Maintenance & Support Python Libraries (April to September 2023)

For the last three years, Polkascan Foundation has been maintaining the Polkadot related Python libraries, such as py-substrate-interface, py-scale-codec and several Python bindings for cryptographic RUST crates used by Substrate. These client libraries are essential for Python developers to interact with any Polkadot, Kusama or other Substrate based chain.

As of writing 265 Github repositories and 21 Python packages are depending on our libraries.

With this treasury proposal, we are asking retroactive funding for our activities in the period April until September 2023. This averages out to approximately 4135 euro per month spent on development and tech support activities.

Overview of activities

Implemented new Polkascan Explorer and Subsquid extensions to the py-substrate-interface extension framework. These utilize indexes from Polkascan Explorer and Subsquid API endpoints, so data can be queried and filtered that is not directly possible or very inefficient on the Substrate RPC.
New runtime interface: more intuitive approach to interface with the runtime functionality, this is planned to be available in the next major release.
Added support for ink! v4
Added SCALE type definitions for upcoming MetadataV15 in Substrate. (Full support is still WIP)
Added multiple params as key support for query_map()
Add support for runtime calls at other blocks than the most recent #346
Upgrade contract interface to support WeightV2 #337
Updated metadata docs for Polkadot & Kusama parachain and stand-alone runtimes
Technical support on Github and in #polkascan:matrix.org and substrate.stackexchange.com channels

For more details about deliverables see https://github.com/polkascan/py-substrate-interface/releases and https://github.com/polkascan/py-scale-codec/releases

Activity report

Details about time spent and cost breakdown can be found in the Q2 & Q3 activity report.

Previous activity reports

Polkascan Foundation has been maintaining libraries for Python developers to interact with Polkadot, Kusama or other Substrate based chains. These libraries are essential for Python developers to interact with these chains. They have implemented new Polkascan Explorer and Subsquid extensions to the py-substrate-interface extension framework. They have also added support for ink! v4 and SCALE type definitions for upcoming MetadataV15 in Substrate. They have provided technical support on Github and in other channels. They are asking for retroactive funding for their activities from April until September 2023, which averages out to approximately 4135 euro per month spent on development and tech support activities. Details about time spent and cost breakdown can be found in the Q2 & Q3 activity report.