#88·Closing XCM channels with four more Polkadot parachains

Democracy
12hrs 31mins ago
0
Proposed

This referendum proposes closing 8 HRMP channels (4 bidirectional pairs) between Astar (paraID 2006) and four Polkadot parachains that have shut down or no longer carry meaningful XCM flow with Astar. It is the second round of the clean-up started with referendum #55.

Channels to close (both directions):

Counterparty ParaID Status Subscan
Phala 2035 Shut down (November 2025) out / in
Polkadex 2040 Shut down (December 2024) out / in
Pendulum 2094 Live, no user flow since 2024 out / in
Unique 2037 Live, low flow out / in

out = Astar → counterparty, in = counterparty → Astar.

Why close them:

  1. Misuse prevention. An open channel into a parachain that has shut down or gone quiet is a latent risk. If the counterparty is ever compromised, the XCM path into Astar is already there.
  2. Maintenance reduction. Every runtime upgrade and XCM version bump has to account for every open channel. Removing inactive ones shrinks the matrix engineering has to validate against.
  3. Security posture. Astar's XCM trust surface should match its active integrations: after this round, Asset Hub, Coretime, Acala, Bifrost and Hydration.

Closing a channel cuts the XCM route and does not touch balances. The HRMP deposits (80 DOT) return to Astar's sovereign account on the relay chain. Closure is reversible by a future referendum.

Holders: PHA holders recover through Phala's manual claim guide, which does not use XCM. UNQ, xcPEN and XLM.s holders (about 150 USD in total) can send their tokens back before execution; the cutover date will be posted on the forum thread once the referendum is live. Polkadex has nothing to move.

Discussion: the forum thread ran from 2026-10-15 to 2026-10-22. It received two supportive replies and no objections, and no team flagged a dependency on any of the four channels.

On-chain artifacts:

  • Preimage hash: 0x68c0fd3170c533741b8e7c1eb3d964d282c9d7e73c2cd490b30480dae9cfe6b9
  • Call data: 0x3300030100031400040000000002286bee130000000002286bee0006000700e40b540282841e004d011a02203c02d6070000f50700003c02f5070000d60700003c02d60700002e0800003c022e080000d60700003c02d6070000f30700003c02f3070000d60700003c02d6070000f80700003c02f8070000d6070000140d0100000100591f

Reference: Full context and discussion on the Astar forum: https://forum.astar.network/t/closing-xcm-channels-with-four-more-polkadot-parachains-round-2/9640

Vote AYE to approve the closures, NAY to reject.

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