Polkadot Live: Polkadot on MacOS and Windows

Download from our Landing Page for MacOS (arm64) and Windows (x64).

Polkadot Live has pioneered a new form factor for desktop blockchain applications, bringing novel tracking tools and critical notifications to token holders, stakers and OpenGov participants.

This proposal is an effort to secure funding for the second development phase of the Polkadot Live application.

View our Full Proposal Document here.

Overview

Polkadot Live is a Polkadot OpenGov funded project that has been in development for the past 10 months, delivering a cross-platform desktop application that allows managing subscriptions and performing chain interactions on Polkadot and Substrate based blockchain networks. We are striving to make Polkadot Live an essential management and productivity tool within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Polkadot Live was originally conceptualised by Ross Bulat (currently director at JKRB) who presented the idea at Polkadot Decoded 2023. The project has been actively developed by Dane Bulat since November 2023 (after our first proposal passed) who is working with Ross to realise the project's long-term goals and objectives.

Use Cases

Polkadot Live has many use cases. In addition to every day Polkadot users, it can also be used by:

• Traders
  
  Use balance notifications to augment trading strategies. Import whale addresses (or accounts of interest) and receive notifications when crypto is moved from or into their accounts.
• Investors
  
  Import your relay chain addresses and enable staking subscriptions in order to get notified of your latest rewards when a new era starts. You can also fetch your accumulated rewards at any time in a fully decentralised manner.
• Developers
  
  Developers can use Polkadot Live to import accounts that are being used to test a Dapp in development. For example, you can easily track metrics on imported accounts to verify that the Dapp is working correctly.
• Managers
  
  Are you managing many Substrate accounts for clients, or just happen to have many accounts in extensions, hardware wallets and mobile apps? You can import all of them into Polkadot Live and track the metrics you are interested, tailored to each account.
• Defi Users
  
  Submit extrinsics directly from the desktop via Polkadot Live. Our proposal details a task that builds on our current extrinsics offering.
• Decentralisation Advocates
  
  Polkadot Live doesn't fetch data from any centralised service when processing a subscription. It connects to a live node and fetches data directly from the appropriate Substrate blockchain network. Light client support is also on the roadmap, as detailed in our proposal.

Discover Polkadot Live

Click the following image to view our getting started video on YouTube and see Polkadot Live in action:

• 00:06 - Part 1: Installation
• 04:38 - Part 2: Importing Accounts
• 14:05 - Part 3: Account Subscriptions
• 23:02 - Part 4: OpenGov Subscriptions

We have also put together a guides page on the documentation portal that users can reference to install and start using Polkadot Live. We recommend firstly going through the “getting started” guides which include:

• Installation
  
  How to install Polkadot Live on macOS and Windows.
• Importing Accounts
  
  How to import accounts via the Polkadot Vault mobile app, Ledger hardware wallet, or read-only mode.
• Account Subscriptions Guide
  
  How to manage subscriptions available to imported accounts.
• OpenGov Subscriptions Guide
  
  How to manage subscriptions available to OpenGov referenda.

Polkadot Live Core Features

• Non-intrusive UI
  
  The Polkadot Live main window allows you to view notifications and manage subscriptions in a non-intrusive UI. Instantly show or hide the main window by clicking the application's tray icon, and have it docked or free-floating.
• Import accounts on multiple networks
  
  Import any Polkadot, Kusama or Westend account via the Polkadot Vault mobile app or Ledger hardware wallet. You can also import an account in read-only mode, which allows you to import absolutely any valid address and enable subscriptions for it. Signing extrinsics will not be possible for read-only accounts due to the necessity of the account's private key.
• Account subscriptions
  
  Receive notifications instantly when any part of an account's balance changes, or when metrics change for an account's nomination pool or direct nominating setup. Discover the available balance, nomination pool and direct nominating subscriptions through our documentation portal.
• Dedicated OpenGov window
  
  View live treasury statistics, browse in-depth track information, and discover ongoing referenda on both Polkadot and Kusama. Check out our portal's OpenGov window documentation to learn more.
• OpenGov subscriptions
  
  Enable subscriptions to track referenda votes tally, decision period time remaining, and current thresholds. OpenGov subscriptions are run after a set time interval, which is chosen by the user. Discover available OpenGov subscriptions through our documentation portal.
• Subscription preview (one-shots)
  
  Run a subscription callback instantly to get notified of live on-chain data. For example, instantly retrieve your current account balances and nomination pool unclaimed rewards with a click of a button.
• Action Items
  
  Dynamic buttons rendered on event items that open an associated Dapp in a web browser. Useful for inspecting the notification in more detail. For example, open the Polkadot Staking Dashboard to inspect your staking setup more closely, or Polkassembly to view the complete state of a referendum.
• Extrinsics
  
  Submit extrinsics to compound or withdraw unclaimed nomination pool rewards. These extrinsics are currently available for accounts imported via the Vault application. We have planned to implement more extrinsics and signing methods in the next development phase.

