Astar Network Launches Collaborative ink!ubator Bounty Program to Accelerate Wasm Use-Cases
Astar Network has joined forces with Parity and other curators from the Polkadot ecosystem to launch the ink!ubator Bounty Program, designed to provide foundational support to builders while stimulating development of new ink! projects, open-source templates and tools, and smart contract auditing opportunities for Polkadot’s native Wasm runtime environment.
Parachains on Polkadot are the unique unlock that enables the network’s shared security and native interoperability to be utilized by a diverse variety of dApps. This has been demonstrated with smart contract focused parachains in particular, which currently lead the network in terms of adoption and activity. While this trend will certainly continue, there is still a largely underutilized opportunity to create more sophisticated and user-friendly applications through Polkadot’s Wasm compatibility and native smart contract language, ink!.
As one of the leading teams pushing Wasm and EVM smart contract environments that allow developers to deploy dApps with ease, Astar is committed to bettering the infrastructure around Wasm and ink! within the Polkadot ecosystem. We see this as a huge opportunity to both iterate and innovate on the limited functionality of the EVM, and provide a unique edge to developers looking to build the next generation of dApps.
As it stands, Polkadot has yet to take full advantage of its superior technical infrastructure and, consequently, still resembles other EVM chains in terms of meaningful activity. With the final audit of ink! yet to be complete, we still see a few blockers to unleash the potential of Wasm in the ecosystem.
- Templates: the reason why EVM smart contracts are popular is that developers can effectively reuse existing secure/audited code and pull from libraries of existing templates. However, due to the fragmented development in the Polkadot ecosystem, we don’t have any templates easily accessible for current and incoming builders.
- Developer Tooling: Solidity has many limitations but many developers choose this language because the EVM ecosystem has an abundance of sophisticated tooling like OpenZeppelin, Truffle, and HardHat, and front-end tooling like ethers.js and useDApp. Astar’s Swanky toolkit helps solve this problem, but there needs to be more open source full stack ink! tooling available for all.
- Financial and Developer Support: Tooling and templates themselves are not enough to nurture a strong ecosystem. Financial and technical support are vital to jumpstarting growth and enabling innovative developers to reach users at scale. This includes resources for education and auditing services to support the growing ecosystem.
To address these main blockers to Wasm and ink! adoption in the ecosystem, Astar has come together with Parity, other parachain teams, and smart contract auditors to propose and pass a bounty through Polkadot’s on-chain Treasury. You can take a more detailed look at the proposal here and conversation about it here.
This proposal allocates 361,990 DOT to establish a council committed to funding innovative teams building ink! Templates and use-cases for the wider Polkadot ecosystem. The main goals are as follows:
- Wasm Canary dApps: 5 Canary dApps created by the community. This can include stablecoin or lending platforms, aggregators, NFT marketplaces, and an ink! Domain name service.
- Ink!ubator: 2 high-impact projects building sophisticated products or services using the ink! and Wasm stack. The program will consist of two tiers: Contract Builder Program, and Contract Auditor Program.
- Open-source Infrastructure: Create a React Hooks “useink!” library for front end development. This will aim to become the go-to library for dApps on Polkadot and will greatly improve the developer experience.
The bounty will be curated by members from a minimum of 4 Substrate-based teams or Parachains, and at least one member from Parity’s ink! team. All applications will be submitted with an online form and will be evaluated by the curators. Between the Canary dApps, front-end library, and dedicated ink!ubator we will put the Treasury funds to work kickstarting a flourishing ecosystem of ink! products and infrastructure. As the bounty is refined through the course of its execution, we will top up and support high-value dApps and templates going forward on an ongoing basis. The application should go live in the coming weeks and will be featured on Astar’s Twitter as well as on the socials of the other partners.
This bounty demonstrates the inherent multi-chain nature of Polkadot and how governance can facilitate the collaboration of multiple parties for the collective benefit of the network. You can find information about Astar’s work enabling Wasm compatible dApps here and the status of ink! here.
