Major Opportunity for Polkadot Ecosystem Developers: Participate in Building the Next Generation Protocol

For blockchain developers in the Polkadot ecosystem, a highly valuable and milestone project is recruiting technical pioneers. This major initiative has established a reward pool of up to 10 million DOT and 100,000 KSM, open to all developers willing to engage in building the next generation of the Polkadot protocol.

As the next-generation core protocol of Polkadot, this new project represents a future network architecture with higher performance and greater flexibility. The plan aims to accelerate the development and implementation of the new protocol, expecting to attract more developers to participate in the construction of Polkadot's next-generation protocol, jointly building a more open, secure, and autonomous Web3 infrastructure.

Basic Information of the New Protocol

This new protocol is designed to replace the Polkadot relay chain, featuring stronger smart contract execution capabilities and a more streamlined modular architecture. Its goal is to allow Polkadot to no longer be limited to running specific functions, but rather to support general "services" - that is, smart contract logic that can run on the core.

In the new protocol, developers can still build and deploy chains through Substrate, which will serve as parachains for access.

The new protocol technically introduces a series of innovations, including replacing WebAssembly with a Polkadot virtual machine built on the RISC-V instruction set architecture, as well as adopting a block generation algorithm based on zero-knowledge proofs. These designs collectively build a more scalable and flexible new paradigm for Polkadot.

Competition Objectives

The foundation aims to fund the implementation of multilingual new protocol clients, strengthening the protocol's decentralization, diversity, and risk resistance, while avoiding the pitfalls of single point of failure.

This bonus program will be promoted in conjunction with the existing numerous Polkadot ecosystem funding projects (such as Grants, on-chain financial subsidies, etc.).

Review Process

Submissions will be reviewed by members of the Polkadot Technical Association, and the relevant foundation will coordinate support and incentive distribution based on the review results.

Three Competition Paths

Participating teams can choose from three different development paths, with the milestone tasks in the first phase of all three paths being the same. In all paths, the use of non-exclusive underlying third-party libraries is allowed, including but not limited to:

• Cryptographic primitives (such as erasure codes, Bandersnatch, Ed25519)
• Binary Encoding Library
• Database System
• Network protocol stack (e.g., QUIC)

After completing each stage, developers can receive a technical rank promotion from the Polkadot Technical Association based on their code and protocol contributions, without being restricted by conventional time requirements. The promotion can reach up to III Dan (Fellow Level 3).

Path One: Full Validation Node (including self-developed virtual machine)

Development goals: achieve a complete validation node with block production capability, and implement a high-performance self-developed virtual machine.

Maximum reward: 500,000 DOT + 5,000 KSM

Performance requirements: Virtual machine execution, Trie/database, signature verification, and availability (EC/DB) testing will run on standard hardware.

Milestone:

1. M1 IMPORTER: Consistency testing through state transition, able to import blocks. Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
2. M2 AUTHORER: Fully compatible, capable of generating blocks (including network communication, off-chain processing) Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
3. M3 HALF-SPEED: Complies with standards, performance meets 50% (including virtual machine implementation) Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
4. M4 FULL-SPEED: Meets standards, performance meets 100% (including virtual machine implementation) Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
5. M5 SECURE: Professional audit by a third party Rewards: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM

Path 2: Non-self-developed Virtual Machine Verification Node

Development goal: Build a complete validation node, but the virtual machine can use third-party implementations to meet performance requirements.

Maximum reward: 350,000 DOT + 3,500 KSM

Milestone:

1. MN1 IMPORTER: Consistency testing through state transitions, can import blocks. Rewards: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
2. MN2 AUTHORER: Fully compatible, can generate blocks. Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
3. MN3 HALF-SPEED: Compliant with standards, performance meets 50% (excluding virtual machine implementation) Reward: 50,000 DOT + 500 KSM
4. MN4 FULL-SPEED: Meets standards, performance meets 100% (excluding virtual machine implementation) Rewards: 50,000 DOT + 500 KSM
5. MN5 SECURE: Through Audit Rewards: 50,000 DOT + 500 KSM

Additional rewards: If the team completes a high-performance virtual machine in the future and passes performance testing and auditing, they can receive an additional 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM in the MN6 stage.

