This is a retroactive funding proposal for work completed over the past 3 months building Kitdot - a TypeScript development toolkit for Solidity on PolkaVM.

Website: https://kitdot.dev/

Summary

I'm requesting $9,999 USD in retroactive funding for 3 months of independent development work that has successfully onboarded hundreds of new developers to the Polkadot ecosystem through Kitdot - a rapid prototyping toolkit that eliminates the complexity barrier for building Solidity dApps on PolkaVM.

Impact to date:

• 200+ contracts deployed on Asset Hub during Latin Hack
• 44 working project demos created by hackathon participants
• 90% of participants were new to Polkadot and successfully onboarded
• Invitation to mentor and judge at Sub0 based on Latin Hack success
• Adopted at Sub0 by Solidity developers (anecdotal evidence from mentors)
• Listed in Polkadot Ecosystem Tools Directory

What is Kitdot?

Forum discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kitdot-build-web2-like-apps-on-polkadot/15303

Kitdot is a rapid prototyping toolkit (similar to eth-scaffolding but for PolkaVM) that provides:

1. Web2-like Authentication

Working directly with the MetaMask team, I integrated Web3Auth with Multi-Party Computation for Asset Hub:

• Users interact with PolkaVM using social logins (Google, Github, Twitter, etc.)
• No need to understand wallets, seed phrases, or private keys upfront
• Try it live: https://kitdot-fronted-templates.w3d.community/quick-starts/react-quick-start/

2. Zero-Config Local Environment

• Automated setup for PolkaVM development with Solidity on Asset Hub
• Developers don't need to understand hardhat-polkadot or foundry-polkadot configurations

3. AGENTS.md Context Files

• Complete speciallized context for LLM agents (Cursor, Claude, Codex, etc.) to develop and troubleshoot PolkaVM projects
• Enables AI-assisted development from day one

Proven Ecosystem Impact

Latin Hack Success (October 2025)

Kitdot launched at Latin Hack with measurable results:

• 200+ contracts deployed on Asset Hub
• 44 working project demos submitted
• 90%+ participants were new to Polkadot and had smooth onboarding
• 2 out of 3 winners used Kitdot to deploy contracts and build UIs
• Detailed impact report: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OiKZWmJKH94GohlXupwLvkHY-QE-9OeJ-yGTm2fXzJU

Sub0 Contributions (November 2025)

Based on Latin Hack's success, I was invited to support Sub0 as:

• Mentor - Helping teams understand PolkaVM and Solidity development
• Full-time developer support - Providing hands-on technical assistance
• Judge - Evaluating project submissions

Kitdot adoption at Sub0: While I don't have access to official metrics, feedback from fellow mentors indicated that Solidity developers were actively using Kitdot during the hackathon. The tool helped teams get started quickly and iterate on their ideas without getting stuck on configuration issues.

Throughout both hackathons, the most common questions I received were:

• "Where do I get price feeds? Which oracles work on Asset Hub?"
• "Which NFT marketplace can I use to test my NFTs?"
• "What are the Uniswap v2/v3 implementations for token pairs?"
• "How do I interact with native assets from my Solidity contracts?"

These questions reveal a critical gap: Solidity without access to native Substrate resources is meaningless to the established EVM market.

Addressing Developer Needs

I've started bridging these gaps independently:

• Deployed a working oracle at: https://polkavm-oracle.w3d.community/ (Note: I'm not aiming to be an oracle service provider - just providing basic resources so builders can test and iterate on their ideas during development)
• Documented PolkaVM gotchas and best practices

Why This Matters to Polkadot

Onboarding the Next Wave of Builders

The Ethereum ecosystem has millions of developers who know Solidity. Polkadot's bet on PolkaVM with Solidity support is about capturing a portion of this talent pool without asking them to learn Rust first.

We're promising composability - ink! contracts and Solidity contracts should be able to call each other and share state. To deliver on this promise, we need to dog food the tooling and build reference implementations showing what's possible. (That's what I'm doing rn)

Vision & Strategic Alignment

PolkaVM's success depends on multiple language stacks (Solidity, ink!, Move) working interoperably within the same runtime. This isn't a zero-sum game between languages - it's about composability and choice.

My position on Rust vs. Solidity:

• Rust (via ink!) is the stack for projects requiring longevity - It's a no-brainer for production systems that need the best performance, safety guarantees, and tight integration with Substrate pallets.

• Solidity is for rapid prototyping and seeing ideas in action - The largest pool of smart contract developers globally knows Solidity. For hackathons, MVPs, and bridging the Ethereum ecosystem to Polkadot, Solidity significantly lowers the entry barrier.

Both stacks should coexist and leverage the same underlying resources. We're promising composability - and to deliver on that, Solidity contracts need access to essential Substrate pallets like assets, governance, and staking through precompiles. The current documentation only covers XCM precompiles, which isn't an onboarding topic. We need practical examples for common operations.

Addressing Community Feedback

Several community members suggested this proposal belongs on Polkadot rather than Kusama. I agree. While I initially submitted to Kusama because it's the current production environment for Solidity contracts, the work benefits the entire Polkadot ecosystem and aligns with Polkadot's strategic direction. Regarding retroactive funding: I understand the preference for pre-approval, but this work evolved organically through dialogue with Parity, MetaMask, PBA alumni, and ecosystem agents as I identified gaps during my own developer discovery and Latin Hack preparation.

Funding Request

I've worked part-time on this for 3 months (~20 hours/week). At my usual ecosystem rate of $66/hour, that's $15,840 USD worth of work.

I'm asking for $9,999 USD.

To be clear: I'm going to keep building either way. This proposal is symbolic - it's about getting a green signal from the ecosystem that this work matters and aligns with where the long-term vision is heading. The funding validates the direction more than it compensates the effort.

Next Steps & Future Work

Future development will follow structured grant milestones through Open Source Bounty (once reopened) or Web3 Foundation Grants. I'm developing production-ready templates for:

1. Gasless Transactions

Research: https://research.w3d.community/gassless-transactions

• ERC-2771 meta-transaction implementation adapted for PolkaVM
• Relay service architecture for sponsored transactions
• Templates for Web2-like UX (users don't need tokens for gas)

2. X402 Payment Protocol

Research: https://research.w3d.community/x402

• HTTP 402 payment flows for AI agents and APIs
• USDT wrapper with EIP-3009 support for PolkaVM
• Self-hosted facilitator architecture

3. Ecosystem Integration Templates

Building at least 2 templates per feature demonstrating integration with:

• ReactiveDOT - Reactive state management
• DOTConnect - Wallet connectivity
• polkadot-ui - Component libraries
• Dedot - Lightweight client library

Team Code Repos

• https://github.com/w3b3d3v/kitdot (Kitdot CLI main repository)
• https://github.com/w3b3d3v/web3auth-examples/tree/web3dev-version (Web3Auth Asset Hub integration)
• https://github.com/w3b3d3v/create-polkadot-dapp/tree/web3dev-version (Polkadot dApp templates)
• https://github.com/w3b3d3v/hackers-survival-guide/tree/main/docs (Polkadot's Hackers Survival Guide)
• https://github.com/nomadbitcoin (Personal contributions)