Building the Web3 community: a visit of the Polkadot house, from Paris to the Indian Ocean
Summary of the first Francophone Polkadot Meetup
Hello, my name is David, I am a Polkadot Head Ambassador as well as Logion founder. With the logion’s team, we are strongly committed to the Polkadot community as we believe that community sharing, the open-source way, is one of the pillars to build the future of Web 3.0.
Based on this strong belief, with the help of the Web3 Foundation and the logion’s team, we decided to organize the first ever Francophone Polkadot Meetup in Paris last Saturday, July 3rd.
It was a great pleasure to see that this first phygital event brought together more than 60 entrepreneurs, developers and beginners passionate about the development of Polkadot and Kusama.
Three other speakers, actively engaged in the construction of the Polkadot ecosystem were also part of that first event: François Branciard, Validator and Polkadot Senior Ambassador; Elodie Dincuff, Community and Growth Manager at the Web3 Foundation and Steve Degosserie, developer at Parity Technologies.
From the genesis of the internet to the way this new interoperable blockchain ecosystem works, through the pillars of the Web3 Foundation and the Substrate development framework, we shared a comprehensive overview of the Polkadot ecosystem.
Last but not least, live from the “La Réunion” island, a surprise guest joined us to share a short teaser of his smart-city project built on Polkadot.
Two hours to visit the Polkadot house
The internet of blockchains, a new type of architecture
Understanding the genesis and the vision behind blockchain projects is essential to fully get their potential.
To better understand the reasons for participating in the construction of the decentralized web — now known as the “Web 3.0” — with Polkadot, I started by going through the web evolution since its inception to describe then, why blockchain technologies are paramount for the construction of the third Internet era, free from the large centralizing actors which control our interactions and own our data today.
Then I shared a summary of blockchain infrastructure evolution from the creation of Bitcoin to the internet of blockchains with Polkadot.
By comparing the advent of the web with the different stages of the blockchain’s genesis, it becomes clear that this new multi-chain infrastructure is still in its initial phase: what we are witnessing today of Polkadot’s potential is probably only a tiny part of what will be delivered in the years to come.
Download my presentation over the blockchain evolution here.
Twitter: @be_dasc
Discord : DavidS| logion.NET| Polkadot Amb#5753
Email : david@logion.network
LinkedIn : David Schmitz
A Polkadot/Kusama vision in 200 blocks by François
François, developer, Lugus Lab co-founder and Archipel co-creator — a Web3F-supported-project — continued the journey by sharing his personal drivers within the blockchain ecosystem.
He essentially pointed out that decentralized systems make us more sovereign of our destiny. Interestingly, he also insisted on the other side of the freedom coin: responsibility. Indeed, as these technologies empower decentralized exchanges, they also make us, more responsible / accountable for what we are doing with it and how we are doing it.
François then took us into the heart of the house for a guided tour of the main rooms and the people who make it work.
More specifically, he explained the role of the key actors and mechanisms within the Polkadot ecosystem: the way the Relay chain works, the role of validators and nominators, different types of parachains and different functions of the DOT/KSM tokens. The visit ended with a brief discussion about decentralized governance.
Beside his passion for encrypted data blocks, François is also an artist, sculpting another type of blocks, tangible this time: rocks.
Not surprisingly, his project, “la Marque de tâcheron du 21ème siècle”, aims to enhance the value of stone artisans’s work — highly competitive with machining — by uniquely identifying each piece of stone on a blockchain.
A great example of blockchain technology usage as a real vector of change towards a better capture of value for creators, in connection with the real-world economy.
Download François’ presentation here.
Twitter: @fbranciard
Discord : fbriancard#5314
Email : francoisbranciard@gmail.com
LinkedIn : François Branciard
Building solid foundations with Elodie
Live from Zurich, Elodie, Community and Growth Manager at the Web3 Foundation, continued the visit inside the structure of the Polkadot house, by sharing insights about the organization behind the development of the Third Generation Web: the Web3 Foundation.
As a landmark in the Web 3.0 ecosystem, the Web3 Foundation is working to build this new era of decentralized internet, where we will be, thanks to what is developed in the Polkadot and Kusama environments, in control of our exchanges and interactions and the administrators of our own values.
Let’s have a look at our in-depth exploration of the Web3 Foundation’s three development pillars.
Projects
The Web3 Foundation supports efforts and promotes open-source projects that contribute to the building of the decentralized web.
To get familiar with the different concepts behind the decentralization, Elodie presents us the Web3 MOOC, a 20-video-courses-program, directed by Bill Laboon, Director of Education and Community at Web3 Foundation, which covers the blockchain fundamentals and the technical basics.
What’s more, rethinking the way we are organizing ourselves can only be done by working together. As such the Web3 Foundation naturally organizes events bringing together actors of the ecosystem like the WEB3 Summit, whose last edition took place in 2019.
Elodie, Community and Growth Manager at the Web3 Foundation:
“One of the objectives of the Web3 Foundation’s Community & Growth team is to encourage and support the initiatives of members of the Polkadot and Kusama community. Whether it is local, international, online or physical. Meetings and discussions are key to learn, surround yourself and develop your projects.”
Grants
The Web3 Foundation has also set up two grant programs to fund development and research efforts related to Polkadot, Kusama and the Substrate development framework:
- The Open Grants Program: this fast program offers (cryptocurrencies) funding for smaller technical grants of up to $30k with applications that are tracked transparently on GitHub.
- The General Grants Program: This is the standard program which offers bigger technical grants (the upper funding limit was removed last week). This program is private and therefore more suited for teams who are not ready to share their project or ideas publicly or which cannot be funded in cryptocurrencies.
