Proposer: Subscan
Beneficiary: 14RYaXRSqb9rPqMaAVp1UZW2czQ6dMNGMbvukwfifi6m8ZgZ
Requested Funding: $249,250 USD
Category: Infrastructure
Past proposals:
Subscan (Commercial) is a comprehensive and widely-used explorer and indexer within the Polkadot ecosystem. It provides developers, validators, parachain teams, and general users with critical data insights—enabling efficient aiding in debugging and decision-making.
Subscan Essentials is an open-source blockchain explorer framework designed for lightweight, modular, and efficient blockchain data indexing and visualization. Originally launched in 2020 with funding from the Web3 Foundation (W3F), the Subscan team has continuously maintained and improved it as a voluntary contribution to the ecosystem, without requesting additional funding for its upkeep until 2025.
Over the years, Subscan Essentials has become a widely adopted foundation for multiple blockchain explorers, providing essential infrastructure for Substrate-based ecosystems. As blockchain technology evolves, maintaining and enhancing this framework requires continuous effort to ensure stability, security, and adaptability to new developments.
Recognizing the rapid evolution of blockchain technology, Subscan proposes to enhance both the open-source Subscan Essentials and its commercial platform by integrating PolkaVM (PVM) data indexing, parsing, smart contract interactions, and UI visualization. This initiative aims to deliver:
By unifying Substrate-based data and PVM smart contract insights within a single explorer, this initiative will accelerate PVM adoption and provide the Polkadot community with a robust, user-friendly, and one-stop dashboard for on-chain exploration.
Additionally, we are committed to supporting EVM compatibility and widely adopted industry standards, including EIPs, ensuring smooth migration and seamless tooling integration (such as Metamask, etc.) for developers deploying applications within the ecosystem.
This new module will focus on:
Open-Source Enhancements for Subscan Essentials
Code Refactoring & Testing: Reviewing and refactoring historical code while upgrading third-party libraries and dependencies.
PVM Plugin Development: Developing a dedicated PVM plugin under the GPL-3.0 license to support comprehensive indexing of PVM (Revive) transactions, events, accounts, tokens, and contracts.
React UI Components: Implementing core React UI components under the GPL-3.0 license to provide an intuitive visualization of PVM transactions, events, accounts, tokens, and contract interactions.
PVM Smart Contract Verification: Extending the EVM smart contract verification solution to support PVM contract verification and new features, delivering an open-source verification tool under the MIT license.
These enhancements ensure better maintainability, improved user experience, and expanded support for PVM-based ecosystems.
Subscan Commercial Version Integration
Built on Subscan Essentials, the commercial version will introduce an enhanced and refined UI/UX to deliver an intuitive and visually appealing interface for displaying PVM transactions, events, accounts, tokens, and contracts.
Free API (rate limit: 5 reqs/second limit, daily request limit 100,000 reqs/d) access to core PVM data, allowing developers and users to efficiently retrieve information on transactions, events, accounts, tokens, and contracts.
Developer-friendly UI enhancements, including the integration of a smart contract verification solution, leveraging existing Subscan open-source contract verification solution to enhance transparency and trust.
ComGPL-3.0ment to community education and adoption, encompassing comprehensive tutorials, detailed user guides, and an iterative feedback loop to drive continuous product enhancement and ensure alignment with user needs.
Subscan commits no additional cost for any of the 90+ networks we already support if they decide to enable PVM functionality. By providing a single platform that unifies Substrate and PVM data, we aim to accelerate PolkaVM adoption and empower users to explore, verify, and analyze smart contracts with ease.
Growing Demand for PVM Exploration
While PolkaVM is relatively new, several networks—such as Polkadot AssetHub, Kusama AssetHub, Westend AssetHub, Paseo AssetHub, and Pop Network—have signaled plans to adopt or experiment with PVM smart contracts. However, there is currently no robust, user-friendly explorer dedicated to indexing and showcasing PVM transactions, tokens, and NFTs. Subscan’s established infrastructure can fill this gap quickly and efficiently.
Unified Data Access for Developers and Users
Developers need a convenient way to monitor both Substrate extrinsics and PVM smart contracts without juggling multiple explorers. Meanwhile, end users benefit from a singular account view that shows balances, transactions, and holdings across all Polkadot-based assets. This proposal addresses these needs by integrating PVM data into Subscan’s well-known interface.
