This is a retroactive funding proposal for work completed over the past 3 months building Kitdot - a TypeScript development toolkit for Solidity on PolkaVM.
Website: https://kitdot.dev/
I'm requesting $9,999 USD in retroactive funding for 3 months of independent development work that has successfully onboarded hundreds of new developers to the Polkadot ecosystem through Kitdot - a rapid prototyping toolkit that eliminates the complexity barrier for building Solidity dApps on PolkaVM.
Impact to date:
Forum discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kitdot-build-web2-like-apps-on-polkadot/15303
Kitdot is a rapid prototyping toolkit (similar to eth-scaffolding but for PolkaVM) that provides:
Working directly with the MetaMask team, I integrated Web3Auth with Multi-Party Computation for Asset Hub:
Kitdot launched at Latin Hack with measurable results:
Based on Latin Hack's success, I was invited to support Sub0 as:
Kitdot adoption at Sub0: While I don't have access to official metrics, feedback from fellow mentors indicated that Solidity developers were actively using Kitdot during the hackathon. The tool helped teams get started quickly and iterate on their ideas without getting stuck on configuration issues.
Throughout both hackathons, the most common questions I received were:
These questions reveal a critical gap: Solidity without access to native Substrate resources is meaningless to the established EVM market.
I've started bridging these gaps independently:
The Ethereum ecosystem has millions of developers who know Solidity. Polkadot's bet on PolkaVM with Solidity support is about capturing a portion of this talent pool without asking them to learn Rust first.
We're promising composability - ink! contracts and Solidity contracts should be able to call each other and share state. To deliver on this promise, we need to dog food the tooling and build reference implementations showing what's possible. (That's what I'm doing rn)
PolkaVM's success depends on multiple language stacks (Solidity, ink!, Move) working interoperably within the same runtime. This isn't a zero-sum game between languages - it's about composability and choice.
My position on Rust vs. Solidity:
Rust (via ink!) is the stack for projects requiring longevity - It's a no-brainer for production systems that need the best performance, safety guarantees, and tight integration with Substrate pallets.
Solidity is for rapid prototyping and seeing ideas in action - The largest pool of smart contract developers globally knows Solidity. For hackathons, MVPs, and bridging the Ethereum ecosystem to Polkadot, Solidity significantly lowers the entry barrier.
Both stacks should coexist and leverage the same underlying resources. We're promising composability - and to deliver on that, Solidity contracts need access to essential Substrate pallets like assets, governance, and staking through precompiles. The current documentation only covers XCM precompiles, which isn't an onboarding topic. We need practical examples for common operations.
Several community members suggested this proposal belongs on Polkadot rather than Kusama. I agree. While I initially submitted to Kusama because it's the current production environment for Solidity contracts, the work benefits the entire Polkadot ecosystem and aligns with Polkadot's strategic direction. Regarding retroactive funding: I understand the preference for pre-approval, but this work evolved organically through dialogue with Parity, MetaMask, PBA alumni, and ecosystem agents as I identified gaps during my own developer discovery and Latin Hack preparation.
I've worked part-time on this for 3 months (~20 hours/week). At my usual ecosystem rate of $66/hour, that's $15,840 USD worth of work.
I'm asking for $9,999 USD.
To be clear: I'm going to keep building either way. This proposal is symbolic - it's about getting a green signal from the ecosystem that this work matters and aligns with where the long-term vision is heading. The funding validates the direction more than it compensates the effort.
Future development will follow structured grant milestones through Open Source Bounty (once reopened) or Web3 Foundation Grants. I'm developing production-ready templates for:
Research: https://research.w3d.community/gassless-transactions
Research: https://research.w3d.community/x402
Building at least 2 templates per feature demonstrating integration with:
Kitdot is a toolkit that helps developers build apps on Polkadot using Solidity, a popular coding language.
This is a retroactive funding proposal for work completed over the past 3 months building Kitdot - a TypeScript development toolkit for Solidity on PolkaVM.
Website: https://kitdot.dev/
I'm requesting $9,999 USD in retroactive funding for 3 months of independent development work that has successfully onboarded hundreds of new developers to the Polkadot ecosystem through Kitdot - a rapid prototyping toolkit that eliminates the complexity barrier for building Solidity dApps on PolkaVM.
Impact to date:
Forum discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/kitdot-build-web2-like-apps-on-polkadot/15303
Kitdot is a rapid prototyping toolkit (similar to eth-scaffolding but for PolkaVM) that provides:
Working directly with the MetaMask team, I integrated Web3Auth with Multi-Party Computation for Asset Hub:
Kitdot launched at Latin Hack with measurable results:
Based on Latin Hack's success, I was invited to support Sub0 as:
Kitdot adoption at Sub0: While I don't have access to official metrics, feedback from fellow mentors indicated that Solidity developers were actively using Kitdot during the hackathon. The tool helped teams get started quickly and iterate on their ideas without getting stuck on configuration issues.
Throughout both hackathons, the most common questions I received were:
These questions reveal a critical gap: Solidity without access to native Substrate resources is meaningless to the established EVM market.
I've started bridging these gaps independently:
The Ethereum ecosystem has millions of developers who know Solidity. Polkadot's bet on PolkaVM with Solidity support is about capturing a portion of this talent pool without asking them to learn Rust first.
We're promising composability - ink! contracts and Solidity contracts should be able to call each other and share state. To deliver on this promise, we need to dog food the tooling and build reference implementations showing what's possible. (That's what I'm doing rn)
PolkaVM's success depends on multiple language stacks (Solidity, ink!, Move) working interoperably within the same runtime. This isn't a zero-sum game between languages - it's about composability and choice.
My position on Rust vs. Solidity:
Rust (via ink!) is the stack for projects requiring longevity - It's a no-brainer for production systems that need the best performance, safety guarantees, and tight integration with Substrate pallets.
Solidity is for rapid prototyping and seeing ideas in action - The largest pool of smart contract developers globally knows Solidity. For hackathons, MVPs, and bridging the Ethereum ecosystem to Polkadot, Solidity significantly lowers the entry barrier.
Both stacks should coexist and leverage the same underlying resources. We're promising composability - and to deliver on that, Solidity contracts need access to essential Substrate pallets like assets, governance, and staking through precompiles. The current documentation only covers XCM precompiles, which isn't an onboarding topic. We need practical examples for common operations.
Several community members suggested this proposal belongs on Polkadot rather than Kusama. I agree. While I initially submitted to Kusama because it's the current production environment for Solidity contracts, the work benefits the entire Polkadot ecosystem and aligns with Polkadot's strategic direction. Regarding retroactive funding: I understand the preference for pre-approval, but this work evolved organically through dialogue with Parity, MetaMask, PBA alumni, and ecosystem agents as I identified gaps during my own developer discovery and Latin Hack preparation.
I've worked part-time on this for 3 months (~20 hours/week). At my usual ecosystem rate of $66/hour, that's $15,840 USD worth of work.
I'm asking for $9,999 USD.
To be clear: I'm going to keep building either way. This proposal is symbolic - it's about getting a green signal from the ecosystem that this work matters and aligns with where the long-term vision is heading. The funding validates the direction more than it compensates the effort.
Future development will follow structured grant milestones through Open Source Bounty (once reopened) or Web3 Foundation Grants. I'm developing production-ready templates for:
Research: https://research.w3d.community/gassless-transactions
Research: https://research.w3d.community/x402
Building at least 2 templates per feature demonstrating integration with:
Threshold
Threshold