Web3’s Promised Lands: A Developer’s...

There are several topics to cover before diving into Astar's strategies. Feel free to jump over any topic.

Introduction to the challenges of Web 2.0 developers adopting into Web3 and the differences between Web 2.0 and Web3 stacks
Programming languages in blockchain space
- Why have some projects preferred implementing WebAssembly (WASM) rather than Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)
How is the Polkadot ecosystem handling the developer adoption
Strategies of Astar Network to lure developers into and the importance of WASM
- XVM - enabling EVM and WASM environments to interact with each other
- Ink! - run on any platform that supports WASM
- Swanky Suite - be to WASM what Hardhat is to Ethereum.
- dApp Staking - build to earn system for developers
- Alchemy Integration
- Startale Labs - a Star in Japan

Disclosure: Why am I using Web3 and Web 2.0 terms in these formats? Click on it for the reason.

Beyond developer activity: how is the integration of Web 2.0 developers to Web3 going?

Web3 developers are a small percentage of the overall developer population.

Even though there are several advantages of being a Web3 developer such as a sense of ownership of the project, focusing on more collaborative work, and leveraging the power of the open source, it is still harder for Web 2.0 developers to adapt as Web3 developer due to a lack of tools, infrastructure and the limitations of the programming languages that are specific for particular blockchain smart contract environments. E.g. They even have to consider the simplest integrations like connecting to different RPC (Remote Procedure Call) points for end users to allow them to integrate smart contracts from different environments.

Nader Dabit, head of Developer Relations of Aave and Lens protocol, who was a serverless expert at Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the past, explains his personal challenges while shifting from the Web 2.0 stack to the Web3 stack as follows:

All the tools, technologies, and ecosystems are immature compared with Web 2.0
Blockchains are very inefficient at storing and processing large amounts of data, especially on-chain storage and the users have to pay gas fees every time they add new data on the blockchain. Storing data off-chain is an option, but they are not yet advanced.
Understanding the identity in Web3 space and what a wallet really means [1]

We see the changes from Web 2.0 stacks such as MySQL, centralized servers and authorities, Paypal/Stripe to Web3 stacks down below:

Disclaimer: The author puts some Layer 0 blockchains as Layer 1s

Moreover, unlike Web 2.0 developers, Web3 developers constantly must consider security, as dApps have to be built on robust infrastructures to prevent potential exploits and attacks. The Web3 space is still very immature and there exist fewer resources and support for Web3 developers overall.

Basically, we are at the stage of blockchain development like building a website in 1991.

What happens once you become a Web3 developer: More in-depth issues with programming languages in blockchain space

First, a short disclosure to understand why Virtual Machines (VMs) are essential:

VMs are not so different from physical computers, they just emulate computers by creating an isolated layer/environment between applications and the physical computer and allowing computer programs to run in it.

How do we use them mostly?

E.g. able to run macOS native applications on Windows OS or vice versa and test codes in an isolated environment rather than on the physical computer and thereby stay protected.

VMs in blockchains and why have some projects preferred implementing WASM rather than EVM

In the blockchain space, the implementation of VMs took several years, and in 2014, the idea of putting executable smart contracts on the blockchain changed the narrative of the whole blockchain space. This gave birth to EVM and created an isolated or so-called abstraction layer. Therefore dApps and smart contracts are separated from each other and nodes on the blockchain. This lets developers communicate with the blockchain using programming languages and execute smart contracts without affecting each other.

Therefore, EVM has become the first and the most popular smart contract environment with the largest user and developer base today. But there is a trade-off. EVM is blockchain specific and it requires high-level programming languages like Solidity.

Developers must have a deep understanding of the underlying blockchain platform with its specific constraints, logic, and limitations. They must be mindful of the gas cost of their smart contracts and ensure that they are optimized to minimize gas consumption.

The solution for these limitations is to have precompiled executables that enable a variety of programming languages. In 2017, WASM (WebAssembly) was released. In contrast to Solidity, it’s a low-level bytecode format that can be run in a web browser or on a standalone virtual machine (VM). It is designed to be a portable, efficient, and safe runtime for executing code on the web. Because WASM is a lower-level language that is more like traditional web development technologies such as JavaScript, Web 2.0 developers might find it easier to work with and more familiar to learn WASM.

Still, key developments are happening on Ethereum-based projects, and this pushes developers to prioritize learning Solidity and adapting to EVM more than any other option. In addition to that, WASM is still an experimental technology and WASM 2.0 is currently in development. Hence, it is not yet widely adopted and used in production.

The survey received results from 196 countries, with the most from USA (21.8%), then China (9.1%), and Germany (9.1%) [*]

Then what happens: a perspective by looking at the issue through the Polkadot ecosystem

Since 2021, 74 parachains have been launched on Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.

