How it all Started

KodaDot's Co-founder, yangWaoopen in new window, was presented an opportunity to research more on Substrateopen in new window developers in the Polkadot ecosystem, where he became intrigued by Polkadot's potential to become a replacement for smaller chains.

To further understand the space, he created a web-based Subket, where you can:

  • Create a Substrate account from a mnemonic and hex seed
  • Load your account
  • Sign data
  • Verify signatures

While developing his project, he came across obstacles. Why wasn't it easy generating a pair of keys as a Vue developer? Why did it take him a week of translating code from Rust libraries to get things done? On top of that, he noticed the amount of teams in the ecosystem using React to quickly put together their frontends so that they can focus more on the backend.

Noticing all the React developers getting their projects done within a weeks timeframe in the ecosystem was alarming to him and rasied a bigger question:

Where were the resources for Vue native developers?

Noticing the little to no support in the PolkdaDot ecosystem, his mission was to make Vue an option alongside React for PolkaDot development to make sure that the ever-growing community would account for developers like him.

Teaming up with Co-founder Vikiopen in new window, they created https://vue-polkadot.js.orgopen in new window, a collection of Vue.js libraries, utilities and classes that allows for easier use of the Polkadot JS infrastructure inside apps. Due to their success, they were awarded a grant from the Web3 Foundation Foundationopen in new window in 2019 as Wave 3 Recipients for their contribution to the Polkadot ecosystem, allowing them to further develop and maintain their creation.

Throughout this process, they grew tremendously in terms of technical ability and knowledge of the space which allowed them to continue their journey on Polkadot.

But, KodaDot is a NFT marketplace?!

After finishing https://vue-polkadot.js.orgopen in new window, yangWao and Viki wanted to make their creation useful for themselves.

At first they created an Automated Registryopen in new window (which won second place in a PolkaDot hackathon!), but soon found out that the idea itself was unfeasible. There were too many features that couldn't be achieved without compromising their intial idea.

This led them to experiement with AR/VR. Their idea of visualizing blocks on the blockchainopen in new window had good traction on Twitter, but wasn't necessarily what they were looking for. They wanted to actively maintain something that required constant innovation and collaboration between people in the ecosystem.

It was until they found Bruno Skvorcopen in new window's activity surrounding the RMRK.appopen in new window on the Kusama Network. Here, they decided to get risky.

Quickly realizing the flexibility of Substrate Dataopen in new window and skimming the rmrk-spec repositoryopen in new window, they spun up a RMRK.app NFT reader, which gained support from the crypto community. However, this wasn't the idea they wanted to settle with.

After working non-stop for 7 weeks and sending in a proposalopen in new window to become an NFT explorer, the KodaDot that you know today serves as the first public good of the Dotsama (Kusama/Polkadot) ecosystem.

Read more about our journey from the bottom to the top hereopen in new window.