First Milestone Deliverables

We are pleased with the foundations that have been built at the end of the first milestone. Our main deliverables include:

• GitHub Project Repository
  
  An open source repository licensed under GPL3 housing the full Polkadot Live application codebase.
• Polkadot Live Alpha Release
  
  Mac OS arm64 and Windows x64 pre-built installers available for download on the GitHub project’s releases page. We have also published instructions for users who wish to build the application from source on the documentation portal macOS and Windows installation pages.
• Documentation Portal
  
  An open source Docusaurus project deployed to GitHub pages. We have made an effort to document comprehensive installation instructions and getting started guides. The portal also houses documentation covering subscriptions, application settings, and the Polkadot Live UI.
• Landing Page
  
  An open source single-page website providing download links to the Polkadot Live macOS and Windows installers. Links to the documentation portal and Polkadot Live GitHub repositories are also displayed.

Proposal Context

We have prepared a proposal in an effort to secure funding for the next development phase of the Polkadot Live project, which will span 8 months. We plan to use the first 6 months to complete each engineering task detailed in the proposal. The final 2 months will be used for code cleanup, debugging, optimizations, and preparing Polkadot Live for a stable release.

Please consult our proposal document for detailed descriptions of the tasks we have planned for milestone 2. With that said, some notable high priority tasks include:

• System parachain integration
  
  Implement balance subscriptions for the Asset Hub and People system parachains. Enable transporting native assets between the relay chain and respective system parachain.
• Improved Ledger hardware wallet support
  
  Support for importing both Polkadot and Kusama accounts from Ledger hardware wallets. Enable signing extrinsics with Ledger hardware wallets.
• WalletConnect support
  
  Support for importing Polkadot and Kusama accounts via the WalletConnect protocol. Enable signing extrinsics using the WalletConnect protocol.
• Light client integration
  
  Eliminate reliance on single RPC nodes by running light clients. Provide the option to make network connections via RPC endpoints or light client nodes.
• Developer documentation
  
  Continuously keep end-user documentation up-to-date and publish comprehensive developer documentation for project contributors.
• Light theme and UX improvements
  
  Implement a light theme and an application setting to choose between the light or dark theme options. Improve the OpenGov window’s presentation by rendering referenda visual indicators, graphs, and improving its UI.
• Linux build
  
  Augment the codebase to support building Polkadot Live Linux distributables and making them available to easily download.

Key People

Dane Bulat, Development (GitHub, X, LinkedIn)

• Lead Polkadot Live engineer.
• React, TypeScript, Rust, Haskell, Web3 expert.
• Polkadot Blockchain Academy Cohort 4 graduate in Hong Kong.
• EMURGO Certified Cardano Developer Professional.

Ross Bulat, Consultancy (GitHub, X, LinkedIn)

• Conceptualized Polkadot Live and published its first OpenGov proposal.
• Lead engineer behind the Polkadot Staking Dashboard.
• Former engineer at Parity Technologies.
• React, TypeScript, Rust, Web3 expert.

Planned Fund Allocation

• 1x Senior Full Stack Engineer - Dane Bulat
  
  Hourly rate: $95
  
  Total hours: 1,280 (5 day work week at 8 hours per day)
  
  Total cost: $121,600
  
  Dane Bulat will continue his role as the lead engineer of Polkadot Live.
• JKRB Investments
  
  Lump-sum: $25,000
  
  The JKRB investments team will continue their role of managing the Polkadot Live deployment infrastructure, providing regular consultancy, and performing code reviews. JKRB investments will also continue to provide developer licenses and take liability for the Polkadot Live production build.
• Miscellaneous Costs
  
  Lump-sum: $8,000
  
  We are also requesting some additional funding for miscellaneous and unforeseen costs that are likely to come up during the next development phase.
• Grand Total
  
  32,4011 DOT (1 DOT valued at $4.77, the 7EMA on 8th August 2024, with a total value of $154,600)

Intended Second Milestone Deliverables

By the end of the second development phase of Polkadot Live, we plan to deliver:

• Augmented Polkadot Live codebase
  
  With complete implementations of the tasks detailed in the proposal.
• Polkadot Live stable release
  
  A stable release of the Polkadot Live app with pre-built installers for macOS, Windows and Linux platforms.
• Augmented documentation
  
  An updated documentation portal with new developer documentation.

Thank you very much for checking out our proposal, and we look forward to any feedback or comments!