#2530 Treasury Proposal - Substrate in Bits
Dear community,
With the aim of supporting ecosystem developers, I'm presenting this treasury proposal for "Substrate in Bits", a series of in-depth technical content focused on addressing the pain points of developers building with Substrate. The goal is to provide valuable and comprehensive resources that can help developers understand their code better as well as serve as a trusted reference for developers seeking to gain an in-depth understanding of how their codes work.
Each article in the series will be written with the goal of providing detailed information and practical examples with the ultimate goal of serving as a trusted reference for the common problems logged on Substrate media platforms like the StackExchange, Polkadot Discord server, Substrate Matrix channel, etc. By breaking down complex Substrate concepts into “bits” that are easy to understand and implement, we aim to make it easy for developers to gain a deeper understanding of their code and be able to make proper changes when things go wrong.
Substrate in Bits
Problem:
- The depth and specificity of community-created content needs to be improved.
- The developer community needs more reference resources that target specific pain points of developers.
- The ecosystem needs more community-curated technical content that can easily evolve over time by eventually leveraging the expertise and contributions of a diverse community of engineers.
Jump to the Problem section of the proposal
Available solutions
There are some existing solutions for substrate-related resources (Including the Substrate documentation and Blockchain training Alliance course) and some are in the works (eg, Polkadot.study). But a key different between "Substrate in Bits" and these solutions is that the technical content in “Substrate in Bits” are not designed to be specific courses. Instead, they’re designed to address specific issues often faced by developers.
A key component of addressing these issues and creating technical content, is consulting with experts and getting their opinion (this is a core component of our research process).
Jump to available solutions section of the proposal
Proposed solution
This proposal aims to tackle the existing problems by:
- Creating technical content using a problem-based approach. The goal of these “Substrate in Bits” is to address common issues faced by substrate developers and go in-depth on why these problems arise and how to solve/avoid them.
- Making technical content as collaborative as possible, allowing engineers from the community to make contributions and make Substrate in Bits an up-to-date and trusted reference for substrate developers. In order to achieve this, all our technical content will be housed on GitHub. This will make it easy for interested contributors to contribute to improving these pieces of content in the future.
By compiling these information in one easily accessible location, developers can more quickly and effectively troubleshoot their code and gain a deeper understanding of Substrate's technical components.
This will not only save developers time and effort but making the content open-source on Github contribute to the growth and success of the Substrate ecosystem by encouraging greater participation and collaboration.
Jump to the Proposed solution section of the Proposal document
Scope of work and Deliverables
The key deliverable for this proposal is 40 pieces of "Substrate in Bits" content. Priorities will ultimately be given to issues that are logged more often on substrate channels and the stackexchange and have less available solutions. These pieces of content will be housed on Github
Other efforts that are not part of the key deliverable include:
- Monthly analytics of our content and the living survey to gauge impact
- Efforts at bringing "Substrate in Bits" into the limelight of developers
- Running a "Substrate in Bits" channels where developers can brainstorm on "Substrate in Bits" content
Jump to the Key deliverables section of the proposal
Key success criteria
- Developer reach:
- Target: 100
- Percentage of developers that participated at least once in our living survey
- Target: 30% - 50%
- Developers’ perception of our content
- Target: >70% of readers should find our content to be helpful and satisfactory
Jump to the success criteria section of the proposal document
You can find the full information in the proposal document
Looking forward to your feedback. Thank you!
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Cool idea, but have question about your track record in Substrate world, do you have some track record? Even one PR merged on production environment?
I ask about it because understanding "pain points" in Substrate ecosystem is not obvious task(without even solving it). I think that gathering all those "pain points" is crucial in the proposal and this subject deserves on solid execution plan.
Hi Tomasz, Thank you for the question.
I've worked on personal substrate projects which you can find on my Github, but I haven't launched any project in production yet. I'll also not be able to claim that we'll be able to provide solutions to all problems without help from other engineers.
From my experience as a technical writer, a key determinant of the quality of technical content is the ability of the writers to source for the solutions (either internally or externally) and present them in an easy-to-digest manner. That is why seeking suggestions from experienced engineers is a component of our research process.
Gathering pain points will require us to monitor discussion channels including the stackexchange. The aim is to look at the commonly logged issues in these channels and work on creating standard content for them.
Happy to clarify if you have more questions. Thanks!
