Polkadot’s April Ecosystem Insights

Welcome to Polkadot’s new monthly ecosystem insights blog, your go-to source for all the latest tech updates, feedback and discussions happening across the Polkadot Ecosystem. In this blog we’ll explore a variety of topics and gather insights from sources ranging from GitHub to the Forums.

Authors: Remy Le Berre and Joshua Cheong

Ecosystem Activity

OpenGov

OpenGov sits at the heart of decision-making within the Polkadot Ecosystem. A place where anyone can freely discuss, propose, vote and voice their opinions on the ever evolving Polkadot Ecosystem.

We’ve highlighted some of the most interesting metrics for everyone to see,

• In April we had a total of 2,136 ‘Unique’ voters, the individual number of unique voters who voted at least once throughout the month! 
• Looking at Referenda, we had a total of 99 referendums this month, with 66 approved, 21 rejected & 8 that were timed out.

GitHub Activity

This past month, the Polkadot ecosystem has demonstrated remarkable vibrancy and robust participation, reflecting the dynamic nature of its development community. Here's a brief overview of the key GitHub activity metrics:

• Total Repositories: The ecosystem now hosts over 26,000 repositories, showcasing a wide array of projects from core infrastructure to innovative parachains.
• Weekly Commits: There have been a steady stream of contributions, with more than 4,600 commits in the last month alone. This is a testament to the active development and ongoing enhancements across the Polkadot network.
• Weekly Developers: Approximately 1,400 developers have been actively contributing, highlighting the collaborative effort and the growing interest in Polkadot’s scalable, interoperable technology.

Polkadot Forum

The Polkadot Forum is the home of discussion within the ecosystem. Whether you’re looking to discuss topics ranging from Tech to BD, the forum is the place to be. This April the forum has yet again shown incredible growth; we’ve highlighted some of the metrics below.

• We saw 203 new faces join the forum this month, 105 new topics and 565 new posts created!

For an overview, we’ve included some further metrics for the month below,

Reigning Champs

With so many new topics, there are going to be some favorites in the ecosystem. Below we’ve listed the topics that are seeing the most engagement.

1. In at first place we’ve got “A semi-coherent ecosystem development strategy for Polkadot”↗ by alice_und_bob
2. Coming in a close second, we’ve got “Decoded 2024 Sponsorship for active community members”↗ by dbpatty
3. Finally, the third most popular topic was “ParityTech update for April 2024”↗ by pierreaubert

Stack Exchange

Stack Exchange engagement for Polkadot is going strong, with more than 250 questions posted in the last month alone. Among these 250 questions, at least 90% of them were answered. This activity underscores the ecosystem’s strong support and expertise-sharing commitment.

Developer & User Wishlists

An initiative to help highlight the needs of the ecosystem by curating a ‘Wishlist’ for both developers & users within the Ecosystem has been launched.

Anyone can open an issue on GitHub and have their voice heard. Check out the links below to view the issues raised by the community, or even raise an issue yourself.

User Wishlist - https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3901↗ 

Developer Wishlist - https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-sdk/issues/3900↗ 

Ecosystem Topics

OpenZeppelin Parachain Templates;

• Following the approval of the second treasury proposal in February 2024↗, the OpenZeppelin team has completed the first development deliverable by releasing the first audited Generic Parachain Runtime. The runtime has been fully audited by SR Labs↗ and will be published next month. Additionally, an updated version of the documentation for the Generic Runtime can be found here↗.

The launch of the UI /UX Collective

• A recent initiative has launched where the focus is to bring together the community on helping tackle the UI/UX issues that the ecosystem faces.
• The group aims to solve issues and present ideas ranging from a unified address format & gas fee tokens to introducing a cross-chain component for swaps across parachains.
• If you’d like to get involved with the UI/UX collective, then check out their forum post here↗ which has links to the TG:

Polkadot Alpha Program

Get started with Polkadot's Alpha Program for groundbreaking development opportunities.

• 441 teams migrated and joined since the launch of the Polkadot Alpha Program↗ in March. (Many of these teams had previously been on the Substrate Builders Program and the Square One initiative).
• One-click direct admission into the Polkadot Alpha Program building resources↗ - zero dependency process into getting started on building.
• Launch of the open office hour sessions with plan to use @PolkadotDevs↗ twitter space for bi-weekly sessions for developer engagement.
• Teams can actively participate by providing feedback with the introduction of Canny.io Product Improvement Requests↗ to gather user feedback and product issues and topics for improvement.

Polkadot Technical Summit - Brussels

• The Parity team have started discussions about hosting another Polkadot Technical Summit that aims to be timed so it’s just prior to Decoded. We aim to host the Summit on the 10th July.
• Discussion will be opened up to the Community. Project teams are encouraged to get involved with the discussions surrounding the agenda for this year's Summit.
• More information about how to get involved is coming soon - For more details, feel free to reach out to Remy@parity.io

Snowbridge Updates

• Snowbridge launch is Imminent
• Using our analysis↗ to inform token registration discussions
• Requested an upgrade of the demo frontend UI↗ for launch on behalf of Mythical / Blockdeep Labs: currently underway
• Integrations ongoing e.g. Mythical, Centrifuge, Moonbeam, Velocity frontend, wallets, subscan

Agile Coretime

• Agile Coretime is now live on Kusama! With Ref 373 passing, this allowed the community to upgrade Kusama to v1.2.0, commencing the start of Coretime trading.
• Market places such as Lastic & RegionX labs are also now live! Check them out here:
  • https://www.lastic.xyz/↗ 
  • https://www.regionx.tech/↗

Async Backing

• Six second blocktime’s have become a reality, async backing is now live on Polkadot. Throughput is getting a welcomed 8x boost, all without having to sacrifice security.
• For more information & to read the ‘Technical Lowdown’, check out the blog here: https://www.parity.io/blog/async-backing-technical-lowdown↗