Dear Polkadot forums community,
Since our last update, ParaSpell
has grown into a much broader XCM ecosystem initiative.
Over the last year, ParaSpell continued refining and expanding its XCM tooling stack with the goal of making cross-chain development faster, simpler, and more accessible for builders across the Polkadot/Kusama/Westend/Paseo ecosystems. This post transparently showcases everything we achieved.
What is ?
A set of powerful XCM Tools ready to elevate your project cross-chain experience.
The following post is a follow-up to previous posts ParaSpell V1 Forums post, ParaSpell V2 Forums post & ParaSpell V3 Forums post.
What is ParaSpell currently working on full-time:
- XCM SDK
: A tool designed to unify the cross-chain experience on Polkadot and serve as a layer 2 protocol that enables seamless integration of XCM into your decentralized applications. Having three versions: PolkadotAPI Version, PolkadotJS Version & Dedot Version as the firstandonlyXCM SDK in the ecosystem. All of the SDKs support extension packages called Swap (Formerly known as XCM Router), EVM & Snowbridge. - XCM API
: An API that provides the ability to integrate XCM interoperability into your decentralized application in package-less way offloading heavy computing tasks from your decentralized application, and reducing associated costs. - XCM Analyser
- Analyser package to convert XCM locations into a human-readable format. - XCM Visualizer
- An application developed to visualize XCM within the Polkadot ecosystem.
Full tool overview also available on ParaSpell landing page.
The XCM SDK that just works.
Created when there were no other SDKs for XCM in the ecosystem. At the sole beginning of Polkadot. Born from a wild idea to unify the XCM experience in the ecosystem. Meet a battle-hardened and well-established XCM SDK.
Marked as go-to XCM SDK by deprecated Asset Transfer API and part of official Polkadot documentation. Now more universal than ever, supporting all three JavaScript clients in the ecosystem (PAPI, DEDOT, PJS) and easily expandable with Swap, EVM, and Snowbridge extensions in all of the mentioned versions. The level of generality and universality is unmatched.
What the XCM SDK Provides:
First SDK to also support the PAPI,DedotandPJSpackages.- API fail-safe mechanisms (API endpoint doesn’t work? No worries, SDK automatically switches to the next working one)
- XCM Dry running and revolutionary XCM Preview (See if your messages fail with Dryrun, but also preview if they pass without you having to have any balance with Preview)
- Ability to transfer XCM messages from/to
62different XCM compatible Parachains & Relay chains (Number of compatible chains fluctuates as some of them are added/removed) - Support for ecosystem bridges such as
Polkadot<>Kusama bridgeorPolkadot<>Ethereum bridge(Snowbridge) - All three XCM transfer scenarios in one line (
UMP- Para to Relay,DMP- Relay to Para,HRMP- Para to Para) - Multiple choices for asset selection - id, symbol, multilocation, multiasset selection
- Customizable XCM version (If preselected version stops working, you can select one that works with just one simple parameter)
- Testing on testnet or localhost (You can input custom WS port parameter or even custom Parachain ID)
- Multiple important Asset queries for front-end such as
getExistentialDeposit,getAssetBalance,getTransferableAmountandgetTransferInfowhich query asset and balance data directly from the chain of your choice. - Other front-end-related data queries, such as XCM Pallet support queries, Asset support queries, and more (all of these are instant because they are in the SDK map).
- XCM Batch transfers (Send multiple XCM messages at once)
- Ability to comprehensively add your own Parachains and/or assets
- Ability to expand your SDK’s standard functionality with extensions such as Swap (Formerly XCM Router), EVM, Snowbridge. They are universally supported for all three versions (PAPI, DEDOT, PJS)
Want to go packageless and save space? We got you
Meet award-winning and first XCM API in the ecosystem. XCM API packs every XCM SDK feature and allows you to implement XCM packagelessly. Now under the unified Paraspell domain (formerly Lightspell).
Unable to decide? A couple of why XCM API might be the right way for your project:
- Built-in Token authentication for DDoS prevention (No authentification required for up to 100 req/min)
- Designed for simple private deployment (Need faster responses? Have servers that are faster? Feel free to deploy API yourself! You can also build business models on top of this when there are other projects needing faster responses. Opportunities are limitless).
- XCM API Offloads your server from computing required to construct calls (You receive constructed message already)
- You save server costs!
- Package-less integration (No need to install anything compared to SDK alternatives)
- Simple to implement (Constructed to be as dev-friendly as possible)
- It is free for everyone to request more requests per minute!
Unable to decode complex XCM? Say no more
Developed in collaboration with PolkadotJS (Now implemented in PolkadotJS Extension-UI) XCM-Analyser lets you decode XCM locations into human-readable format while being lightweight with minimalistic dependency list.
What are pros of XCM Analyser?
- Minimalistic library (No heavy dependencies)
- Decoding individual junctions or entire XCM Calls
- Support for JSON or Object syntax
Exploring XCM in stunning, universe-like 3D Visualization was never this straightforward
Discover award-winning and first XCM-Visualization oriented tool in the ecosystem - XCM Visualizer. Built to enhance data science around XCM. Scientists can visualize XCM-related information with ease in remarkable 3D and 2D visualizations.