The first ones were the EVM-compatible parachains. Until today, these were where the main liveness of the ecosystem occurred in terms of TVL, development activity, and the number of dApps deployed on them.

Astar is one of the EVM-compatible smart contract parachains on Polkadot. It’s a blockchain that provides infrastructure for building dApps with EVM and WASM smart contracts. At this moment, around 70 dApps are deployed on Astar and 100% of them are EVM copy-cat dApps without any unique features. All of them are products and services which Ethereum can already do.

It’s clear that Parachains and Polkadot infrastructures are still in the development phase. XCMP is just beginning which will provide efficient interoperability among parachains and dApps on them. So, the lack of innovation is understandable at some level.

But there is great potential in working with WASM, which can provide developers a quick transition from Web 2.0 languages to Web3 languages. This enables them to spend more time building core features in their dApps rather than learning specialized languages such as Solidity for EVM.

Chain extensions are also an essential feature of smart contracts that are implemented using WASM on the Substrate blockchain platform. In more basic form, due to Substrate being highly customizable down to its consensus, any developer can make their own customized pallets/modules with a set of features in their own platform and make them accessible for other developers to call them by smart contracts and even customize them further. These features are called chain extensions.

About the use cases of chain extensions Hoon Kim, CTO of Astar, states that “‘If we have a chain extension for the XCM pallet on Astar Network, we can create custom XCM transfers completely from a smart contract that is executed on-chain, and allow dApps to interact with other foreign parachains directly from the smart contract.” [2]

Therefore, Astar sees the development of XCM and WASM as quite important in 2023 to have unique and authentic use-case dApps.

If it is that important why doesn’t Astar do these by themselves or even Parity Tech?

It’s crucial to understand the development phases and aims of the Polkadot ecosystem. The development of the Polkadot ecosystem can be thought of in terms of three waves of builders. This wave analogy is mostly based on a conversation between Tommi Enenkel, community builder of Mangata parachain, and Polkadot co-founder Robert Habermeier.

1st Wave:

We can call the Parity Tech team the 1st Wave. Founded by Gavin Wood, this is the company behind the Substrate framework and Polkadot.

Parity Tech is the foundation of Web3 and every core development of Polkadot at first. They are the builders of the base layer for other blockchains to safely start building on and leverage the benefits of sharing the security provided by the relay chain. Thereby, these blockchains can interoperate and communicate safely.

2nd Wave:

After that, we started to see the parachain teams building parachains that are sovereign layer 1 blockchains sharing the security from the relay chain. Because the relay chain doesn’t support smart contracts and doesn’t exist for general-purpose usage, these parachains are where all the innovation, dApps, and services can happen. To achieve this, these teams are building the core infrastructures for specific features for developers to build dApps on them. Therefore, we can call these parachain teams 2nd wave builders.

3rd Wave:

Now Polkadot is shifting towards the 3rd wave.

In two years, we will be seeing 100 parachains on it along with some core updates in 2023 H1, such as light client bridges which will enable trust-minimized bridges to other ecosystems, asynchronous backing which will increase the scalability and the performance of the network significantly, XCMv3 and especially XCMP will enable parachains and dApps on them to communicate each other seamlessly, similar to what we saw in Cosmos’ Ecosystem with IBC.

Briefly, in Cosmos, we don’t see this wave scheme. Usually, the core developers of Cosmos also have developed app-chains in the ecosystem. This is a relatively different approach; in the end, it’s a tradeoff. There is no optimal approach in this stage of blockchain.

To continue, the 3rd wave combines all these developments above leveraging from the core features of Polkadot and Interoperability. It is not a network granted by Parity anymore, it is the era of 3rd wave builders where we can see killer dApps, protocols, and services either by app-specific parachains or dApps on them. This is the wave where we should assume to see UX (user experience) improved and real use cases thanks to the shared security and interoperability.

Therefore, it is essential for Astar to focus on WASM developments. It must be easier for developers and even junior developers to adopt these chains and quickly integrate with the infrastructure. Because there needs to be a large number of developers in order for exponential growth to occur. This will provide essential feedback to core developers of parachains to configure and enhance the core design. Then, Parity developers can receive feedback due to parachain projects’ needs. Testing limits is something 1st and 2nd wave builders looking for, thereby something unique can occur and new needs can be discovered.

How does Astar lure Web 2.0 developers?

Astar is aware that only EVM copy-cat dApps development has been built on their blockchain. Having EVM compatibility was a pragmatist’s short-term solution for having projects and developers come to build something at first.

Soon enough XCMP will kick into the ecosystem and WASM developments can mature. Therefore, 2023 is the time for them to lean on these developments. To achieve this, the parachain teams have built, adapted, and collaborated on several features in their protocol and incentives for Web 2.0 developer adoption into their ecosystem.

XVM (Cross-Virtual Machine) and the importance of WASM:

Sota Watanabe, the founder of Astar Network, uses the analogy of Windows OS and macOS in a different way to explain what XVM achieves.

