Hello Polkadot Community!
We would like to take this opportunity to share our vision and ongoing work with the Staking Dashboard and Polkadot Developer Console prior to opening our public proposal on OpenGov for the next 12 months of funding.
The full details of our proposal can be viewed here: Full Proposal on Google Docs.
PolkAssembly discussion post: Polkadot Staking Dashboard & Developer Console 2024-25 Funding | Polkassembly
Previous Funding Period
The last funding period spanned from February - July 2024, which was dedicated to the Staking Dashboard and its surrounding tooling. Since then, we have launched an early version of the Polkadot Developer Console, with the goal of leapfrogging Polkadot JS Apps UX and eventually becoming a stable and superior alternative platform.
Developer Console has allowed us to iterate and generalize a large amount of logic that was taken from the Staking Dashboard, and this has resulted in a more robust codebase, as well as major UI iterations such as Console’s unified account connect module.
Since July 2024, we have been maintaining and implementing action items from feedback received from the community, unpaid, in preparation for our new proposal. We’ve designed this proposal from the ground up and with a fresh perspective that reflects the current needs of the Polkadot ecosystem and the role Polkadot Cloud can play.
Major Applications
Polkadot Staking Dashboard: A fully-featured Dapp for interacting with staking and nomination pools on Polkadot.
Polkadot Developer Console: A next-generation Polkadot developer console that aims to leapfrog current console UX.
These efforts, alongside the Polkadot Cloud landing page and documentation portal, are hosted on GitHub in the Polkadot Cloud organization.
About the Developer Console
Watch our Developer Console announcement and features overview:
As many of you know, we recently revealed the Developer Console’s alpha release. We’d like to address our development strategy: Our alpha release intentionally focuses on innovative features rather than replicating existing functionality. You might notice the absence of specific tools (like a block explorer) - this is by design.
To provide more insight into our vision and approach, we’ve prepared a detailed Q&A:
Our goal isn’t to duplicate what’s already working well in the ecosystem but rather to create new approaches to developer tooling that address current pain points and prepare for future needs. Already-working features will roll out in time but must be treated as a lower priority relative to high-impact enhancements.
What we’ve built so far:
- A multi-chain, tab-based interface allowing simultaneous connection to multiple networks.
- An intelligent chain directory with advanced tagging for easier network discovery.
- State-of-the-art persistence allowing developers to maintain workspace setups with import and export support.
- A unified connect UI simplifying wallet and extension interactions.
Over the past six months, we’ve focused on development first, ensuring we had something tangible to demonstrate before seeking wider community support.
During the period post-announcement to the public proposal, we have listened to community feedback and have implemented a number of fixes and updates. Notably, Wallet Connect V2 support has rolled out in the Console, and we are currently working on integrating PAPI’s lower-level APIs as we draw down support for Polkadot JS API and bolster open-source PAPI integration code and documentation around it. Staking dashboard bug fixes are also being merged as they are discovered, and general dependency updates are being deployed.
Here’s a comparison of key features across existing platforms to help illustrate how the Developer Console advances the Polkadot developer experience. While tools like Polkadot JS Apps have served the ecosystem well, we believe there’s room for innovation in several crucial areas:
Importantly, this feature set represents just the beginning. Our upcoming proposal will outline plans to enhance these capabilities further.
Proposal Prerequisites
We have held back from opening this proposal until the following items were satisfied:
- The Plaza roadmap was finalized and publicly announced, as it has significant impacts for the Staking Dashboard.
- Polkadot API launched their 1.0 version for stable APIs (this happened on August 16th 2024).
- Developer Console was publicly announced, and the codebase open sourced.
- Sufficient feedback from the community was received following the Developer Console’s public alpha announcement.
Our High-Level Goals for the Next Proposal
We’re preparing a comprehensive treasury proposal that will outline our plans for the following:
- Abstraction of the Staking Dashboard to make it a general tool for any chain built with the Polkadot SDK.
- Continued feature support for Staking Dashboard and listening to community demands (these are outlined in more detail in our proposal).
- Enhanced support for Polkadot 2.0 features like Agile Coretime in Developer Console.
- Completing the Polkadot API (PAPI) integration across the platform.
- Introducing staking features platform-wide to supersede JS Apps Staking.
- Expansion of the w3ux library and documentation.
- Implementation of a community contribution program.
You can explore our current progress at:
- Staking Dashboard: App / Github
- Developer Console: App / Github
- W3ux Library: Github
- Polkadot Cloud: https://polkadot.cloud
We’ll be submitting our treasury proposal soon, but we want to ensure we pick up on any final feedback or commentary. Your input now will help shape our final proposal and the future direction of these tools.
Best regards,
Ross & Joel
Polkadot Cloud Team