How to create a dApp on the Polkadot platform?

With a rise in the number of blockchain protocols, we must understand their purpose and what drawbacks of the existing blockchain generations they will address. Interoperability is one of those features that most of the blockchain protocols from the 1st and 2nd generations lack. Because of their siloed architecture, they cannot communicate with the other blockchain platforms and cannot process cross-chain exchanges.

This is where Polkadot steps in to address the issue of interconnectedness. Polkadot is the blockchain superhighway that focuses on providing interoperability, bridging the gaps between different blockchain networks that function on distinctive consensus mechanisms.

Polkadot is an interoperable chain that also helps host dApps of one blockchain on the other blockchain based on a different consensus mechanism from the first one. Polkadot is one of the preferable blockchain platforms that help host interoperable decentralized applications with all these benefits.

This article will help you understand the process of building a Web3 application on the Polkadot platform.

About Polkadot’s architecture

Polkadot is a mix of heterogenous blockchain shards or parachains in a single network. These chains are safely monitored by being linked to the Polkadot Relay Chain, and they can easily interact with external networks with the help of Polkadot bridges. Polkadot has the following components in its architecture that performs the parachain consensus role:

Relay Chain

Relay is the crux of Polkadot’s entire architecture. It is focused on the network’s cross-chain interoperability, consensus and security.

Parachains

Parachains are the sovereign blockchain that can regulate their functionalities for particular use cases. For contact connectivity with the Relay Chain, parachains are allowed to lease a slot and can also pay when they decide to go, as they have their tokens with them.

Polkadot bridges

Polkadot bridges are special blockchain components that facilitate the interaction between two different blockchains or two different external networks.

Nominators

Nominators protect the Relay Chain by selecting trustable validators and staking the DOTs.

Validators

Polkadot validators focus on the security of the Relay Chain by taking part in consensus along with the other validators, validating proofs from staking DOTs and collators.

Collators

They provide proof for the validators and are credible for maintaining the shards by taking shard transactions from the users.

Fishermen

They are fundamentally involved in the monitoring and oversight of the Polkadot network and bring up any bad functioning to the notice of the validators. Any parachain, a complete node or a collator can serve as a fisherman.

Components that take care of the Polkadot governance:

Council members

Council members represent the passive stakeholders and are given the responsibility of performing referenda and vetoing the malicious referenda.

Technical committee

The technical committee shoulders the responsibility of building the Polkadot, and this committee can link the council members in a proposing emergency referendum.

Now that we are familiar with the fundamental components of the Polkadot network, Let us dive into the steps of building a decentralized application on it.

How to build a dApp on the Polkadot network?

The Substrate provides all the important components to build a dApp on the Polkadot network.

Pre-requisites

• The locally installed Rust on your computer should be configured to create the development environment.
• Fundamental knowledge of how to utilize manual and software programming.

Step1

Start with setting up a blockchain application using the Substrate. There are templates on the Substrate which are already formatted for setting up a development environment.

These preformatted templates help add more custom features while developing on the Substrate.

git clone https://github.com/substrate-developer-hub/substrate-node-template

Then run the following command to integrate the Nightly build using Rust:

rustup update nightly rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown — toolchain nightly

After that, change the directory to the ./subsrate-node-template folder. Then look for the latest version inside the repository.

cd substrate-node-template

git checkout latest

This repository saves the Rust files, which can be customized as per the need of the project.

After this, run the following command to compile and get the node template running within your project.

$ cargo build — release 2021–12–16 00:36:30 Running in — dev mode, RPC CORS has been disabled. 2021–12–16 00:36:30 Substrate Node … 2021–12–16 00:36:33 Highest known block at #0 2021–12–16 00:36:33 Prometheus exporter started at 127.0.0.1:9615 2021–12–16 00:36:33 Listening for new connections on 127.0.0.1:9944. 2021–12–16 00:36:36 Starting consensus session on top of parent 0x4bbcc70ccccc322d314a5df12a814c28d40e6879b7b930df5ac5a50fe4be4c30 2021–12–16 00:36:36 Prepared block for proposing at 1 (1 ms) [hash: 0x18f1c7bf91a1544c9a0e35ac08c8f036b4cb2f8d8297233fffadb94022b982a7; parent_hash: 0x4bbc…4c30; extrinsics (1): [0x6458…325e]] 2021–12–16 00:36:36 Pre-sealed block for proposal at 1. Hash now 0xf10d170d82617ff5df6752dc911d3483badf34b005c8c48a46aeb6b708c915b 2, previously 0x18f1c7bf91a1544c9a0e35ac08c8f036b4cb2f8d8297233fffadb94022b982a7. 2021–12–16 00:36:36 Imported #1 (0xf10d…15b2) 2021–12–16 00:36:38 Idle (0 peers), best: #1 (0xf10d…15b2), finalized #0 (0x4bbc…4c30), 0 0 … 2021–12–16 00:36:42 Pre-sealed block for proposal at 2. Hash now 0x409138fda4f59dc093dce60fefbaca31c354ce18cef1bbea6f69a5009af6e0f4, previously 0x484e81ea10a15f04a640a595cb51d41eecc05919b4a16839852ba4d8a69440e1. …

Then, set up a frontend app to allow interaction with the decentralized application currently running on the network terminal.

git clone https://github.com/substrate-developer-hub/substrate-front-end-template

Now, install the yarn:

yarn install

Step2

The last step is to test and deploy the newly developed Polkadot dApp using Rococo. Rococo is a Polkadot parachain testnet, and it functions based on a proof-of-authority consensus mechanism. After testing the dApp on the testnet, it is now ready to be deployed.

Wrapping up

Blockchain platforms individually have distinctive features, but they are useless if these blockchains lack cross-chain communication. Interoperability is thus an important feature that is being massively incorporated into most of the blockchains around the world. With its multi-chain compatibility and architecture, Polkadot addresses all the issues related to interoperability and scalability.