First, imagine you have a computer that runs on Windows OS, but you want to use an application that is only available on macOS. Instead of buying a new MacBook, you can create a VM and use the application that runs macOS on your Windows OS computer.

In this analogy, he describes EVM as Windows OS due to its massive adoption in the blockchain space and refers to WASM as MacOS due to it being technically more sophisticated. By using XVM as a cross-virtual machine, Astar supports and allows EVM and WASM to interact with each other on the Astar protocol in a similar way of supporting both Windows OS and macOS in the same computer. Therefore in Astar, developers can build dApps using the languages such as Rust, JavaScript, Go, and VMs that best suit their needs. This makes Web 2.0 developers adopt Web3 much easier as they may choose to build with the programming languages they are familiar with and compile them to WASM, but at the same time, they are able to call EVM smart contracts in the same protocol.

To understand why WASM is a catalyst for developer adoption of Web3, it’s important to look at the numbers of what programming languages are mainly used by developers. WASM enables smart contracts to be programmed using the most popular, developer friendly programming languages.

It is also important to emphasize that the XVM protocol is designed to connect any arbitrary contract environment. That means, in theory, anyone can integrate CosmWasm, Near or Solana in XVM if they would like to.

Ink!:

Ink! is a programming language designed specifically for writing smart contracts in Rust for blockchains built on the Substrate framework. It was developed by Parity Tech as a safer and more expressive alternative to Solidity.

One of the key features of Ink! is that it is implemented in WASM, and can be executed in a variety of environments. This means that Ink! smart contracts can be compiled to WASM and run on any platform that supports WASM.

In addition to that, Ink! is also designed to be easier to read and understand than Solidity, and to include several built-in safety features to help prevent common mistakes and vulnerabilities. This makes it an appealing choice for developers who want to build fast, secure, and reliable decentralized applications on the Polkadot ecosystem and other platforms.

Due to being a relatively new programming language, Ink! lacks templates for developers. These devs need to create everything from scratch, and it is not audited yet.

Therefore, Astar is collaborating with Parity and the ecosystem to create a treasury proposal for funding WASM development. The founder of Astar has already submitted the first proposal allocating around $1.6M to fund WASM smart contract, ink!, and developer tools developments.

Astar is very bullish on ink! due to WASM smart contracts handling asynchronicity in contrast to EVM. CTO of Astar, Hoon Kim, explains that a developer can send an asynchronous function using XCM to another blockchain and expect a response which is not possible without asynchronicity.

He says, “Basically it is giving the power to the developers to leverage cross-chain functionality instead of developing pallets/modules by themselves.” [3]

Swanky Suite - The Swankiest way of Swanking on Polkadot:

In the first part of the article, I mention the lack of tools for Web3 as one of the major challenges to Web3 adoption. To open this up more, these tools are the frameworks that allow developers to use CLI (Command Line Interface), compile different languages, and test and deploy their smart contracts from a local node easier and quicker.

In the second part of the article, I will discuss why adoption is mostly happening on the EVM side. Because in comparison to the WASM space, EVM has lots of tools and documentation for developers to ease into the smart contract world.

Therefore, Astar has taken the initiative of creating the Swanky toolkit as an all-in-one WASM tool for ink! developments on Substrate based blockchains and be to WASM what Truffle Suite or Hardhat is to Ethereum.

What should we understand by easing the life of the developers? Swanking? YES.

In simplest terms, allowing developers to come and start building with a language they already know without forcing them to build dApps with a specific language, instead providing them resources and tools to build pallets/modules onto their already existing dApps.

Using polkadot.js only on the backend and developing smart contracts through Swanky nodes with ink! will improve the efficiency of a developer and make their life more swanky.

Swanky is not explicit for the Astar ecosystem. It will be accessible and playable for anyone who is willing to build anything with ink! on WASM. Therefore we will see a collaborative development on that end.

We can already see teams like RMRK planning to build their NFTs in ink! using Swanky.

Recently the ArthSwap team, a DEX on Astar network, cloned Uniswap into WASM using ink! with Swanky as a proof of concept.

Anyone can take further developments on Swanky Suite to also add any other languages that compile to WASM, but initially, it will be ink! focussed.

Astar plans to promote Swanky at events such as hackathons, workshops, and conferences, to grow the WASM smart contract developer community and the Polkadot ecosystem.

dApp Staking / Build2Earn:

Astar has introduced a system called "dApp staking" allowing anyone to stake their Astar tokens on dApps that they prefer to support. Based on the number of stakers and the total stake value, Astar will pay developers from the block rewards of Astar Network.