Lower Barriers to Contract Verification and User Education
Accurate contract information (e.g., verified source code, function signatures) significantly reduces risk for users interacting with on-chain assets. By integrating an open-source contract verification solution into Subscan’s commercial platform, we will help ensure transparency and security while also providing user-friendly UI for verifying contracts. Additionally, we will deliver community education resources—such as how-to guides, workshops, and ongoing user support—encouraging broader PVM adoption.
Subscan will develop and open-source a dedicated PolkaVM (PVM) plugin under the GPL-3.0 license, enabling comprehensive support for the PVM ecosystem within Subscan Essentials. This plugin will introduce advanced indexing capabilities, including:
Additionally, Subscan Essentials will provide core UI components to enable visual representation of PVM transactions, events, accounts, tokens, and contracts, ensuring that both developers and end users can seamlessly explore and interact with PVM data.
Building on the open-source foundation, the commercial version of Subscan will further enhance and expand PVM ecosystem support, delivering a superior UI/UX experience, enhanced analytics, and developer-oriented features. Key improvements include:
/api/pvm/transactions – Retrieve PVM transaction history and execution details.
/api/pvm/events – Query PVM event logs, with filtering options based on contract address and event type.
/api/pvm/accounts – Fetch PVM account details, including asset holdings and transaction history.
/api/pvm/tokens/{contract_address} – Retrieve metadata and details about specific PVM token contracts.
/api/pvm/tokens/{contract_address}/holders – Retrieve a list of token holders for a given contract.
/api/pvm/contracts/{contract_address} – Fetch detailed smart contract information, including verification status and interaction history.
These APIs will offer free access to essential PVM data, ensuring that developers and users can leverage Subscan’s infrastructure to accelerate PVM ecosystem adoption within the Polkadot network.
Smart Contract Code Verification: Allows developers to subGPL-3.0 contract source code, verifying its authenticity against the on-chain deployed contract.
Function Call Analysis: Decodes contract interactions, enabling users to clearly understand function calls and associated parameters.
Event Log Parsing: Automatically extracts contract-triggered events, providing a structured and user-friendly view of execution details.
This feature will enhance the PVM development experience while also building user trust in smart contract interactions, reducing fraud risks, and improving ecosystem security.
Through these efforts, Subscan aims to establish a more open, transparent, and developer-friendly PVM explorer and data service platform, contributing to the long-term growth of the Polkadot ecosystem.
We plan an 18-week (estimated) development timeline, divided into two major phases. The actual calendar dates may shift based on PolkaVM’s final release schedule. Each phase includes a user feedback cycle to ensure we build features that genuinely serve the community.
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We calculate costs using these hourly rates:
This budget reflects the best estimate of core development hours, subject to final PolkaVM specification and community feedback loops. Our final figure is around $249,250, which covers open-source development, commercial enhancements, community outreach, and contract verification integration.
Subscan’s PVM integration is structured into two key phases: Open-Source and Commercial. While we have allocated specific development hours for each role, the actual release timeline remains dependent on PolkaVM’s official schedule. As PolkaVM is still in development, any changes to its release timeline or specifications will directly impact Subscan’s roadmap.
Although our estimated effort is well-defined, the start date and final deployment will be synchronized with PolkaVM’s official progress, ensuring seamless integration and compatibility with the finalized PVM framework.
| Role | Persons & Hours | Hourly Rate | Subtotal (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product Manager / Tester | 2 person × 200 hrs | $70 | US$28,000 |
| Designer | 1 person × 300 hrs | $70 | US$21,000 |
| DevOps Engineer | 1 person × 240 hrs | $75 | US$18,000 |
| Front-End Engineers | 2 persons × 160 hrs | $75 | US$24,000 |
| Back-End Engineers | 3 persons × 370 hrs | $75 | US$83,250 |
Subtotal (Phase 1): $174,250
In Phase 2, we add contract verification integration tasks and expanded user feedback cycles, adding some weeks for development, front-end UI, and testing.
| Role | Persons & Hours | Hourly Rate | Subtotal (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product Manager / Tester | 1 person × 20 hrs | $70 | $1,400 |
| Designer | 1 person × 10hrs | $70 | $700 |
| DevOps Engineer | 1 person × 12hrs | $75 | $900 |
| Front-End Engineers | 2 persons ×240 hrs | $75 | $36,000 |
| Back-End Engineers | 2 persons ×240 hrs | $75 | $36,000 |
Subtotal (Phase 2): $75,000
Total Estimated Cost: $174,250 + $75,000 = $249,250
Actual release date = PolkaVM release cycle + Subscan PVM module development
While the full development cycle (both Open-Source and Commercial phases) will officially commence once PolkaVM reaches a stable release milestone, we will leverage publicly available information to begin preliminary development in advance. This includes analyzing disclosed specifications, prototyping key components, and preparing our indexing framework to accelerate integration once PVM is ready.