Hey Abdulbee,
As always, the problems you are wanting to solve in the ecosystem would be very valuable to the ecosystem. I will support this as it progresses. For those who might not be familiar with Abdulbee, he has spent the last 2 years(that I am aware of) learning and coding substrate and has gained an impressive amount of knowledge in that time that they use to also help the community on both the regular user side and the technical side. I think the idea is great overall and Abdulbee is definitely the one to execute on this.
Thanks Grizz. Really appreciate the feedback!
This is a very good initiative, I have always been a fan of your insight and ability to break down complicated concepts to the level of the expected reader. Your targets look realistic. I believe for you to bring this up you have a good grasp of the level of complexity of this task. I look forward to seeing your cool output on this as usual.
Thanks for the feedback, gambo
Hey Abdulbee,
Thank you for updating the proposal.
Please note the [Audit report] is reflecting only the quality of information presented in the proposal and not the Quality of the project/idea itself. I will create another report when the proposal goes onchain. Please remember to use the latest price and update budget before going onchain.
The following proposal Audit is created as a part of Proposal#67. More information about the Treasury proposal template and the Audit process can be found on the link above. All templates are free for everyone to use. For any questions or feedback regarding the Audit templates use the discussion link from above.
Please note that views and opinions presented in the Audit report are my personal and they do not represent general community opinion. If you cant access files on Crust network, original report can be accessed here.
Thanks, coinstudio
Sounds great to me, some well-composed series of articles guiding you through the Substate world is definitely necessary. However, as it was already posted here, the only concern is that you might not have the in-depth technical knowledge to cover all the necessary information. Are you planning to involve other developers for a review? Do you have any particular names in your mind?
Hi pmensik,
I appreciate the feedback.
I agree with you that the level of depth we'll like to go in for "Substrate in Bits" requires some deep understanding of the framework (especially since the intention is to make "Substrate in Bits" a trusted reference). And at most, we have 1.5-2 years of experience working with rust/substrate. But as technical writers, we also understand that successful technical writing involves four components:
- Having enough background knowledge in an area to pick up new concepts in that area and present accurate content (which we currently have).
- sourcing for the right information (this could come from our knowledge/experience or that of more experienced engineers)
- presenting these pieces of information in an easy-to-digest manner
- Ensuring that the content are accurate and meet standards with the help of reviewers. This is the primary reason why Substrate-In-Bits is open-source. For now, we don't have any name in mind. But we plan to contact engineers from Parity to help review the content we push out. It'll also be nice if wider developer community keeps an eye on it too :)
This is our first step, and our ultimate goal is to encourage more engineers to contribute to "Substrate in Bits" in the future. Perhaps a good option may even be to include reviewers in future proposals :)
This is a great idea and in my opinion, is long overdue. Though I am not technically inclined, it could be easily grasped how critical it is. One suggestion I might have is to consider adding more team members, especially those that will take a load of publicity off your shoulders. That way, you can concentrate on the major deliverables while not having to be concerned with getting the words out there.
Hey @abujulaibib. Thanks for the suggestion. We've thought of this, and it's definitely something worth considering down the road.
Dear community.
As promised, the USD value of the funds were calculated as soon as we were funded and the excess was returned to the treasury.
You can find the details in the table below:
| Fund requested in USD | 17,220 |
|---|---|
| Funded in KSM | 515.35 |
| KSM Price at funds release | 33.478 |
| USD value at funds release | 17,252.8873 |
| USD Surplus (to be returned to the treasury) | 33 |
| KSM surplus (to be returned to the treasury) | 0.9823555768 |
| Remaining funds in KSM | 514.3676444 |
The surplus was returned to the treasury in extrinsic 17366532-2
Thank you!
Dear Polkadot and Kusama community,
We've published the report for the first milestone of Substrate in Bits, which ran from the 1st to the **31st of May, 2023. **
You can find the report here.
Thank you.
Dear Polkadot and Kusama community,
We've published the report for the second milestone of Substrate in Bits, which ran from the 1st to the **30th of June, 2023. **
You can find the report here.
Thank you.
Dear Polkadot and Kusama community,
We've published the report for the third milestone of Substrate in Bits, which ran from the 1st to the **31st of July, 2023. **
You can find the report here.
Thank you.
Dear Polkadot and Kusama community,
We've published the report for the fourth milestone of Substrate in Bits, which ran from the 1st to the **31st of August, 2023. **
You can find the report here.
Thank you.
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