Set Asset Rate for KSM/DOT Conversion for spending DOT from Kusama Treasury

Thanks to Polkadot ecosystem's Interoperability and Cross Consensus Messaging through Polkadot <> Kusama trustless bridge, DOT can be accessed directly on Kusama. At the time of creating this post, there is around 4900+ DOT on Kusama. You can query the chain state to get the accurate number

It is possible to send DOT to Kusama Treasury and access it through Kusama OpenGov. For the treasury tracks on Kusama to work as expected, a proper spend limits in terms of DOT need to be set. For this purpose, the asset rate parameter is used. For instance, DOT/USDC/USDT conversion rates were set on Polkadot through referendum 645, which allowed for Polkadot OpenGov to spend USDT/USDC directly through its treasury tracks.

It is worth noting that the current asset rate for DOT/USDC and DOT/USDT on Polkadot is 1 DOT = 10 USDC/T. This should not be confused as the actual exchange rate of the assets. Instead, the asset rate just applies this factor to adhere to spend limits. This rate can be adjusted through governance if the actual rate diverges too much.

In that light, the asset rate of 1 KSM = 4 DOT is reasonable to set, which translates to an asset rate of 25. We understand it is a bit counter intuitive. Please check the explanation below which converts assets into the smallest units (plancks) represnted on-chain:

• 1 KSM = 1000,000,000,000 (hence KSM token has 12 decimals)
• 1 DOT = 10,000,000,000 (hence DOT token has 10 decimals)
• 4 DOT = 40,000,000,000 when multiplied by 25 results in 1000,000,000,000 units which are interpreted as 1 KSM by Kusama OpenGov treasury tracks