#2547 Retroactive Funding for Polkadot Chain & Pallet Discovery
Dear Kusama community,
I am thrilled to introduce you to "Polkadot Discovery Portal" a comprehensive directory for Polkadot & Kusama ecosystem & all its actors.
"Polkadot Discovery Portal" was born out of one developerโs struggle with finding artifacts, binaries, docker images, and specs for the chains he wanted to test. Through the discussion with fellow community members, the idea grew and evolved into the project you see in front of you, intended as a comprehensive ecosystem discovery: to connect all the ecosystem actors, from big to small. The Polkadot & Kusama ecosystem is not only about parachains and relay chains; itโs also about pallets, wallets, apps and Dapps, browser extensions, utility libraries, websites, etc. In one word this ecosystem is about community. Without good project discoverability, the community cannot find the information it needs.
Our aim is to make project discoverability seamless and simple. This way, everyone can access the information they need to contribute to the ecosystem's growth.
I open this discussion to propose a retroactive payment by Kusama Treasury to cover 60% of the "Polkadot Discovery Portal" development costs and gather feedback on this PoC so we can improve it further and prioritize the functionality that the community wants to see.
Please see the full proposal here https://kelp.notion.site/Retroactive-Funding-for-Polkadot-Chain-Pallet-Discovery-09c9c9adc77e4f22b7c7b36494f991c5 and, of course, check out the website https://polkadot-discovery.macula.link
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Generally, I'm in favor of this idea and proposal as an experiment. I'm concerned that this project may fall victim to the fate of other projects with low or no adoption. What are your plans for adoption, how do you see your website being adopted by the community, and more importantly, what are you going to do to make that happen? Thanks
Thank you for the feedback. That's a fair point, getting initial traction is usually challenging. That's why we plan to have a coordinated effort onboarding the early projects until we reach a "minimal critical mass". Then, once Dotsama Info has enough data, is in every team's interest to be included so their information can be easily discoverable and their data can "flow" further:
- What really sets Dotsama Info apart is that all the data can be extracted and used by other teams and projects sourcing the info around the ecosystem.
Then when it comes to updating the data, the teams can either do it themselves or crowdsource it to their community with incentives. Once we have the tipping functionality by Anagolay rolled out, it all be as simple as shown here chart 2
What really sets Dotsama Info apart is that all the data can be extracted and used by other teams and projects sourcing the info around the ecosystem.
Have you reached out to any other teams yet? Have any shown interest in integrating the data that exists now?
One of the things that I've noticed since becoming more active in the ecosystem is that teams tend to stay within their little corner and tend not to reach out and talk to other projects. Have you considered giving someone an ambassador type role to push this adoption by interfacing with the community and other projects?
Yes, in fact, most of the data you see atm is imported from polkadot_network_directory. Yet please check out the difference between
- the info that was available from p_n_d, for example here: https://dotsama.info/acala/
- and the full data that Dotsama Info makes available https://dotsama.info/idiyanale/
As for the other directories in the ecosystem Parachains.info and Dotinsights by Subwallet, while doing a great job in their respective domain, they are handling submissions manually and the data is not exactly portable. Besides, they are still missing the substantial amount of data that needs to be included.
Thanks for bringing up the collaboration vs. doing things "in your own little corner". It is the very thing we are advocating for. Dotsama Info is just a starting point to collect useful data about all things built across the ecosystem that is hard to discover (like chains specs, pallets, smaller projects, etc.). All data is intended to be used further by other projects: JSON endpoints make it super easy for developers.
We are already in talks with a few projects, and anyone who wants to join in (as an ambassador, or otherwise) is more than welcome: https://dotsama.info/get-in-touch/๐
Following the feedback we got from the Parity team and fellow community members, we made a decision to name the project "Polkadot Discovery Portal" instead of the initially proposed "Dotsama.info" as it goes in alignment with clear branding of the Plolkadot and ecosystem. We changed the title of this proposal accordingly and made the respective changes to the Portal itself.
Currently, "Polkadot Discovery Portal" is hosted on our IPFS-based hosting platform https://polkadot-discovery.macula.link/. Once we reach a consensus about the new domain, we'll move to the new address.
We are grateful for your comments and support and welcome any further questions you may have.
The only issue I see with the current setup of Polkadot Discovery is the contribution process.
There are lots of ambassadors out there who might be interested in submitting infos/updates for their projects, but don't necessarily have a GitHub account or know how to handle PRs.
Alternative methods are needed for ordinary community members to join in an populate Polkadot Discovery. This could be in the form of GitBook entries (which would be linked to the GH repo of Polkadot Discovery), JSON file submissions, AirTable forms, or even a spreadsheet.
The above adjustments will require more clerical work from your end, but, at least, you will be giving community members equal opportunities to partake in your initiative, rather than limiting your outreach to devs/tech-savvy folks.
Hi Anaelle, thank you for your comment.
If this initiative gets initial support, as a next step, we do indeed consider implementing a minimalistic UI to allow for alternative forms of submissions, as well as integrations with other platforms & channels (but that's for later ๐)
For now, in the POC (already built) the focus is on chain and pallet discovery, so it is tailored to the needs of the actors (the teams and contributors) who are comfortable with GitHub. Besides, as we explain in Data updates & verification section we use GitHub account to verify the accuracy of the data and enable incentives for the contributors in retrospective.
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