The bonded majority
Polkadot pays stakers from issuance, and the reward is set high enough that a large majority of DOT stays bonded. Bonded supply is not gone — but it is slow: unbonding takes days, so it cannot chase a move. The float that actually trades an hour-to-hour swing is a fraction of what the market cap implies, which is the general lesson of float versus market cap with the dial turned all the way up.
What a thin float does to the tape
Thin float cuts both ways. Impulsive moves run further than the coin’s size suggests, because the sell-side that would absorb them is locked. And the positioning read shifts: with no options book, the leverage story lives entirely in perp funding and open interest, and a funding extreme against a thin float resolves faster and harder than the same extreme on a deep one.
Issuance is the other side of the yield
The staking yield is paid in new DOT. That is not income arriving from outside the system; it is the float being diluted toward the stakers. A holder who does not stake is paying the yield, not earning it — the same arithmetic covered in liquid staking tokens, without the wrapper.
Reading it
Treat DOT as a small-float coin wearing a large-cap label: expect overshoot, watch funding rather than looking for walls that no book exists to draw, and remember the unbonding queue means the float cannot grow quickly even when everyone wants out.