21Shares Lists First US Spot Polkadot ETF on Nasdaq Under Ticker TDOT
The US crypto ETF market got its first Polkadot product on Thursday. 21Shares, the Zurich-based asset manager that has been one of the most aggressive issuers of exchange-traded crypto products globally, listed TDOT on Nasdaq, giving US investors regulated access to Polkadot’s DOT token through a standard brokerage account for the first time.
The fund was seeded with roughly $11 million in initial assets, charges a 0.3% annual management fee, and holds actual DOT tokens rather than futures or derivatives. Coinbase Custody is the custodian. Price tracking uses the CME CF Polkadot, Dollar Reference Rate, New York Variant as its benchmark, aggregating data across major trading platforms into a single reference price.
For investors unfamiliar with it, Polkadot is a blockchain network specifically designed to solve an interoperability problem: most major blockchains, Ethereum, Solana, Bitcoin, cannot natively communicate or share data with each other.
Polkadot connects independent blockchains, called parachains, into a single unified network that shares security infrastructure while allowing each chain to operate independently.
Projects building on Polkadot rent blockspace using DOT, the network’s native token, which ties the token’s economic value directly to network utilization.
DOT is currently the 19th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Federico Brokate, 21Shares’ global head of business development, called Polkadot “one of the only platforms designed for different blockchains to work together securely and efficiently.”
The Staking Feature Is Worth Watching
TDOT’s prospectus allows the trust to stake a portion of its DOT holdings to earn network rewards. Staking on Polkadot currently generates approximately 12–15% annualized yield, paid in additional DOT.
If 21Shares exercises that option, shareholders would receive economic exposure to staking returns on top of price appreciation, a structure that no US spot crypto ETF has fully implemented yet at scale.
The practical and regulatory mechanics of passing staking yield through a grantor trust structure remain untested in the US market, and 21Shares has not confirmed when or whether staking will be activated.
But the permission being in the prospectus from day one signals intent, and it distinguishes TDOT from the Bitcoin and Ethereum ETF products that preceded it.
Where This Fits in the Broader Altcoin ETF Race
TDOT is not arriving in a vacuum. Since the SEC signaled a more permissive approach to crypto ETF applications under the current administration, issuers have moved quickly to file for products covering a wide range of altcoins.
Pending applications currently exist for spot ETFs tracking Solana, XRP, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Chainlink. 21Shares itself first filed for TDOT in January 2025, making the roughly 13-month path from initial filing to Nasdaq listing one of the faster timelines in the altcoin ETF pipeline.
The TDOT launch does not by itself indicate that Solana or XRP ETF approvals are imminent, those products involve different regulatory questions around staking classification and securities status, but it confirms that the SEC is now willing to approve spot exposure to major altcoins beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.
