At DaBlock, we’ve focused on creating a detailed information portal for the Polkadot ecosystem, aiming to provide easy access to valuable resources. Key areas of focus include DApps, major initiatives and organizations, as well as insights from flagship events like Sub0 and Decoded.

It serves as a well-rounded and current information hub for the ecosystem, aiming to complement the Polkadot Wiki by emphasizing the key elements rather than the technical concepts.

Background

All of this officially began with the proposal #240, which, among many other tasks (complete report November 2023 — July 2024), has generated two notable and distinct outputs to highlight:

dablock.com
This is the most comprehensive and curated ecosystem portal, featuring over 600 well-defined and structured URLs of mostly atemporal content. In its first months, the portal received approximately 12,900 views from more than 4,000 users, with a notable increase in activity over the last two months.

DOT Brain
This is the most extensive raw directory of ecosystem elements, with more than 1,000 curated and categorized items. Management of this directory and related documents will transition to GitHub and be integrated into a monorepo alongside the new ecosystem portal.

The impact of these resources extends beyond individual users. Creators, agencies, and media teams within the ecosystem are leveraging this content as a valuable reference. These resources can significantly reduce the time required for content generation, making them useful for updating other major ecosystem portals as well as external platforms.

For teams, bounty curators, DAOs, or anyone needing assistance, feel free to reach out to me at: lv@dablock.com

Initiative Development Report

A detailed report on the development process and experiences is available here. This document may serve at least as a curious/interesting reading for indie projects seeking to establish themselves in the Polkadot ecosystem, sharing valuable lessons and challenges encountered. Additional perspectives can also be found in this forum post.

We have decided not to request the final 25% retroactive payment for proposal #240, initially intended for completion upon delivering all tasks. This decision stems from our underestimation of the workload and the necessary modifications made to adapt to major updates in the ecosystem. While striving for excellence is commendable, we recognize that it is ultimately up to stakeholders to evaluate the value of our efforts. We acknowledge that our initial proposal may have been overly ambitious in attempting to address multiple tasks and areas simultaneously, which led to some delays. We remain just as ambitious, but we are committed to progressing step by step.

Request for Support

After nearly a year and 1,000 on-chain governance events, we are again seeking direct support for the proposal #1240. This support will enable us to continue expanding our efforts to advance the ecosystem's maturity.

The latest public update with a summary of the next steps we are working on can be found in this short forum post.
From now on, all updates will be easily accessible from the organization's GitHub and its project roadmap view.
We are asking for 8,400 USDC to sustain and continue advancing our work on this phase.

Over the next two months the following tasks will be further developed and delivered:

100% Open-Source Migration

Tech: the Dablock portal is being migrated from the current CMS to a Static Site Generator solution (Astro), ensuring the entire platform is 100% open-source and fully manageable along with its content from a public GitHub repository, following a similar approach to the Polkadot Wiki.

Domain: Along with this change, the portal will also be migrated to the polkadotecosystem.com domain, so that it is easier to identify and is disassociated directly from the identity of Dablock as such.

Timeline: The migration of the portal to its first functional version is expected to be completed between early and mid-November, with ongoing development and expansion planned in the following months.

Multi-Language Version

A multi-language version will be introduced, enabling the publication of content in multiple languages beyond English.

Context: We’ve observed a significant number of articles from Dablock being translated and shared, especially those based on talks from major ecosystem events. While these translations are often linked back to the original sources, they are published across various blogs without consistent organization.

Solution: This update will enable everyone to publish the translations directly on a central ecosystem managed portal, enhancing navigation and resource accessibility.

Portal Restructuring

The portal structure will be reorganized to prevent the generation of URLs with duplicate content, solving derivative problems, optimizing for SEO, and improving overall user navigation. A key task will be merging posts derived from talks at recent events like Sub0 and Decoded with the related directory profiles they reference—whether they are projects, initiatives/DAOs, or glossary entries.

Context: The publication of content derived from event talks has resulted in the creation of URLs with duplicate content, which has negatively impacted the original portal's organic growth in SERPs. This restructuring and merging of content will address the issue from the beginning in the new deployment.

Directory & Content Updates

All directories will be updated with new information and elements. Main content pages, along with those expected to see increased traffic, will also be refreshed to boost relevance and visibility.

Sub0 Reset

As was done with the last editions of Sub0 and Decoded, all the talks, their summaries and related resources will be available on the new polkadotecosystem.com portal derived from the current dablock.com. Remember that If any speaker wishes to send us directly their slides or additional materials from their presentation, they can email them to contact@dablock.com. In any case, they will be able to modify and update any details on GitHub once the project migration is complete.

With this support, in addition to completing the portal's migration and it expansion, our main mission is to keep increasing the visibility and accessibility of its resources. Answers to any possible questions and explanations for all the changes and additions made to the project over the past year can be found in this odyssey and report till mid July.

Thanks for reading.