Polkagate Treasury Proposal: 2nd Milestone
Polkagate extension is a user-friendly extension/wallet to interact with the Polkadot/Substrate based blockchains through a browser. The extension allows users to access their Polkadot/Kusama ecosystem account(s), which can also be used to interact with decentralized apps. It injects a @polkadot/api signer into a page, along with any associated accounts.
Polkagate is now available on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Microsoft Edge web stores for download.
Polkagate extension’s main supported functionalities, developed in milestone 1, are as follows:
- Add address only accounts (To be used as a watch only and proxied address)
- Contribute to Crowdloans (View contributions/auctions, and contribute to crowdloans)
- Export/Import/Derive account(s)
- Ledger support
- Parachain accounts
- Phishing website detection
- Pool staking (Fully supported, including pool management and owners exit facilities)
- Proxy management (Add/Remove proxy accounts, sign with proxy accounts)
- QR account import
- Solo staking (Fully supported, including fast unstake, reward history, and advanced settings)
- Support different remote nodes
- Switch to recent chains
- Transfer funds
- View balances (Crypto/USD)
- View transactions history
- View an address as a QR code
Polkagate team aims to provide additional new features, and the budget is requested for the development of the 2nd milestone:
After the delivery of milestone 1 of the PolkaGate extension with the above mentioned features, We are going to develop the milestone 2 of the proposal to add the following features to the PolkaGate extension:
1. Identity management: Identities exist on-chain but cannot be managed via the extension, we already have shown the identity for accounts, but we want to bring the full management of identities into the extension. Accounts’ names in the extension may differ from their on-chain identities, and this may be inconvenient to distinguish which identity belongs to which name/Id. This problem will be more for users with multiple accounts. Moreover, in social account recovery, when you lose your account, most probably you cannot remember the address, hence on-chain names come in handy! By integrating the identity management into the extension, users not only can easily set their identities but also request judgements using the extension. In addition, using the on-chain identity instead of the local name of accounts, makes the accounts management more convenient. Identities also help social recovery be more user-friendly for users.
2. OpenGov: We would like to have OpenGov features in the extension so that most token holders of the community can easily participate in new governance activities. OpenGov is new with more changes in the pipeline (v2.5). Community involvement is still low in openGov activities. Sometimes proposals are very technical, and sometimes users may not be available in the voting period to vote. Making voting more accessible and providing vote/list delegation besides all governance facilities in Polkagate extension, will increase the tokens participated in different OpenGov voting activities.
3. Light client integration: We would like to provide the Polkadot light client as an end point in the extension, which will make the extension much more standalone, and help the ecosystem to be more decentralized. If blockchain endpoints stop servicing for whatever reason, since no data can be fetched from them, hence all extensions and wallets would be useless. Integrating the light client inside the extension not only helps to distribute the Polkadot ecosystem more but also lets the extension operate while all existing endpoints stop servicing. However, we need to consider the sync waiting time when using the light client.
4. Social Recovery: Managing your own private keys is a difficult task. The average person doesn’t want to spend multiple hours to ensure the security of their keys. This leads to people having difficulties to join the blockchain space or even worse leads to the loss of funds. Social account recovery is the solution. It allows users to recover their accounts if their key or other authentication mechanism has been lost. When an account is recoverable, if you lost the account, you can create a new account named Rescuer, and recover your lost account with the help of your lost account’s on-chain friends in a recovery process.
5. Misc. updates: Due to adding new features in milestone 2, some new functionalities need to be added to the currently existing features, and pages need to be upgraded. With vote locking in openGov, the extension’s account page needs to be upgraded to show locks information and let account holders to clear the locks, and also show suitable alerts when locks expire. With vote delegation, we are going to let users have the option to choose un-delegation while unstaking, to have the unlocking period overlapped not stacked. To support XCM, we want to add multi chain transfering to the transfer fund page to let users teleport their tokens.
Please find the full proposal here.
Feel free to comment and ask questions.
Comments (2)
I have read your proposal for the 2nd milestone of Polkagate treasury, and I must say, it seems like you have put a lot of effort into developing a user-friendly extension to interact with the Polkadot/Substrate-based blockchains. However, as a Polkadot/Kusama maximalist, I have some concerns that I would like to share with you. Firstly, let's talk about the proposed features. The identity management feature seems like a great addition to the extension, as it will make it easier for users to manage their on-chain identities and distinguish between multiple accounts. Additionally, the OpenGov feature would allow more token holders to participate in governance activities, which is always a good thing. The light client integration is also a nice touch, as it will make the extension more standalone and decentralized. However, I am a bit skeptical about the social recovery feature. While I understand that managing private keys can be a daunting task, relying on other users to recover lost accounts seems like a potential security risk. It's important to remember that the Polkadot ecosystem is based on trustlessness, and adding a social recovery mechanism may compromise the security of the network. Now, let's talk about the budget requested for the development of the 2nd milestone. While I appreciate your effort and hard work, I think the proposed budget is a bit too high. I believe that the development of these features can be done more efficiently and at a lower cost. As a conservative person who values the common good, I am concerned about grifting the treasury and wasting community funds. In conclusion, I think that the proposed features for the 2nd milestone of the Polkagate extension are good, but we need to be cautious about potential security risks and the budget requested for the development. As a Polkadot/Kusama maximalist, I want to see the ecosystem thrive, and I believe that we need to be responsible with the community funds and ensure the security of the network.
Dear @ecila
First of all, Thank you very much for reading the proposal, and spending the valuable time to write this feedback.
About the budget, It is not more than the other treasury supported extensions/wallets, and we hope to have the support of the community to be able to continue our journey towards even milestones 3 and 4, with a lot of cool features.
About the social recovery importance and why we really need it, you may want to read these articles: an article from the parity blog + an article from Vitalik
As you may be aware, the social recovery pallet is already integrated in the Kusama code, and is available to use via polkadot js, but you need to be a developer to use it, because almost all of the related extrinsics are available via the developer mode.
Therefore we intend to make its usage as simple as possible for average users.
Regarding the security concern, I just want to emphasize that, there is a mechanism in Social Recovery where you can punish malicious actors if they try to recover your account provided you set a long enough delay period (like one month or so) for your recoverable account. In fact, you can close recovery process and withdraw the malicious rescurer's deposited tokens :)
This is my element handle and I would be so happy if I can help more about the social recovery process which is really complex but secure in action.
Sincerely yours,
Kami | Polkagate.xyz