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Polkadot-API 2026 Development Funding through Polkadot Community Foundation
This proposal covers the funding for the continued development of Polkadot-API and the additional efforts by its team for 2026.
Over the past development cycles, we have introduced new features and enhancements to Polkadot-API, along with additional libraries that complement and expand its capabilities. We've also released a series of tech demos that are valuable in their own right, while also showcasing the potential of these libraries, like the Staking Optimizer. A detailed breakdown of our recent progress can be found in our updates thread on the Polkadot forum.
For this proposal, we have been in contact with the W3F and Parity to refine the scope and alignment of the proposal, and we have followed the guidelines published by the W3F for new OpenGov proposals.
We are seeking funding for ongoing development and maintenance through the Polkadot Community Foundation, for the months from January 2026 to December 2026. As outlined in their documentation, the beneficiary is their address in AssetHub.
You can review all the details of the proposal in the following Google Doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hdLGRK9FGcJk5o87TIfbOuQMOqyDb7-0fiiDDJ7BQkg/edit?usp=sharing or in the following IPFS link: https://bafybeiele5ush7iy3sywu4paqf3zm6ttkddcxqzvs5bbedm6oqohkufxjq.ipfs.w3s.link/PAPI%202026.pdf
Once the referendum is approved, the PCF and Polkadot-API team will go through the following process:
- Create and sign a contractual agreement.
- For each monthly milestone, as long as the OpenGov payments are not delayed or cancelled, the Polkadot-API team will issue an invoice to the PCF.
- The PCF will execute each payment to our address in AssetHub 13dXmfrN4Prb3FmdxKDNRyUeNDuNwUTZibYAMFNKmZJut2Lq.
We have allocated a buffer of 4,000€ for PCF legal and operational costs. After the process is complete, the PCF will refund the remaining amount back to the Polkadot Treasury.
Thank you for your support.
Polkadot-API Dev Team (@Josep, @carlosala, and @voliva)
Comments (12)
Papi is a very much needed tool from an excellent development team.
Time and time again I have seen the team go over and above to deliver quality code, everyone I have spoken to in the ecosystem and at Parity have nothing but good things to say about the Papi codebase and the team.
The team are also active promoting Polkadot and their tooling, speaking at events and going over and above what you would typically see from most treasury funded projects.
Given the Polkadot.js api is no longer being maintained, AND the majority of work that Parity is currently building uses Papi, we must continue to fund and nurture this team :) Easy aye vote
As an early pioneer of PAPI—from the pre-1.0 release to the present—I can firmly attest that I’ve never been more excited for the PAPI 2.0 launch and the suite of products it will enable. The PAPI team has remained steadfast in their support of the light client vision, empowering developers to use composable APIs to interact with light clients while providing seamless interoperability for those migrating away from legacy WS JSON-RPC APIs.
By continuing to fund and support PAPI, we drive the light client vision forward and expand the rich ecosystem of tooling available to developers. One project I am particularly impressed by is the "Polkadot JSON-RPC DevTools" Chrome extension, slated for release in the near future. This tool allows developers to inspect light-client compliant JSON-RPC subscriptions, calls, operations, and pinned blocks directly in the browser. It significantly simplifies the process of reasoning about and debugging challenging network scenarios in dApp development.
I have full confidence in the PAPI team’s ability to deliver on their milestones. And i believe it is paramount that we continue to fund these operations so we can remain the leading trailblazers in light client technologies.