Treasury Proposal: ink! Alliance for a more successful Plaza

1. Overview

Motivation Overview

Polkadot is built to be “the next-generation blockchain protocol at the heart of a vision for a fair, secure and resilient web that protects user interests by design (Web 3.0).” (src). It is the compute platform designed to power the next generation of applications. Polkadot is secure, resilient and unstoppable, without compromise. However, for Polkadot to truly reach the masses, smart contract development must become more accessible. ink! offers the most straightforward approach to building secure and truly decentralized technology. By supporting the ink! alliance, growth can be accelerated and the developer pool broadened for Polkadot, Plaza, and parachains.

Why is ink! part of the solution? ink! is a Polkadot native smart contract language. ink! shares the same ideals, security and resilience as Polkadot. It uses the same code-libraries and technology that the Polkadot SDK uses, allowing for seamless integration with runtimes and Polkadot’s multichain composability. ink! allows smart contract developers to use Polkadot’s offerings, while remaining secure.

This security comes from ink! being Rust. The language that built Polkadot, and is renowned for its robustness, reliability, and performance. Rust is extensively used by major companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, Discord, and even the Linux kernel. Additionally, Rust has a thriving ecosystem with over 4-million developers, is the fastest growing programming-language, and has been the most admired programming language for 8 years in a row.

With ink!, Polkadot has a smart contract language that makes creating proper decentralized applications simple, while remaining true to Polkadot’s uncompromising ideals and composability. Solidity allows Polkadot to cater to Web3-native developers, and ink! caters to the market of Rust developers. Multi-language smart contract support diversifies the developer pool, providing Polkadot, Plaza, and parachains the best chance to thrive.

To achieve growth for ink!, and Polkadot, this ink! Alliance is formed to decentralize the decision making amongst a strong-group of companies motivated to help make Polkadot & ink! thrive. As ink! has not achieved mass-usage, this alliance is putting a large focus on traction, with a strategy centered on developer education, increasing the awareness of ink!’s capabilities while also making it easier to start building for Polkadot. Additionally, the alliance will ensure ink!’s codebase continues to be maintained and improved, and provide ongoing community support including answering questions, giving workshops at hackathons (EasyA, EncodeClub, WebZero, etc.), teaching at the PBA and more.

ink! Alliance & Collaborations

The initial alliance is made up of the following members:

• Michael Müller: Led the ink! team at Parity bringing ink! to where it is today.
• Polytope Labs: The team behind Hyperbridge Network
• R0GUE: The team behind Pop
• Virto: The team behind Virto and Kreivo

Additionally, the alliance will work closely and collaborate with:

• EasyA, to incorporate ink! into the #1 Web3 learning platform
• Encode Club, for education, ink! bootcamps and hackathons
• WebZero, to promote ink! and provide hackathon support
• Distractive, aligning ink!'s messaging for powerful and cohesive narratives
• Core ink! engineers and dApp developers

ink! status

Current Status and Adoption of ink!

It is an ideal time to push for greater traction for ink! due to Polkadot’s preparation for contract-enabled system-chains, and ink! being at its most mature-stage yet. ink! is supported by several parachains, has thousands of contracts deployed across the ecosystem, and boasts a robust set of tools, including full-stack boilerplates, scaffolding tools, and advanced security tools.

Endorsement and Impact

OpenZeppelin, a major player in Web3 security, highlighted that they “see great potential in ink! and its tool cargo-contract which has demonstrated robust security measures and an unwavering commitment to ensuring the safety and security of its users. Overall we are confident that ink! and its associated tools will see significant adoption in the future” (src). Data from Parity indicates that the most used smart contract parachains in 2023, Astar and Phala, support ink!, with Phala having over 6,000 ink! Contracts deployed. Additionally, Aleph Zero has developed a thriving ecosystem around ink!, showing how ink! can be impactful in Polkadot with the proper support.

Widespread Usage

Numerous projects including Abax Finance, Archisinal, Pendzl, GenesisDAO, Music Finance are utilizing or contributing to ink!. Chains supporting ink! include Aleph Zero, Astar, Kintsugi, Kreivo, Magnet, Pendulum, Peaq, Phala, Pop Network, Ternoa, Zeitgeist, and more. In addition to the many tools such as ink!-analyzer, DRink!, ink!athon, Pop CLI, ink!scope, and many more.

Objectives and Ask

The objectives of this alliance and proposal is to execute on the following:

1. Traction
   1. Produce high-quality tutorials, courses, and examples
   2. Consistent social media engagement
   3. Unify branding, messaging, and developer journey
   4. Teach at PBA and hackathons/conferences
2. Development
   1. Maintain ink!, including fixes and addressing V5 audit findings
   2. Finalize PolkaVM support
   3. Maintain ink!-focused tooling (e.g., cargo contract, ui.use.ink)
3. Community Support
   1. Support parachain teams and developers using ink!
   2. Assist with hackathons from EasyA. EncodeClub, WebZero and more

To do this, the alliance is requesting a budget of $520,000 USD (115,807.9 DOT based on EMA-7) for 6-months of support for ink!. This will be controlled via a multisig of trusted members. Please see the section "Deliverables & Budget" for a breakdown of this amount.

See the full proposal here