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ink! Alliance — Enabling Rust Smart Contracts and Developer Growth on Polkadot Hub
Treasury Proposal: ink! Alliance — Enabling Rust Smart Contracts and Developer Growth on Polkadot Hub
Proponent: ink! Alliance (122VRdiHngKqsqqqVvTT2SZ3FN3BRFrupdYRaT7wuoZgkThd, 4/5 multisig)
Date: October 2025
Requested Amount: $538,000 USDC
Category: Core Protocol / Developer Platform (Public Good)
Short description: This proposal enables the critical path for DOT programmability on the Hub for Rust developers. It aims to finalize, audit-remediate, and stabilize ink! v6 on PolkaVM for the Polkadot Hub launch, then drive education, adoption, and developer support for six months (Q4 ’25 → Q1 ’26).
Overview
Polkadot Hub marks the next evolution of Polkadot, introducing dual-VM smart contract support for both EVM and PolkaVM, balancing short-term traction with long-term innovation. While EVM compatibility enables Solidity developers to deploy familiar dApps, PolkaVM represents Polkadot’s technological differentiation: high-performance, RISC-V-based execution, and future compatibility with JAM.
This proposal represents the third Treasury request related to enable ink!, the Rust smart contracts SDK for Polkadot Hub. While a bounty referendum with a longer-term strategic focus is currently under consideration, it may not reach approval in its present form. In parallel, a prior Treasury proposal successfully funded foundational work toward this same objective, and this proposal now seeks to complete that effort in alignment with the upcoming Polkadot Hub launch.
As an ecosystem we should prioritise our native technology and innovations to enable strategic advantages through differentiation and not mere imitation. ink! is the only language currently capable of bringing PolkaVM to market in 2025, begin testing it for JAM, and enable a market size of 5.1+ million Rust developers to use DOT programmatically in their applications. Without ink!, there will be no way to use PolkaVM in the near to mid-term on Polkadot Hub.
ink! provides a secure, native Rust environment built directly on the Polkadot SDK, enabling developers to build advanced, composable, and cross-chain applications that leverage Polkadot’s unique interoperability through XCM.
This proposal funds the final push to bring ink! v6 to production, a release that will both showcase Polkadot’s unique technical edge and expand its developer base.
In terms of adoption, ink! v6 continues to see strong usage on the Hub’s testnet in relation to Solidity even though it is only in beta, with almost 1/3 of all smart contracts on PAsset Hub being deployed in ink! and 36% of all accounts related to ink!.
ink! also sees strong web traffic stats in terms of interest relative to the wider ecosystem. In addition to direct engagement on Telegram totalling 1237 messages and 71 active participants in the past 6 months.
Results from the Web3 Summit Hackathon in July ‘25, with ink! significantly taking the lead in terms of smart contract developer interest and hackathon project submissions:
Source: WebZero
This 6-month proposal funds the critical path to take ink! out of beta, into production and build traction on the Hub:
- Audit remediation & stable release of ink! v6 on PolkaVM.
- Tooling, docs, benchmarks, and ergonomics improvements.
- Education (examples, guides, videos, campaigns).
- Community support (teams building on the Hub; hackathons).
Full Proposal & Note on Prior Bounty Proposal
The full proposal can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zAFK7JgGgn2HbEbcXPDl53mT-KC6WQ-aoehYVl8ww7A
We previously opened a proposal to create an ink! Alliance Bounty. However, after listening to feedback, we have created this proposal returning us to milestone based and half the price.
Here's a simple summary of the ink! Alliance proposal:
- The ink! Alliance wants to finish making ink! v6 ready for Polkadot Hub
- This will let Rust developers build smart contracts on Polkadot
- They're asking for $538,000 to work for 6 months
- ink! is important because it uses Polkadot's special technology called PolkaVM
- Right now, about 1/3 of test contracts are already using ink!
- The money will help fix security issues and make ink! easier to use
- They'll create learning materials and help developers
- This helps Polkadot stand out from other blockchain platforms
Treasury Proposal: ink! Alliance — Enabling Rust Smart Contracts and Developer Growth on Polkadot Hub
Proponent: ink! Alliance (122VRdiHngKqsqqqVvTT2SZ3FN3BRFrupdYRaT7wuoZgkThd, 4/5 multisig)
Date: October 2025
Requested Amount: $538,000 USDC
Category: Core Protocol / Developer Platform (Public Good)
Short description: This proposal enables the critical path for DOT programmability on the Hub for Rust developers. It aims to finalize, audit-remediate, and stabilize ink! v6 on PolkaVM for the Polkadot Hub launch, then drive education, adoption, and developer support for six months (Q4 ’25 → Q1 ’26).
Overview
Polkadot Hub marks the next evolution of Polkadot, introducing dual-VM smart contract support for both EVM and PolkaVM, balancing short-term traction with long-term innovation. While EVM compatibility enables Solidity developers to deploy familiar dApps, PolkaVM represents Polkadot’s technological differentiation: high-performance, RISC-V-based execution, and future compatibility with JAM.
This proposal represents the third Treasury request related to enable ink!, the Rust smart contracts SDK for Polkadot Hub. While a bounty referendum with a longer-term strategic focus is currently under consideration, it may not reach approval in its present form. In parallel, a prior Treasury proposal successfully funded foundational work toward this same objective, and this proposal now seeks to complete that effort in alignment with the upcoming Polkadot Hub launch.
As an ecosystem we should prioritise our native technology and innovations to enable strategic advantages through differentiation and not mere imitation. ink! is the only language currently capable of bringing PolkaVM to market in 2025, begin testing it for JAM, and enable a market size of 5.1+ million Rust developers to use DOT programmatically in their applications. Without ink!, there will be no way to use PolkaVM in the near to mid-term on Polkadot Hub.
ink! provides a secure, native Rust environment built directly on the Polkadot SDK, enabling developers to build advanced, composable, and cross-chain applications that leverage Polkadot’s unique interoperability through XCM.
This proposal funds the final push to bring ink! v6 to production, a release that will both showcase Polkadot’s unique technical edge and expand its developer base.
In terms of adoption, ink! v6 continues to see strong usage on the Hub’s testnet in relation to Solidity even though it is only in beta, with almost 1/3 of all smart contracts on PAsset Hub being deployed in ink! and 36% of all accounts related to ink!.
ink! also sees strong web traffic stats in terms of interest relative to the wider ecosystem. In addition to direct engagement on Telegram totalling 1237 messages and 71 active participants in the past 6 months.
Results from the Web3 Summit Hackathon in July ‘25, with ink! significantly taking the lead in terms of smart contract developer interest and hackathon project submissions:
Source: WebZero
This 6-month proposal funds the critical path to take ink! out of beta, into production and build traction on the Hub:
- Audit remediation & stable release of ink! v6 on PolkaVM.
- Tooling, docs, benchmarks, and ergonomics improvements.
- Education (examples, guides, videos, campaigns).
- Community support (teams building on the Hub; hackathons).
Full Proposal & Note on Prior Bounty Proposal
The full proposal can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zAFK7JgGgn2HbEbcXPDl53mT-KC6WQ-aoehYVl8ww7A
We previously opened a proposal to create an ink! Alliance Bounty. However, after listening to feedback, we have created this proposal returning us to milestone based and half the price.
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OG Tracker Rating 2/3
Clear display of deliverables✅
Clear display of a valid direct point of contact ❌
Clear display of proposal’s duration✅
OGT Rating aims to help voters make better informed decisions and direct proposers towards certain common-good practices. We are providing feedback based on 3 simple yet crucial criteria which we believe should be included in every OpenGov referenda.