova Wallet having such great success across multiple ecosystems? We believe that it boils down to a few things:

Best in class staking — Nova Wallet makes staking easier than ever before with our Super Simple Staking and Multistaking Dashboard features. All complex decisions are abstracted away and users can be sure that they start their staking journey in the best way for them — and earn maximized staking rewards!
Rich feature set — Nova Wallet is the most feature rich wallet in the Polkadot/Kusama/Aleph Zero ecosystems! All of these features and more are packaged in our elegant user interface — providing the ultimate user experience:

Super Simple Staking and Multistaking Dashboard
Governance — OpenGov and Gov1
Hardware Wallet support — Ledger & Polkadot Vault
DApp Browser — Use any Polkadot ecosystem DApp with the combined power of the Polkadot JS and Metamask protocols
WalletConnect Integration — Connect to DApps on your desktop via WalletConnect — no need for another browser extension
Number of supported networks — 81+ supported
Number of cross-chain transfers supported — 410+ supported
Crowdloans — supported for both Polkadot and Kusama

3. The most active user base — Nova Wallet has more than 65,000+ users around the world across our iOS and Android applications!

4. Community focused approach to development — We always welcome all feedback from our community and make sure to implement features that are requested by them!

The community is what makes us great and we are so proud to be able to build the perfect app for them!

What’s Next for Nova Wallet?

So you may be wondering, what’s next for Nova Wallet!?

We listened to all of your feedback and we have included the most critical improvements to Nova Wallet in our latest Polkadot Treasury Proposal!

We will bring a ton of exciting new features to Nova Wallet:

Cloud Backups and Updated Onboarding — A lot of new users in web3 aren’t used to the common web3 onboarding process but are very familiar and comfortable with the typical web2 onboarding process. As such Nova Wallet will give users the option of backing up their seedphrase/private key as a secure encrypted file on their Google Drive / iCloud storage. This is an important step to having web3 be adopted by the masses!
Push Notifications — Push Notifications are widely adopted by mobile applications and are part of the expected user experience. Nova Wallet will integrate push notifications to ensure that you never miss a balance change, staking rewards, or the latest referendum! You can customize the type of push notifications you wish to receive!
Proxy (Delegated to You) Wallets — Nova Wallet serves a wide range of users, including power users! Nova Wallet will be the first popular application in the Polkadot ecosystem to integrate Proxy Wallets — an advanced account management feature which we will integrate to unlock the full power of Polkadot account management!
Deeplinks & Applinks — Nova Wallet is so widely used by the Polkadot community that we have had many requests to implement this feature to help onboard users at the various community events across the world — making it even easier for newcomers to get started!
Network Management and Optimization — Nova Wallet has reached almost 100 simultaneously connected networks and is a true multichain application! We need to improve the apps logic to ensure that it remains future-proof and can continue to support even more networks! Additionally many teams in the Polkadot ecosystem request us to support their test networks — currently this is a lot of overhead for the Nova Wallet team to add these networks and distribute test versions of our app to those teams — with this update it will significantly improve the experience for all the teams in the Polkadot ecosystem to test their chains and applications using Nova Wallet!
OpenGov Improvements — OpenGov is one of the most popular features of the Polkadot ecosystem! We will improve Nova Wallet’s OpenGov functionality even more by adding the ability for users to Abstain on referenda and also improve the interface for OpenGov based on feedback we have received from the community!

If you want to support our latest Nova Wallet treasury proposal then please consider voting AYE on Polkadot referendum 302!

About Nova Wallet

Nova Wallet is a next-gen iOS/Android application for the Polkadot and Aleph Zero ecosystems, which provides the ultimate mobile wallet experience! Supporting 81+ networks and 168+ assets, governance, DApp support (for both Substrate and EVM), Hardware Wallet support for Ledger and Polkadot Vault, NFTs, Crowdloans and staking of assets including DOT, KSM, AZERO, GLMR, MOVR, KMA, PDEX, CAPS, TUR, ZTG and more! Nova Wallet is an open source and community-oriented app which is funded by the Polkadot Treasury and is the leading mobile wallet in the Polkadot ecosystem providing a fast, convenient and secure wallet experience for mobile! Developed by Novasama Technologies.

About Novasama Technologies

Novasama Technologies develops user-focused applications for the Polkadot ecosystem. Our portfolio includes Nova Wallet, the leading mobile app for the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems available on iOS and Android devices, Nova Spektr the full-spectrum Polkadot Desktop Wallet available on macOS, Linux and Windows

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