Paying high gas fees while building dApps and smart contracts on the blockchains is one of the main issues of Web3 developers. This makes developing on Web3 costly for developers. Moreover, for a single developer or a small team, it is nearly impossible to start or continue working on Web3 without raising funds or being backed by companies. dApp staking system prevents this by giving them the option to be funded from block rewards via Astar token holders.

This is a strong initiative from Astar to lure developers who have ideas but don’t have enough funds and give them the option to kickstart.

Alchemy Integration:

Alchemy is one of the most popular platforms that has a reputation for giving developers the necessary tools to build on Web3.

Let’s go back to the Windows OS and macOS analogy one last time. Alchemy positions itself as a platform layer on the top of blockchain protocols allowing developers to have the necessary tools and API (application programming interface) to build dApps on top of blockchains similar to Windows OS enabling applications such as Microsoft Word and Google Chrome to be built. Without these operating systems, building applications were nearly impossible on computers.

Alchemy is basically trying to fill this gap between protocols and dApps for the developers.

They recently announced integration with Astar Network, which will allow developers to build dApps utilizing Alchemy's API on the Astar Network and therefore to focus more on application layer developments and innovations. This might also open the gates for Astar to welcome new developers into their network by allowing the already existing EVM developers who are using Alchemy to integrate with Astar.

Startale Labs:

Japan made web3, a national strategy in 2023. Japan's government and high-scale companies like Toyota and Sony would like to join the Web3 space according to that.

Astar has already made a partnership with Japan’s 4th biggest company NTT’s subsidiary NTT Docomo which is 30% owned by the Japanese government.

They were selected as top 100 promising Japanese startups in 2023 and just recently announced as “Product of the Year” at the 4th annual Blockchain Award by the Japan Blockchain Association.

The founder, Sota Watanabe, was also awarded the “Person of the Year” for the second time in a row.

Astar is already becoming a symbol of Web3 in Japan. As Sota claims that Polygon in India, is going to be Astar in Japan in 2023.

To strengthen this narrative and even to make stronger alliances, Astar wants to position itself as a company named Startale Labs and separate itself from the Astar network to be like what Parity Tech is for Polkadot and ConsenSys is for Ethereum. They want to enable the Astar network to exist in the future even without them. In the near future, they are converting Shiden, their Canary network in Kusama, into a DAO. This is their long-term vision for the Astar Network as well.

Astar claims that starting Startale Labs will enable them to work easier and receive more funds from Japanese enterprises. As Startale Labs they will focus on building infrastructures on WASM and therefore they will need more developers. Connecting with Japanese enterprises as a company will help them to raise funds enabling them to hire new developers and also integrate these enterprises into the Astar Network.

Closure

It is true that charts and numbers of developer activities of blockchains don’t point out everything about an ecosystem. But it is one of the strongest metrics if you search for where innovations and exponential growth could happen.

Another essential point is that, unlike Web 2.0 companies, in Web3, the structure is based on competition along with collaboration. Even though projects want to take a bigger piece of the pie, they also organically collaborate to enlarge the pie.

Especially at this immature phase of blockchain tech, the pie is relatively small. Therefore, we mostly see similar projects partnering with each other, especially in ecosystems like Polkadot and Cosmos.

On the core level developments, in the end, competition is sought on the dApp level.

Projects like Astar are welcoming any kind of developer with any kind of background. Incentivises them to come in, use any language that compiles to WASM or use the Swanky Suite tool to easily build smart contracts, put any kind of crazy ideas as a smart contract on dApp staking platform, get funded by the community, be involved and create something.

To enable that Astar heavily bets on the future of WASM developments which they believe the future of Web3 will shape around it, but at the same time, they keep supporting EVM implementations even though in Astar’s protocol design, building on EVM is like deploying an application on Windows OS in a MacOS environment which is inefficient.

In this dilemma, Astar seeks short and long-term adoptions by considering today’s needs and at the same time developing an infrastructure for future needs.

There are other projects under development on the Polkadot ecosystem which choose to only focus on WASM developments. In another article, I will mention the reasons behind it and compare them with Astar’s vision.

What about my personal take? - only if you are curious, otherwise this is the end.

My take is a simple one. As an artist and a CS major, in this 3rd wave, I want to see more products that combine both art and tech in the representation of the tech even in an aesthetic way.

This art and tech combination is often overlooked in the blockchain space which is understandable given the current stage of development. However if we truly want to create a culture and a narrative of Web3, I strongly believe it also must be backed by art. In today’s world, the most successful products come from the perfect combination of these two fields.

Therefore, I want to see dApps where artists and non-developers can seamlessly leverage several app features at the same time and put their own spin on things to create something unique. I would like to see them collaborate on a project with a heart and soul in it and get support from dApp Staking.

The projects who provide these platforms to developers and creators will be the hubs where people converge and Astar is making strong moves and taking initiative toward that.

References & Resources:

Web3’s Promised Lands: A Developer’s Roadmap to Adopting the Astar Network within 6 Ways