Hey everyone! This is Alex from Web3 Foundation (joined exactly a month ago from Parity), working as an Ecosystem Development lead.
The purpose of this post is to provide an overview of key initiatives, goals, impact metrics, timeline and requirements to successfully launch Polkadot Hub in Q3 2025, from a previously established “Hub BD group” consisting of W3F, Parity, Velocity Labs, Magenta Labs, and experienced individuals from Papermoon and Distractive (special thanks to @albertov19 and @NateHam1 )
We’ve established this “BD Group” a while ago, and as you might already know, working in decentralized nature has its perks, but also flaws and challenges. It’s been a tad more than 3 months since Web3 Foundation picked up the role of coordinating BD activities, but most of the credits would go to key participants mentioned above for defining the strategic road ahead and ensuring first success moving forward with the Hub opportunities.
A few notes before we dive in:
- This is a Growth and Business-development (say even EcoDev) related update. Dedicated marketing updates or plans might come separate.
- Polkadot Hub development and strategy DOES NOT mean that either entity close to developing Polkadot is ‘scaling down’ support for Parachains (Polkadot rollups). It is an opportunity to fill some of the gaps that Polkadot has been facing over the years, and make our resilient infrastructure more accessible. We want to capitalize on that opportunity.
- Please take mentioned numbers/impact metrics as assessment and overview of what goals we are trying to achieve. A lot of different criteria will impact our results, but what we can do is make sure we have enough clarity and visibility into what we’re achieving and how are we measuring ROI.
- Some of the KPIs mentioned (e.g. # of application customer we aim to land) are NOT definite, but more of a bare minimum. However, the direction we’re heading (e.g. tackling DeFi, Entertainment, RWA as top verticals) is clear and set (but subject to change due to market analysis/research). This is is a VERY market and product-driven strategy breakdown.
Problem statement
In the current decentralized team setup, we need to collectively move forward with launching “Polkadot Hub” (i.e. an Ethereum-compatible smart contract platform on Polkadot L1) in a collaborative, accountable, and transparent manner, so we can land impact through tangible ROI and addressable timeline.
Statements have been made (or feedback collected) that:
- The impact/success for past Polkadot products were suboptimal (as they didn’t address burning/crucial market needs)
- Polkadot has had a few ecosystem development shortcomings that resulted in missing out on growth cycles building “viral/mainstream” applications due to:
- large constraints in infrastructure
- passively engaging with the developer community on interacting with the infrastructure/tooling that was shipped
- failing to look at DeFi as a foundational piece to a growing ecosystem of both developers and users
- There wasn’t a good enough knowledge-sharing acumen between commercial and engineering teams (i.e., resources centralization and dominion over developer-first rather than business-first approach)
All of this resulted in Polkadot falling behind in key impact metrics (considered as financial metrics that drive general market movement), but also damaged reputation in the wider industry.
Per announcing Ethereum-compatible smart contracts and PolkaVM through Parity’s internal “Plaza upgrade”, we are facing an opportunity to fill mentioned gaps and “re-build” a thriving ecosystem of growing apps built on Polkadot, through something we actively call “Polkadot Hub”.
The general goals that Polkadot Hub is expected to achieve are:
- Lowering down the entry barrier for Polkadot (application-first, instead of chain-first)
- for mainstream and native apps to access Polkadot’s resilience
- Maximizing compatibility with industry standards (Ethereum compatibility)
- Standardizing requirements for infrastructure providers that enable mainstream applications’ requirements (DevX), but also distribution and liquidity
The Polkadot Hub launch was decided to be split between:
- Parity, as the engineering forefront, and
- The BD group (led by W3F), as the business development (EcoDev) forefront, consisted of: Velocity Labs, Magenta Labs, Distractive, and Papermoon due to their experience launching Moonbeam
Overview of the Hub BD Strategy
Minimum viable ecosystem (MVE): January 2025–September 2025
As an ecosystem, we need to ground our expectations around what the initial launch of Polkadot Hub actually represents.
For the internal audience—agents, ecosystem stakeholders, infrastructure providers, and current builders—this is a step in the right direction. It reflects both the successes and missteps of the past four years of building the Polkadot ecosystem. We’re doubling down on the resilient Web3 infrastructure we’ve become known for, while making it significantly more accessible to developers, users, and infrastructure providers alike.
However, for external observers—Ethereum developers, peers, competitors, blue-chip projects, and VCs—this initial version of Polkadot Hub may not be immediately compelling. If we fail to communicate it properly, there’s a real risk the market will view this as yet another generic EVM chain, launched in a desperate attempt to gain traction.
That’s why it’s crucial to align our expectations for this initial phase with what we, the internal stakeholders, define as short-term success for this launch. Here are some examples of what that looks like:
- Expanding access to liquidity within the ecosystem
- Closely mimicking the Ethereum developer experience
- Leveraging Ethereum compatibility to attract critical infrastructure—such as custody providers, token issuers, interoperability protocols, and onboarding tools
In other words, if by the end of 2025, Polkadot Hub looks and feels like one of the leading L2s—such as Optimism, Base, or Arbitrum—we should consider this first phase a success. For the external stakeholders, this should be framed under a progressive upgrade that will bring the PVM to life, where this first Ethereum compatibility implementation is just the first step towards that greater vision.
