Ink!ubator 2.0 – proposal for treasury funding to accelerate polkadot's growth through ink! smart contracts

Ecosystem
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Hey community! :wave:

We are presenting ink!ubator 2.0 as a proposal to the Polkadot Treasury for continued innovation within the Polkadot ecosystem through projects utilizing ink! smart contracts. and ofc, we would like to hear the community thoughts first!

We have recently posted the ink!ubator 1.0 report and it is already finalised. But we would like to continue this initiative with the feedback and comments from the community.

Also, we are aware that there is a proposal to return the current funds from ink!ubator 1.0 to the Treasury, in this case, we will need to start the initiative from the beginning and set up the bounty again! (update: it is already decided, so we will need to start the initiate from scratch)
Please read the new proposed ink!ubator 2.0 and we would love to hear your feedback!!

Key highlights of the proposal:
:small_orange_diamond: Ecosystem grants focus:
We aim to incubate around 10+ high-potential projects, with each project receiving a grant in the range of $50,000 - $60,000. These funds will enable developers to focus on delivering innovative products that contribute to the Polkadot and ink! smart contract ecosystems.

:small_orange_diamond: Mentorship and guidance:
ink!ubator 2.0 will provide professional mentorship through active curators who will guide projects in the creation of ideas from inception to completion. The selection criteria for curators are stringent, based on deep technical and ecosystem development experience; hence, supported teams will be able to get the best resources possible.

:small_orange_diamond: What will be different from ink!ubator 1.0:

The experience gained from ink!ubator 1.0 has deeply influenced the development of ink!ubator 2.0. We have reimagined our curator selection process in such a way that the curators remain motivated and on board during the whole project life cycle. Second, the incubator has been streamlined because now it will focus only on ecosystem grants since those have been most productive concerning the effort and resource involved.

Also, we understand the issue of Transparency in the ink!ubator 1.0, so we aim to do even more frequent reports and post more detailed feedback on the GitHun for each application!

:small_orange_diamond: Curators panel:
Selection for our project is secured at the highest possible level of quality and innovation, hence we have reserved a panel of experienced curators bringing along wealth and hands-on experience from across Polkadot and ink! ecosystems:

  • Michi (ex-Parity)
  • W3F (Web3 Foundation)
  • David Semakula
  • R0GUE
  • Sam Ruberti
  • Facilitator: Toma Sadova

Why treasury support is critical:
Funding from the Polkadot Treasury is needed to both enable developers and ensure continued growth within the Polkadot network. Investments in ink! smart contracts are funding projects in the Treasury that have real value-add for Polkadot by empowering its technology and attracting new waves of innovating developers.

The requested support of 600,000 - 1,000,000 USD will enable ink!ubator 2.0 to:

  1. Deliver impactful projects that align with Polkadot’s vision.
  2. Empower developers to push the limits of decentralized technology.
  3. Strengthen Polkadot’s position as a leader in blockchain innovation.

What the future holds: Through ink!ubator 2.0, we aim to:

  1. Expand the reach and influence of ink! within the Polkadot ecosystem.
  2. Foster the development of scalable and sustainable decentralized solutions.
  3. Bring innovative tools and frameworks that contribute to Web3 and blockchain technology on a global scale.
  4. Together, with the Polkadot Treasury’s support, we can lay the foundation for the next era of decentralized innovation.

:scroll: You can find the full proposal document below for a detailed breakdown:

  1. Proposal
  2. Final report of Ink!ubator
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Hey there
I fully support the initiative! And I would love to take part once it’s live.

I trust the creators and facilitators expertise in building good program such Ink!ubator 2.0

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Looking forward to it! :rocket:

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Really cool initiative! I also followed the Incubator 1.0, and it’s truly a great idea. Projects with Ink! really need this kind of support.

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Looking forward to this new version of ink!ubator!!

It should allow the ecosystem to keep on planting seeds for new Polkadot applications while supporting the growth of an amazing language as it is ink! :fire: :squid:

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As someone looking and thinking a lot about the future of Polkadot, I feel that I currently do not see where ink! currently plays a role in really making a meaningful difference to Polkadot.

Where can I find the latest thoughts on what specific role ink! will play here?

I have some of my own thoughts of course, but I would like to hear from the team/teams first.

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Hey Shawn, thanks for engaging!

Directly answering your question, the best resource to clarify this at the moment would be the forum post by the ink!alliance:

I would like to add that all the involved entities here definitely share the same goal of achieving success and fruitful adoption of the ecosystem.

As the platform evolves into “a VM to rule them all,” it would be great to see a variety of different languages being able to deploy and run together in the same environment. This would allow developers from other ecosystems to use the stacks they are already familiar with while keeping the doors open to others as well. The more options, the better. This, of course, falls under the responsibilities of the ink!alliance rather than the ink!ubator, and the team is working hard to ensure that ink! runs on PVM.

ink! features native interoperability, allowing its developers to write programs that can utilize different services connected to Polkadot. The language is friendly for both Web3 and Web2 developers alike, providing users with options and flexibility. This brings a more appealing argument for building interesting applications based on smart contracts within this ecosystem.

