Hello, I am Rosťa and I am bringing You a revised proposal for SAGE.
I will address a few comments that we have received and I will try to explain why I think SAGE is valuable for Polkadot Ecosystem.
I do not want to repeat myself, so at the bottom, you can find the original proposal.
Junior Developers and Junior Game developers.
The .net development ecosystem in Polkadot has been growing and it is now used by many projects secured by Polkadot that depend on it.
Projects like Xcavate, Ajuna, PlutoFramework... (Those are only open-sourced projects that I know of. There are certainly many more closed-sourced ones too)
By supporting this proposal, you will help all of these projects by improving the tooling they use. Teams will spend less time figuring out low-level shits and they will have more time to focus on the final product. This has been proven multiple times at hackathons over the past 2 years.
Cedric (The main developer behind SAGE) and his company Ajuna have proven themselves with the development of incredible open-sourced tooling for .net ecosystem and also with the development of most technically advanced fully on-chain games.
Unlike many other teams, Cedric and Ajuna have followed the web3 core principles and made all of their work open-sourced. This was also beneficial for them, because many developers that used these tools have also contributed back!
The help from Cedric and everyone maintaining always immediate. Take a look at the github issues other dev's made and notice that the responses came just a few hours after the issue was made. Many times Cedric stepped up and coded his own solution of the problem, like in this issue and this issue.
One of the most important things for toolings is not only to have them, but also having them maintained. Polkadot is well known for it's forkless upgrades, however frequent updates also require frequent maintenance of tools. Cedric and Ajuna also have not disappointed and delivered all of the updates needed on time.
Elegance of the .net tooling developed by Cedric and Ajuna could be seen on Hackathons. Over the past 2 years, there has always been at least 1 project which used Substrate.Net.Api and won the main prize. Here is a list of the hackathons and prizes won:
Polkadot Global Series 2023 (Europe) by AngelHack - Second place
Polkadot Global Series 2023 (APEC) by AngelHack - Second place
Polkadot Winter Hackathon 2023 by OneBlock - First place
Polkadot Global Series 2024 (North America) by AngelHack - Third place
Polkadot Summer Hackathon 2024 (Singapore) by OneBlock - First place
This would not have been possible if the tooling would not been so effective and simple to use. In fact, it is very powerful.
Developers are clever and very mindful of their time. If they want to build a c# application that is secured by Polkadot, they will use google/chatgpt and search what are the existing options for developing a c#/unity application/game with Polkadot. They will easily find Polkadot Unity SDK, Substrate.Net.Api, Substrate.Net.Toolchain... on the first page of google search. All of them are well documented, with a lot of working examples. Developers will find what they need just because it is very useful to them.
Personally, if the tooling would not have been there, I would probably give up and move on to a different ecosystem/different projects.
Also, you can not market something you do not have. It is hard to say that development on Polkadot is easy when in reality it is not. SAGE tries to address this by developing a full-featured solution for game developers that are not really familiar with the inner workings of blockchains.
I will not try to persuade anyone into thinking that the value is large. It probably is not. However, it is proportional with the amount requested.
Cedric is asking for ~0.0014% (as of time of writing) of the treasury funds and I think the impact for the ecosystem is already reaching >1% (Projects that rely on using Substrate.Net.Api for their parachain secured on Polkadot) and the potential for growth is even larger.
SAGE brings:
- Substrate pallets
- JavaScript SDK
apart from just Unity SDK integration.
SAGE, or Substrate Asset Game Engine, is a proposal by Rosťa aimed at benefiting the Polkadot ecosystem, particularly for junior developers and game developers. The main goal is to improve tooling for .net development in Polkadot, which is used by many projects like Xcavate, Ajuna, and PlutoFramework. Supporting SAGE will help these projects by allowing teams to focus more on their final products and less on low-level details.
Cedric, the main developer behind SAGE and his company Ajuna, have a proven track record of developing open-source tooling for the .net ecosystem and creating advanced on-chain games. Their work is well-maintained and has been beneficial for the community, as seen in the quick responses to GitHub issues and contributions from other developers.
SAGE has already shown its effectiveness in hackathons, with projects using Substrate.Net.Api winning major prizes. The .net tooling developed by Cedric and Ajuna is powerful and easy to use, which is crucial for the success of projects relying on it.
Marketing for SAGE is not necessary, as developers will naturally find and use the tooling if it is useful for their C# applications secured by Polkadot. SAGE aims to provide a full-featured solution for game developers who may not be familiar with blockchain technology.
The value brought by SAGE is proportional to the amount requested, with Cedric asking for a small percentage of the treasury funds. The impact on the ecosystem is already significant, and the potential for growth is even larger. SAGE offers more than just Unity SDK integration, including Substrate pallets and a JavaScript SDK.
Threshold
The main idea of the Games bounty which was later overridden by the Dot Play bounty was to have an all encompassing framework for Polkadot to work with and within the gaming industry and to develop titles, tools, etc. with it. Fragmenting the gaming effort into small pieces without much certainty of what happens next is possibly the main reason why these gaming referenda have been declined for the time being.
In short, there is not much certainty of a continuation or a path moving forward.
We would like to see a better and more structured way for all gaming efforts within Polkadot to move forward in order for us to vote positively on all these Gaming development referenda.