With that in mind, the table below outlines the key goals and North Star metrics that will guide us toward achieving this outcome with a credible and focused strategy:
Go-to-market (GTM): September 2025–Q3 2026
Assuming a successful launch by September and the first cohort of dApps already live on Polkadot Hub, the focus should shift toward building on top of the solid foundation we’ve established. At this stage, we can begin targeting additional components of the Ethereum-compatible tech stack—those that, while not foundational, are essential for creating a robust platform for builders.
We should start implementing growth strategies aimed at attracting developers, users, and liquidity that we are now in a position to onboard. This includes coordinating all relevant stakeholders to drive a product-led growth strategy for the Hub. Key initiatives may include hackathons, incubators, builder programs, liquidity incentives, on-chain quests, and RFPs.
By this time, some of the key precompiles that enable runtime functionality for Solidity-based dApps should be live. This marks our first real opportunity to encourage builders to innovate—creating solutions that go beyond what’s possible on other EVM chains. We want to see projects that leverage Polkadot’s unique system features, such as OpenGov, Staking, and XCM.
With the goal of presenting an integrated unit ready to support builders at every stage of their journey, Velocity Labs will be launching a program called the DeFi Builders Program (DBP for short). The aim is to provide a competitive and well-rounded experience for builders and entrepreneurs, ensuring we attract top talent into our ecosystem.
While many support programs already exist, they often operate in isolation—run by separate teams, targeting different (yet sometimes overlapping) audiences. Velocity Labs will serve as a program aggregator, acting as the first point of contact. The team will filter applicants, identify high-potential projects, and guide builders toward the specific programs that best meet their needs.
Some of these support systems include:
- Funding (VC, Strategic Grants, Bounties, Treasury)
- Liquidity (Liquidity Incentives, guaranteed TVL at launch)
- Technical Development (PBA-X credits, Builder Office Hours, Hackathons, DevRel)
- Audit Support (PAL Bounty)
- Hiring Support (Missing Link and alike)
- Marketing/PR Support (Distractive, Marketing Bounty)
- GTM, Tokenomics, Product Design (Velocity Labs)
- Fee Rebates (Top fee generating dApps get rewarded with retroactive rebates)
Builders make ecosystems, and we have to make sure that we go above and beyond to provide the best environment for builders to build successful products.
This phase should also involve close collaboration with parachain teams to ensure they are also benefiting from and engaging with the new wave of builders on Polkadot Hub.
Below are some of the goals and North Star metrics that will drive success in this second phase of Polkadot Hub:
DeFi impact metrics: Goals for 3-6 months post-mainnet launch, as well as 9-12 months post-mainnet launch
General impact metrics: Goals for 3-6 months post-mainnet launch, as well as 9-12 months post-mainnet launch
Differentiation Phase (dependent on a fully-fledged PVM): Q3 2026–JAM Launch
This represents the final stage of Polkadot Hub — the phase where we aim to truly differentiate ourselves and set Polkadot Hub apart from other EVM chains. At this point, we’re operating under the assumption that the initial version of the PVM is feature-complete (i.e., it includes a JIT compiler, is fully optimized, and has been benchmarked against native EVM).
In this phase, we’re targeting a different set of builders than in the earlier two phases. While details and audience segments may evolve over time, we currently see two core groups:
- Existing EVM builders on the Hub who recognize the advantages of PVM’s unique features and want to expand their dApps on Polkadot Hub.
- New builders are interested in creating something truly novel — applications that haven’t been built before.
Each of these groups requires a tailored support system. It’s critical that we offer strong support and guidance through tight feedback loops between dApp developers and core engineers. We need to ensure that the tools we’re building are genuinely useful to our users — and if they aren’t, we must iterate quickly in pursuit of product-market fit.
From the EcoDev side, we’ll be proposing PVM-specific hackathons, PBA-X credits, tailored content that highlights PVM features, dedicated incubation cohorts, and more. This is the time to lean in — to actively support the next generation of builders, many of whom will likely be early adopters of JAM as well. It’s hard to have specific details of how we will go about this, given a lot of it will be dependent on the success of the first and second phase of Hub.
Closing words
I hope this post will address the Community well enough on the ongoing work, timelines and strategic road ahead according to Polkadot Hub roadmap.
While there has already been significant results achieved (i.e. opportunities in the pipeline, deals closed); the reality is that “we are building the plane while we fly” (a quote from our fearless @nico_a ) building Polkadot’s Ethereum compatibility and PolkaVM.
We’d like to keep our 
on the ball – keep our feet on the ground, but head in the sky, as we come from a lot of experience analyzing past Polkadot performance and learning from fighting in the trenches.
Thank you all for your contributions here – W3F, Parity, VL, Magenta, Distractive, Papermoon.