See the Value Behind the Data:
- Browse all 4 ecosystem XCM Data (Polkadot, Kusama, Paseo, Westend)
- Gain insights into network scalability over time with detailed historical analysis
- Identify the most active chains in cross-chain messaging
- Monitor the accounts with the highest cross-chain messaging activity
- Discover the most frequently used channels
- Track the most commonly transferred assets
- Access comprehensive details for any selected chain, including simultaneous multi-chain analysis
- Download your selected chains graph or it’s data to directly use them in research articles or next data processing
- See live XCM Data and message progress with the new XCM Live Data tab.
Implementation made easy with XCM Tools Docs
Explore comprehensive documentation, which covers just about every topic developers will encounter when implementing XCM and XCM Tools into their apps.
Play with XCM Tools in Playground
Get hands-on with XCM tools instantly in an interactive playground. No setup is needed — just experiment, see real-time results and explore the full potential of XCM solutions for your projects.
ParaSpell’s Team and history:
- By now, we completed 6 Web 3 Foundation grants meant to fund the development of ParaSpell’s common good tools. This goes to show our dedication to the topic and the community. They can be observed here: Phase 1, Phase 2, Phase 3, Phase 4 and Phase 5. We are also pushing development onwards in other cross-chain topics in the ecosystem. For example, the xcNFT pallet meant to allow users to transfer NFTs through XCM - Link.
- We have been granted trust from the Kusama community multiple times in the following maintenance proposals that helped us further perfect XCM Tools: Maintenance 1, Maintenance 2 and Maintenance 3. Maintenance 2 is also historically first maintenance-related referenda to receive 100% AYE support for which we are very thankful! Our recent and longest maintenance was granted to us by the Polkadot community in Maintenance 4 - also huge thank you.
- Some of XCM Tools are partially / fully funded by participation in Hackathons (To maximize self-sufficiency when developing state-of-the-art tools).
- XCM API was co-funded with first place at the Polkadot Global Series APAC 2023 Hackathon in the XCM Integration track. Here is the final announcement post.
- The XCM Visualizer was fully funded by
second place at the Polkadot Global Series North America 2024 Hackathon in the XCM Integration track. Here is the result announcement
- XCM API was co-funded with
- Knowledge and funds are reinvested into professional research articles
- Promoting Polkadot and ParaSpell in the long run at international research conferences (We occupy the first page when you search “Polkadot XCM” on Google Scholar). Conferences we choose are with higher standards and higher Z-indexes. We were so far able to publish a total of 8 professional research articles and 2 journals:
- Sharing fungible assets across Polkadot Paraverse: IEEE ICECET 2022 - link
- Enhancing XCMP Interoperability Across Polkadot Paraverse: IEEE ICBC 2023 - link
- ParaSpell XCM SDK: A New Protocol for Interoperability in Polkadot Paraverse: IEEE BCCA 2023 - link
- Cross-Chain Payments on Blockchain Networks: An Apartment Booking Use-Case: ACM SAC 2024 - link
- Interlinked Transactions: Revolutionizing Apartment Bookings through Cross-Chain Payments: IEEE BCCA 2024 - link
- Cross-Chain Non-Fungible Assets Sharing on Polkadot: IEEE Brains 2024 - link
- Protocol for unifying cross-chain liquidity on polkadot: Frontiers in Blockchain Journal 2024 - link
- Decentralized Bridge Between Polkadot and Cosmos: ACM SAC 2025 - link
- UniSpell: Universal Adapter for Interoperability in Polkadot Paraverse: Cluster Computing Journal 2025 - link
- Understanding Cross-Chain Message Passing Delays in Polkadot: An Experimental Perspective 2025 - link
Other results worth mentioning
Our initiative to create a bug bounty pool to support newcomming developers & developers that are already in the ecosystem - supported by Polkadot threasury has so far transparently distributed $4,409.38 out of $10,000.
What this forum post aims to achieve
- Raise awareness of XCM tools
- Gaining valuable feedback and suggestions on what should be added
- Task preparation for the upcoming fifth, highly reduced maintenance treasury request on Polkadot (Due to the current economic situation of Polkadot and deprioritization of XCM by Parity) for a further 12 months.
What are you getting by implementing ParaSpell’s XCM Tool
- Complex free support with implementation (Through a private telegram group between us and your team (We usually respond within minutes, and we are also open to live calls when time plays a role in your project delivery - form to reach out to us can be found on ParaSpell’s Landing page)
- Prompt issue solving if any occurs (Feel free to open an issue in any repo)
- Constant updates for every package (We strive to bring new features for each tool)
- Comprehensive documentation for each tool
- Reliability (Checked each month for changes in Pallets or compatible Parachains)
- Guarantee that everything is free for everyone. The ParaSpell team aims to deliver only the common good and be completely open-source and free with no hidden costs or subscriptions.