I would also like to invite everyone to keep in mind that ink! is not starting from scratch. It has a solid foundation and a rich set of tools built around it, and it continues to attract the attention of builders. (SRLabs is developing a fuzzer for the language out of their own initiative and interest - Phink!)

The ink!ubator is a way to nurture the developer community for ink!, allowing them to grow their ideas more easily and create more solutions on top of Polkadot.

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That is def the first answer I was looking for :slight_smile:

Can you be more specific what you mean here? There is something that ink! can do regarding creating an app with multiple contracts that Solidity cannot do?

Starting to insert my own ideas:

Everyone in the ink! team must know about the proposed “merge”, which is trying to turn ink! into a language which can be used for both Contracts on Polkadot and Services / Parachains.

This seems to me to be the most obvious fit for where ink! would make sense in the Polkadot ecosystem. As the language that you can launch both a contract on the “Polkadot Hub” and a service compatible with “Polkadot Cloud”.

I think if ink! remains just an alternative contract language to Solidity for the “Polkadot Hub”, it seems very unlikely to take off or make a meaningful impact into adoption / growth of Polkadot.

Of course, in a bull market where we have plenty of successful teams and builders, such experiments could be okay, but I don’t think we are really in a position where Polkadot can afford to walk down paths like this with such little upside.

For example, any resources currently being used on ink! compatibility probably are better used on Solidity compatibility (if they were one to one), or even Move, which has some existing hold on the larger community already.

Anyway, I guess we will see how the treasury voters feel about putting money in directions like this.

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Sure!

Having the possibility to natively write XCM programs directly within the smart contracts allows developers to communicate with other chains securely.
XCM programs could also be used by smart contracts to communicate with the host runtime, decoupling these ink! smart contracts from an opinionated pre-compile (which is not a bad thing necessarily).

Devs can use SCALE encoding and certain crates as if they were runtimes.

I believe it all comes to ink! making things significantly easier and bumping the devex.

Everyone in the ink! team must know about the proposed “merge”, which is trying to turn ink! into a language which can be used for both Contracts on Polkadot and Services / Parachains.

It is an awesome idea! However, the ink! alliance is not a large team, and turning this idea into reality in a timely manner could be challenging. That said, I can see the benefits. Perhaps after achieving a successful ink! <> PVM milestone, it would be a better time to assess something like the merge.

I appreciate your points, and your input is highly welcomed. We want to see ink! thrive, and we are working towards that goal in the best way we can. The more feedback we receive, the better decisions we can make for that purpose.

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Hello, it’s a pleasure to greet you. The referendum execution failed; what’s next for this bounty?

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Hi @lilymendzdev thanks for reaching out,

Indeed, it seems that the proposal to close ink!ubator v1 has failed, as one of its child bounties remains open and needs to be claimed.

My personal concern regarding ref#1160 was the community sentiment surrounding the removal of support for teams and individuals building applications with ink!. Although it seems that the motivation for closing bounty #19 was primarily the decline in activity and effort put into it.

For the purpose of this post and the suggested initiative, the outcome of ref#1160 had no effective impact. I believe a change of curators would require community voting, and the same applies to “reopening” the bounty.

The different teams involved are, of course, firm believers that ink! provides value and reasons to develop smart contracts within this ecosystem. The main question still remains: does the community want to support applications being built with ink!?

With bounty #19 open, the option of submitting a change of curators is still available. Therefore, we will need to decide what the most effective path forward would be.

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Hello all!

As I write this comment we are gold platting some details before incorporating some changes to the above proposal and discussion.

But I’d like to share here the change of direction this initiative is taking.
For what is worth, expect an edit on the above post including the following Seems that Toma can’t edit the post above, please take this as the update for this post. Also note that the proposal document has been amended.

Given that the execution of ref#1160 failed and bounty #19 is still open, we have decided to take a different approach to execute this proposal. We’re moving away from opening a new bounty, which now clearly feels unnecessary, and instead pursuing the substitution of the current curator set.

We have communicated our intentions to the current curator set. It’s also worth noting that the main motivation for closing bounty #19 seemed to be a lack of activity and pro activity. We believe that refreshing the set with a group of passionate and involved agents will have a positive effect on both the application developers using ink! and the ecosystem as a whole.

The change of curators won’t be accompanied by a top-up. We will focus on leveraging the existing funds and demonstrating demand.

The action plan will unfold as follows:

  • :purple_circle: A referendum proposing the new curator set will be opened.
  • :purple_circle: Once the decision deposit for the above referendum is paid, the current curator set will sign and submit unassign_curator().
  • :purple_circle: The referendum will be executed.
  • :purple_circle: The newly proposed curator will sign and submit accept_curator().
  • :purple_circle: ink!ubator will reopen its doors. The website will be updated, and new applicants will be welcomed.

Pinging @lilymendzdev and @shawntabrizi as you guys have been somewhat active in this thread.
Leaving a ping for @ltfschoen too as the OP for ref#1160.

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Thank you for this update; I’m excited to see what’s next for this bounty.

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