Path Three: Light Node Implementation

Development Objective: To achieve a low-resource-occupying node that, although lacking block generation capabilities, can process network requests and is suitable for embedding in tools or web pages.

Maximum reward: 250,000 DOT + 2,500 KSM

Resource requirements: Nodes must complete standard tasks with minimal CPU, memory, storage, and network usage on standard hardware. Performance should be roughly consistent with smoldot.

Milestone:

1. ML1 IMPORTER: import blocks through consistency testing. Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM
2. ML2 FULL-SPEED: Performance meets the standard 100% Rewards: 50,000 DOT + 500 KSM
3. ML3 SECURE: Through Auditing Reward: 100,000 DOT + 1,000 KSM

Additional Rules:

• Each development language group can issue up to 4 ML2 rewards.
• Each language group has only 2 ML3 audit reward slots, and they must come from different language implementations.
• After reaching ML2, the team can reserve the ML3 audit qualification for 6 months. If ML3 is not submitted during this period, the slot can be taken over by the next eligible team, processed in the order of application.

Suggestions for the Development Team

The more completed milestones you have, the more competitive your submissions will be. If you don't know where to start, it is recommended to proceed with development in the following order:

• The data structure and serialization of blocks / block headers
• Data structure and serialization of status
• In-memory database and Merklization (Merkle tree processing)
• Non-Virtual Machine Block Execution / State Transition
• Virtual machine instantiation, execution, and host function
• Block Import Test

Notes

To ensure the fairness of the competition and the security of the protocol, it is recommended that each participating team avoid referring to the specific implementation details of other teams, especially not to directly share code.

You can communicate high-level design ideas or optimization directions with other teams, but you must not consult or reference the specific implementations of each other. The review party will focus on whether there are any undeclared collaborative behaviors, such as a highly similar code structure appearing in both implementations, or the occurrence of the same bug at the same time, which will be considered a potential risk signal.

This does not mean that all forms of collaboration are prohibited. If you collaborate with other teams during the debugging process, simply record the relevant content and findings truthfully, and submit them to the relevant repository through GitHub issues, or explain them in the remarks when submitting results, to participate in compliance. Transparent recording helps to ensure the attribution of your team's results and technical contributions.

More Polkadot Ecosystem Grant Programs

In addition to this reward program, the Polkadot ecosystem also offers various long-term and special funding channels to support developers, researchers, and entrepreneurial teams in advancing innovative projects at different stages.

Polkadot Open Source Grant Bounty Program

The program provides grants of up to $30,000 for individuals or small teams aspiring to build open-source software for the Polkadot ecosystem, with an expected support for about 15 teams or individuals. Applicants must have solid open-source development experience, and the funding can cover prototype development, general tool libraries, or complete DApps, etc. Funds will be disbursed based on project milestones and will be allocated after a review.

Web3 Foundation Grant Program

The long-term funding project that has been running since 2019 selects and supports development and research work aimed at enhancing the Polkadot ecosystem on a quarterly basis. The program provides phased funding and offers project parties ecological collaboration, promotion, and other supporting resources.

Polkadot Ecological Fund

Led by a well-known digital asset management company, this fund focuses on supporting early projects built on Polkadot and its Rollups. The fund has financed several core projects, including Astar and Centrifuge.

Polkadot Ecosystem Fund II

Initiated by relevant institutions, focusing on venture capital and liquidity investment strategies for growth-stage companies. The fund provides Pre-seed/Seed stage support in the form of equity or Token and collaborates with other VCs for strategic investments, with invested projects including peaq, Mythical, and Mandala.

Polkadot Pioneer Award

A bounty funding program funded by the on-chain treasury and governed by DOT holders, with a total prize pool of nearly 1 million DOT, aimed at rewarding innovators who solve core challenges of Polkadot. It has currently supported multiple technological breakthroughs, including zero-knowledge cryptography projects.

Conclusion

The new protocol is not only the next-generation core protocol of Polkadot but also a key step in determining the future direction of the entire ecosystem. This reward program is gathering the most visionary developers from around the world to build a stronger and more open Web3 infrastructure together. Let us build a stronger and more open decentralized future together!