Polkadot Devnet Update: New Apps, X25519 Chat and .dot Registry Changes
The Polkadot Products Devnet is undergoing a major September update that changes its mobile and desktop applications, messaging encryption, account system and developer infrastructure. The update was published on September 8 and requires users and developers to take specific steps before moving to the new builds.
The most important change for users is that existing accounts will not simply carry over. Every user must create a new username, while contacts and chat history will not migrate. The .dot names themselves survive, but they remain associated with the previous account and its recovery phrase.
That makes the order of the upgrade particularly important. Users with .dot domains need to record their recovery phrase before clearing their cloud backup and reinstalling the application. Losing the recovery phrase before completing that process could permanently prevent access to the old account’s .dot domains.
Polkadot Moves Chat to X25519 Encryption
One of the central technical changes is the migration of chat encryption from P-256 to X25519. Polkadot’s documentation describes X25519 as a modern elliptic-curve system designed for efficient key exchange. Because keys using the previous format cannot simply be converted, users begin with fresh contacts and conversations after the upgrade.
The update also changes the cryptographic context used for personhood pseudonyms. That is another reason every user receives a new username rather than carrying the previous identity directly into the new application version.
The desktop application is receiving several practical improvements as well. Users will gain native audio and video calling instead of being directed to the mobile application, along with search across chats, contacts and message content.
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Mobile users are also getting chat search, a redesigned tab bar, improved multimedia handling and the ability to reply directly to transfers inside conversations. The update includes improvements to registration progress, error messages, coinage management and PGAS, making the release more than a simple security upgrade.
For developers, the changes extend deeper into the platform. The CDM ContractRegistry has been redeployed at a new address after a problem affecting the publication of new contract names. Existing names and versions were migrated, but developers must update their tooling and regenerate their cdm.json configuration where necessary.
The .dot naming system has also moved to a new contract deployment. Registered names are preserved, while app records were reconstructed from a snapshot of the previous system. Developers therefore need to check their published applications and republish those that fail to load or display outdated versions.
Developers Must Re-Pin Their Chain Descriptors
The update introduces another important developer requirement: chain descriptors for Bulletin, Asset Hub and People need to be regenerated and re-pinned after the runtime upgrades. Stale descriptors can cause publishing or querying to fail during decoding. The Bulletin authorization structure has also changed, with bytesPermanent moved into a nested extra field.
Developers also need to be careful with old tooling. The new DotNS and deployment packages contain the updated contract addresses, while older versions can continue interacting with retired contracts without necessarily producing an obvious error. That creates a risk of successfully publishing to infrastructure that newer applications no longer use.
The broader architecture behind the Devnet is designed around several Polkadot components. Asset Hub handles contracts and assets, People provides identity functionality, and Bulletin stores web-app bundles. Applications can then be opened through the Polkadot app or the Devnet’s web gateway.
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This distinction is important because the September release is still a public developer preview rather than a finished production network. The documentation explicitly warns that Devnet tokens have no real value and that chains, services and application flows can change between builds. Developers should therefore treat the update as an infrastructure migration and testing opportunity rather than a final representation of the production Polkadot experience.
For the Polkadot community, however, the update shows the direction of the Products platform. The combination of encrypted messaging, personhood-based identity, .dot application names, decentralized publishing and smart-contract tooling points toward a broader attempt to make decentralized applications feel more like conventional software while retaining blockchain-based infrastructure underneath.
The September Devnet release therefore matters less because of any single feature and more because it demonstrates how quickly the platform is evolving. Users face a reset in identities and conversations, while developers must update contracts, registries and descriptors. For those building on Polkadot’s Products Devnet, following the migration instructions carefully will be essential to avoid losing access to .dot names or publishing against retired infrastructure.
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