By aligning each phase with PolkaVM’s feature rollout, we ensure that Subscan’s PVM module will be functional and available as soon as PVM is live within the Polkadot ecosystem.
The Subscan team will continuously track PolkaVM’s development and remain in communication with core contributors and ecosystem partners. This allows us to anticipate potential changes in PVM’s specifications or timing and adapt our module development promptly.
As PolkaVM specifications evolve, especially before mainnet deployment, we will keep our architecture flexible. By doing so, we can incorporate any last-minute adjustments to ensure Subscan’s PVM integration remains fully compatible with PolkaVM’s final design.
In other words, the overall timeline for Subscan’s PVM integration should be viewed as “PVM stable release + the allocated open-source and commercial development hours.”
Upon PolkaVM stabilizing, we anticipate delivering a fully integrated PVM explorer (data indexing, visualization, contract verification, and comprehensive API services) within the scope of our defined open-source and commercial phases—ensuring the Polkadot community can access and analyze PVM data as soon as it becomes officially available.
Single Explorer for Substrate & PVM
Users and developers gain unified visibility into both Substrate-level data (extrinsics, staking info, governance) and PVM-level smart contracts, tokens, and NFTs—all in one dashboard.
Immediate Community Benefit
By releasing an open-source PVM plugin for Subscan Essentials, we empower new parachains or specialized chains to incorporate the code directly. This reduces development overhead for individual teams.
Integrated Contract Verification
The commercial version will include a user-friendly UI that leverages an open-source verification framework. This helps projects provide transparency to token holders and fosters trust across the Polkadot ecosystem.
Ongoing Community Education & Feedback
Subscan comGPL-3.0s to community workshops, documentation, and user surveys, ensuring the product continuously evolves to meet real-world needs.
Reduced Risk & Faster Time-to-Market
We already maintain robust indexing infrastructure for 90+ networks, so adding PVM data is comparatively efficient. This lowers technical and financial risks for the Polkadot community.
We invite the Polkadot community—parachain teams, developers, validators, and token holders—to review and refine this proposal. Constructive feedback will help us finalize our feature scope and cost optimizations.
Once the Phase 1 MVP is complete, we will open an early testnet environment. Community members can test PVM transactions, explore verified contracts, and share suggestions for improvements or new features.
Subscan will provide guides, video tutorials, and possibly online seminars on how to use PVM, how to verify contracts, and how to interpret the newly available data.
Upon successful testing, the PVM plugin will be rolled out to any Subscan-supported network that enables PVM. Maintenance, updates, and user support are part of Subscan’s ongoing service comGPL-3.0ment.
We are requesting to make this payment using USDT, totaling $249,250 USDT.
Subscan is well-equipped to deliver a comprehensive PVM explorer—from open-source foundations to advanced commercial features that include contract verification and community-focused UI enhancements. By approving this funding, Polkadot stakeholders will:
We appreciate the community’s time and consideration. Together, we can ensure Polkadot’s continued leadership in scalable, interoperable blockchain technologies—strengthening both Substrate and PolkaVM ecosystems under one powerful explorer.
We appreciate your support and valuable feedback. Your insights will help shape a robust and seamless PVM integration within Subscan, ensuring a powerful and accessible explorer for the Polkadot ecosystem. We look forward to collaborating with the community to drive innovation and adoption.
Threshold
Dear Proposer,
Thank you for your proposal. Our first vote on this proposal is AYE.
The Medium Spender track requires 50% quorum and simple majority of non-abstain voters according to our voting policy. This proposal has received seven aye and zero nay votes from ten members. Below is a summary of our members' comments:
The voters overwhelmingly supported the deployment, highlighting its significance for the platform's launch and the benefits it would bring to the ecosystem. Many expressed confidence in the experienced team behind the proposal and emphasized the importance of its open-source nature. Some voters admitted limited knowledge about the specifics but chose to trust the broader community's judgment. Overall, the sentiment reflected strong support for the initiative, with an emphasis on collaboration and innovation within the Polkadot ecosystem.
The full discussion can be found in our internal voting.
Kind regards,
Permanence DAO
Edited
Can you describe what is going to be the cost of the support for this moving forward and the specific time frame we hope this will be supported for? We would like to know about future costs in advance given that many projects have created expensive abandonware and more importantly, for how long this will be supported.
We have provisionally voted AYE awaiting for the answer to this very important quesiton.