Summary

This Root-track referendum deregisters ParaId 2270 on Kusama. It releases the 235.468 KSM registration deposit back to the manager account that already owns it and removes dead state from the relay chain. No treasury funds are requested and nothing is minted: the only effect is an existing reserved balance becoming free inside one account.

Why Root is the only route

The lease of ParaId 2270 ended long ago, the chain has not produced a block since, and the team that registered it no longer operates. registrar.paras(2270) still reports locked: true, so from the manager account registrar.deregister and registrar.swap return ParaLocked, and registrar.removeLock returns BadOrigin. LeaseAdmin and GeneralAdmin also return BadOrigin. The only other accepted origin is the parachain itself calling removeLock through its own ParachainsOrigin, which is unreachable in practice: the chain is dead and nobody can run it to emit that message.

The call, and how to verify it

After the Asset Hub migration OpenGov lives on Kusama Asset Hub while the registrar pallet stays on the relay chain, so this is dispatched as polkadotXcm.send to the relay chain carrying UnpaidExecution followed by Transact with originKind Superuser.

Relay chain call: 0x4602de080000 (registrar.deregister(2270))

Asset Hub call: 0x1f0003010003082f000006020300286bee02350c00184602de080000

DryRunApi.dryRunXcm on the relay chain, with origin location (0, X1(Parachain(1000))) and exactly the message above, returns Ok and Complete and emits precisely two events: balances.Unreserved for Ggyx6maeuWuKR6RkF4UiSEANZLejTVypJ9atP6jwCVvthJj of 235,467,996,471,199 planck, and registrar.Deregistered for paraId 2270. Nothing else is touched. The dry-run APIs are free, so anyone can reproduce this before voting rather than taking my word for it.

On the sell-pressure objection

Deregistering does not mint anything. These 235.468 KSM already exist and are already counted in issuance; they only move from reserved to free within a single account. The alternative is not fewer KSM in circulation, it is the same KSM frozen forever in a registration for a chain that will never run again, plus permanent dead state on the relay chain.

Precedent

This is not a new category of request. Referendum 491 deregistered parathread 3390 on the Root track: a third party placed the same 3,333.33 KSM decision deposit on 2025-02-10 and it executed on 2025-02-26. Referendum 590 was the same ask for ParaId 2114 (Turing Network) and passed with roughly 1.62M KSM aye and zero nay across 140 votes, but was cancelled before execution, so registrar.paras(2114) still reports locked: true with 63.14 KSM stuck.

What this needs

The referendum is in the preparing phase and needs the Root track decision deposit of 3,333.33 KSM before it can start deciding. I cannot fund that myself. It can be placed by any account via referenda.placeDecisionDeposit(664) on Kusama Asset Hub, and it is returned to whoever places it once the referendum concludes, whether approved or rejected. To be straightforward about the one real risk rather than overselling it: deposits are slashed only if a referendum is killed through the Referendum Killer track. If nobody places the deposit, this times out and the KSM stay locked for good.

Two points I would welcome input on. First, I am happy for a single referendum to deregister both 2270 and 2114, so that one deposit clears two stuck cases and sets a reusable precedent for the abandoned ParaIds that will keep accumulating. The manager of 2114 is CmxJEdEniSV6hGWoKfHWLR6h4A1dh5gD1vgzmD12osJvGsk. Second, if a cheaper origin is allowed to send a Superuser Transact to the relay chain, for example Whitelisted Caller after a Fellowship whitelist, the deposit requirement drops enormously and I would gladly withdraw this one and resubmit there. If anyone familiar with the post-migration Asset Hub XCM origin configuration can confirm or rule that out, it would help a great deal.

Full write-up and discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kusama-request-for-a-root-referendum-deregister-paraid-2270-to-release-a-locked-235-468-ksm-registration-deposit/18703