Building dApps
As with any blockchain, building decentralized applications (dApps) is a huge part of how a developer can build on Polkadot.
As an application developer, you can compose your front-end apps in a few different ways. Because Polkadot and its parachains are all built using Substraste; you can often use the same SDK to communicate with Polkadot, a parachain, or any other Substrate-based chain.
Please see the SS58 registry to see which chain corresponds to a given prefix, and which prefixes are available.
SDKS & Libraries
If one aims to develop a dApp (Decentralized App), the Polkadot ecosystem contains various SDKs to tap into the relay chain and parachains. There are several languages already supported - see the tooling page for a detailed overview of different SDKs and libraries that are available.
Frameworks & Toolkits
For front-end applications, several options exist for interfacing with Substrate-based chains (parachains, relay chains, etc.) and smart contracts. These often will interact with the RPC of a Substrate node:
- Polkadot.js
- Polkadot-API
- Reactive DOT
- Subxt
- React Hooks for ink!
- ink!athon Boilerplate
- Polkadot Cloud
Promise and RxJS APIs around Polkadot and Substrate-based chains via RPC calls. It is dynamically generated based on what the Substrate runtime provides regarding metadata. Full documentation & examples available here.
Polkadot-API will serve as a replacement for Polkadot JS. Full documentation & examples available here.
A reactive library for building Substrate front-ends. Full documentation & examples available here.
Query and submit extrinsics (transactions) to a Substrate node via RPC using Rust. Also referred to as Rust Parity. Full documentation & examples available here.
React hooks library for ink! smart contracts that abstract the functionality of Polkadot-JS. Full documentation & examples available here.
ink!athon is a starter kit for full-stack dApp development with ink! smart contracts and a React-based frontend in one place. With convenient helper scripts and a pre-configured project setup, you can quickly scaffold any dApp. Live example & full documentation available here.
Polkadot Cloud hosts a library of assets, ranging from data sources, graphical elements, to fully functional components, for app developers to plug and play into their codebases. Learn more here.