Decentralized Futures: Accelerate Polkadot (Goal-oriented, code-first, in-depth guides)

Hi Lauren and Aaron,

Thank you for the in-depth proposal. I believe there is a lot to chew on with this. Several attempts have been made in the past to solve this issue. Parity team members have discussed the fragmentation of the documentation and resources available to the community.

I agree that a place for individuals to work through the complexity that the substrate/polkadot community has to offer is crucial to reducing the fear factor of individuals coming into it without any experience or those currently deep-in who can find more information needed.

I know you personally, and your advocacy capabilities in person and through engagement are fantastic. I want to jump on the same question Basti raises about the examples of written guides.

Additionally, I had several other questions:

  1. Why will this be a chain and not a smart contract still utilising the proposed structure and teams?
  2. Why would you need a secondary chain?
  3. Will you be using InvArchs MultiSig to build the DAO structure?
  4. Are there written guides besides the content at conferences and streams you can showcase?
  5. Would you integrate with the Polkadot Heroes program?
  6. What would be the funding for each Milestone?
  7. How are the collaborators incorporated?
    i. Would it be the new Accelerated developers doing this?
    ii. What is needed with the collaborators?
  8. Can the content/proposal packages be reduced to smaller ones? This would allow the community to see each package’s impact and decide whether to continue or refine the proposals.
  9. How would you unite the currently separated documentation and projects?

I appreciate that you have defined the state of success and your metrics to showcase this. I believe this will help the project’s success in the future. Considering the open challenges in the community regarding funding and transparency.

Bringing more engaged and knowledgeable newcomers would be amazing, as it would likely help with retention.

Kind Regards,

Dudley from the KILT Core team

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Hey Dudley!

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a detailed response. We’re passionate about this proposal and we’re always trying to refine it, so we appreciate your feedback and thoughtful questions! I’ll try to address them as best I can.

Fragmentation of documentation is somewhat of a concern, and while we do talk about it a little in 1.3.2 it’s not something we’re trying to solve with this proposal.

If you search for “how to develop on Solana”, you will find the Solana docs, but also SolDev[1], Udemy courses, Start on Solana, BuildSpace, freeCodeCamp, the Solana Cookbook, and hundreds of other tutorials and blog posts. I don’t see this as problematic; on the contrary, I envy the amount of in-depth content developers have available to them in their community.

There is no denying that our technology is complex; our hope is that placing the complexity in context will help with understanding and make it more approachable.

As mentioned in reply to Basti, written content wasn’t prioritised in our current roles[2], but we can provide examples from previous companies.

We’ve also mentored and spoken many times on how to write content for developers. You can view one such talk by Lauren online: The Art of Writing Technical Content. While writing for developers has its own particular nuances, it is worth noting that before transitioning to tech, Lauren was an English teacher and department head for ten years.

The governance chain mentioned in the proposal is a part of the educational content package itself. Each content package aims to help developers build an application with a real-world use case. The governance chain is part of the example application users will build in the first guide to learn how to build a DAO and a dApp.

I think these might all be related to the initial misconception about the governance chain. But to clarify our plans for the content package: the secondary chain is supplemental content; it won’t be as in-depth as the rest of the content package but instead aims to spark interest with developers and show them where to go next, in this instance, it will be to learn more about chain interoperability and XCMP.

We won’t be using InvArch for this example, but we are really keen to collaborate with parachains and other projects and would like to integrate their functionality into our content packages where it makes sense. A key aspect of the Polkadot ecosystem is interoperability. If we do not produce guides that demonstrate this, then we are only showing developers the tiniest fraction of what they can build. There’s more information about this in section 1.3.4 and some examples of where we could integrate existing projects into the first content package, including Kilt, in section 1.3.4.1.

We want to incorporate collaborators where it makes sense. We do not want any of the examples to be contrived. Sometimes, we might be able to think of suitable integration points ourselves (like in 1.3.4.1) but the topic of each content package will be decided via public discussion. Hopefully, if a project thinks they’re a good fit, they will make themselves known during this stage.

We are working under the assumption that we will produce all code and content. However, the level of commitment from a collaborator will really be up to them and what time they have available. If a collaborator is really keen, we’ll happily have them work directly on the code or the content, but it will not be a requirement. All that we would ask is that they have someone available should we have any questions during development and that they’re also available to perform technical reviews to ensure we’re following their best practices.

Also, if they want to join us on any of the live streams, they will always be welcome; it would be great to see you and Lauren streaming together again!

The Polkadot Developer Heroes, the PBA alumni, and other similar groups already building in the ecosystem will be acutely aware of where we lack documentation to help them achieve their goals. We hope that they will not only find our content useful but that they will provide valuable feedback and ideas for future content packages. Also, we hope that members of these groups will be some of the first contributors once we have tips and bounties (see 1.4.1.2 and 1.4.1.3).

Each deliverable within a content package is geared towards a different learning style. If we produced content only for a single style of learner, we would not reach those other developers, and the impact could not be reliably measured.

If we were to keep the different styles of content but reduce the scope of the example application, then we risk creating tutorials which do not contain enough context to allow people to really grasp how all of the technologies work in unison.

However, each content package is broken down into multiple deliverables, each of which will be published as soon as they are completed. This means that we will be publishing a new deliverable roughly every two weeks. This way, not only will the community be able to see constant progress, but should a package need refining, they can provide that feedback early.

As I mentioned when discussing fragmentation, that’s really out of the scope of this proposal. But, if you’re asking how I personally think they could be united, then I think our best chance will not come with having a single organisation attempting to do it solo but through shared responsibility (see 1.3.2).

Maybe it is time for a Polkadot Developer Education DAO/Fellowship!

We are proponents of data-driven decision-making and evidence-based education, so I’m glad the proposal made that clear. We’re also on the side of the community; we want to be open and transparent, not just for accountability but so that we can involve the community at every level of decision-making.

:100:


  1. The Solana Development Course and the Solana Bootcamp - Advanced are probably the closest to the level of detail we’re aiming for ↩︎

  2. I did work on some written content briefly, but it was never published. You can view an unfinished, unedited first draft of such a post here ↩︎

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As someone who attended the Polkadot Blockchain Academy along with Lauren and Aaron, I want to voice my support of the proposal, and especially their professionalism and ability to create incredibly high quality educational content.

I think that this proposal will result in a lot of engaging, well-thought out content that will draw new developers into Polkadot. It’s clear how much time and thought went into it, and I think they’ll put the same attention to detail into their work. Super excited to see this come to fruition!

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