Both programs are open to any startup or project that wishes to develop an open-source infrastructure contributing to the construction of a decentralized web as well as to any PhD student working on a legal or economic research project related to the web3 ecosystem.
Research
Last but not least, the Web3 Foundation also has its own research pole, constantly active in the fields of security, cryptography and privacy, decentralized algorithms, cryptoeconomics, game theory and networking.
To be kept up to date on the participation of researchers in specific conference: https://research.web3.foundation/en/latest/news.html
Join Polkadot and Kusama communities and find the links to the Web3F support portals presented by Elodie here.
Twitter: @Elodie_Dnf
Discord: Elodie | W3F#0377
Email: elodie@web3.foundation
LinkedIn: Elodie Dincuff
Stack bricks and build the first wall with Steve
To complete this Polkadot overview, Steve, developer at Parity Technologies, shared a technical overview of Substrate, the core development framework that allows the developer community to build applications based on Polkadot and Kusama environments.
To understand the benefit of this open-source framework enabling anyone build a custom blockchain, Steve took the example of a company that is willing to build a blockchain-based project.
In that case, the company can:
- Either build on top of a generic platform such as a smart contract platform
- Or build its app-specific blockchain
Why building a fit-for-purpose blockchain instead of building on top of a generic one?
- Match the use-case performance: the fixed functionalities of generic platforms may not be fitted to the needs of the project, causing potential performance issues (eg. problems of scalability)
- Reduce the security threats: the level of hacking risk is potentially higher on a generic platform due to the higher number of implemented features (the related project doesn’t even need)
- More sovereignty: no dependency coming from the governance and the technical roadmap of a generic platform
Guess what: that’s exactly what the Substrate development framework provided by Parity Technologies offers. Substrate provides the access to a technology stack composed of a pre-tested ”palettes” library that enables to fully and modularly configure the logic and the functioning of a blockchain to fit specific needs.
To close this visit, Steve ended with a little tour behind blocks through some on-chain interaction on a local blockchain deployed on his laptop using Substrate.
Find links to the Substrate development templates in Steve’s presentation.
Twitter: @stiiifff
Discord: stiiifff#5881
LinkedIn: Steve Degosserie
Immersion in the Reunion Island
Marc Agouni is Climatopolis’s founder, an international green-smart cities project which aims to accelerate green technologies deployment in a dozen of cities in the world for the benefit of our environment.
Marc started his blockchain journey several years ago. He is the initiator of various blockchain initiatives and groups in the Reunion Island. With the support of local authorities, he is working on different projects to improve some operational requirements of the smart cities domain.
Why not using Polkadot ecosystem resources for that purpose?
For sure, we will discuss that idea with him during an upcoming meetup.
The beginning of a long series
We are now launching this community with the ambitions of building strong connections between the French-speaking actors involved in the development of the Web 3.0 and giving greater resonance to what is being built within the Polkadot ecosystem.
One of our goal is to contribute to the spreading of information and knowledge about Polkadot and Kusama environments, by involving actors at the heart of the system’s engine — such as validators or ambassadors.
With our diverse backgrounds and different projects, we are working on, I believe there is a great potential for co-building in this community, leveraging the magic of Polkadot interoperability while seeing the rise of projects linked with the real economy.
Thanks again to my fellow speakers and to everyone who attended this meetup.
This is just a start, stay tuned!
Join the French-Speaking Polkadot community:
To watch the replay:
- David at 00:01:30
- François at 00:25:04
- Elodie at 00:49:40
- Steve at 01:13:07
- Marc at 01:40:20
Polkadot
Polkadot is the first interoperability protocol that enables blockchain networks to work together under the protection of shared security.
By parallelizing transactions, Polkadot solves major scalability issues that have thus far hampered blockchain development. Polkadot also introduces a highly advanced, open governance system that will allow the network to innovate and grow at a much more rapid pace than legacy networks. Applications from decentralized finance and energy to gaming and communications will thrive on Polkadot, forming the basis of digital jurisdictions in Web 3.0. Polkadot is the first project spearheaded by the Web3 Foundation.
For more information on Polkadot, visit polkadot.network.
Kusama
Founded in 2019 by Gavin Wood, founder of Polkadot and co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum, Kusama is a scalable network of specialized blockchains built using Substrate and nearly the same codebase as Polkadot.
The network is an experimental development environment for teams who want to move fast and innovate on Kusama, or prepare for deployment on Polkadot.
Kusama is a network built as a risk-taking, fast-moving ‘canary in the coal mine’ for its cousin Polkadot. It’s a living platform built for change agents to take back control, spark innovation and disrupt the status quo.
For more information on Kusama, visit kusama.network.
Web 3 Foundation
Established in Zug, Switzerland by Ethereum co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Gavin Wood, the Web3 Foundation funds research and development teams building the stack of technologies behind the decentralized web.
For more information on Web3 Foundation, visit web3.foundation.
Parity Technologies
Parity Technologies was founded by key Alumni of the Ethereum Foundation in 2015. It has become one of the most widely recognized infrastructure providers in the blockchain space with a team of 100+ members including some of the leading peer-to-peer networking, distributed consensus and Rust programming experts. With 30% of remote workforce, Parity has offices in Berlin (Germany), London and Cambridge (UK).
For more information on Parity Technologies, visit parity.io.
logion
With a public blockchain of nodes managed by legal officers and based on the open-source Substrate technology, logion is bringing to the decentralized economy the Trust, legal officers bring for decades to the physical world and economy with capabilities such as social recovery, assets & documents certification and protection, as well as Judicial Officer report, usable as evidence in a court of law.
logion will empower other blockchains with a decentralized trust as a service.
For more information on logion, visit logion.network.
