Highlights of Apillon and the Polkadot ecosystem — Q3 2023
Apillon platform upgrades and increasing adoption, along with complementary solutions developed with ecosystem partners, added their share…
Apillon platform upgrades and increasing adoption, along with complementary solutions developed with ecosystem partners, added their share to the consistent growth of the Polkadot space.
With Q3 well behind us now, we’re taking a page of the Medium space to retrospect on what Apillon, partner parachains, and the Polkadot ecosystem achieved in the past few months.
1 Apillon
For the big part of the past three-month period, the Apillon team was focused on the revised Polkadot Proposal #161, a thorough revamp of the apillon.io website, and upgrades to the Apillon dashboard UX.
- 1.1 Platform integrations & Web3 Services
- 1.2 Adoption
- 1.3 Features & functionalities
- 1.4 Events
- 1.5 Community
Let’s start from the core — the Apillon dashboard.
1.1 Platform integrations & Web3 Services
🔗 After integrating KILT Protocol’s decentralized authentication service to enable wallet-based log-in on the Apillon dashboard, the team is fast approaching the release of the Web3 Authentication service. KILT-powered Web3 Auth would offer users a plug-and-play way to integrate decentralized identity and authentication into their Web3 projects and even equip digital assets with DIDs.
🔗 Similarly, following the integration of Phala’s computing logic in Schrödinger’s NFT, this parachain’s extended capabilities of decentralized computing are making their way to the Apillon platform to become available in a streamlined manner.
📢 More partnerships with key ecosystem players to power your Web3 project will be announced soon, so stay tuned.
1.2 Adoption
After a somewhat steadier Q2, the third quarter of the year released the brakes, and the increased user interest in faster Web3 development resulted in higher spikes on charts.
The Apillon dashboard welcomed 42% more users compared to the previous three-month period. On average, the platform thus saw more daily signups than before, with a new user starting their Web3 journey with Apillon every 10 hours.
📊 Total users on the platform (updated: Nov 10, 2023): 1.074
📊 New users per day on average: 2.4
And they didn’t just stop at the door. They went in, played around, and channeled quite some activity through Apillon, building the next big Web3 thing or just testing the waters.
With 48.842 server requests, user engagement was stable every week, and steadily increased month by month.
Compared to Q2 (22.761 server requests) and Q1 (15.576), developers intensified their Q3 keyboard-hitting spree with a 215% and 314% increase, respectively.
To date, the Apillon platform accounted for 82.506 server requests in total, demonstrating its hands-on utility and essential role in the Web3 building ecosystem. With new features and development options rolling in, the analytics landscape will likely steepen further.
And, to complement the stats of new users and their activity, Apillon started tracking IPFS traffic, too. Despite its chronological limitations, the data shows consistent use of Apillon-powered file transfer to IPFS via Crust Network, the pillar of the Web3 Storage and Web3 Hosting services.
1.3 Features & functionalities
As a one-stop-shop for Web3 services, the Apillon platform was designed to not only facilitate advanced technical possibilities, but also to ensure optimal user experience regardless of programming background.
🔑 React and Vue-based templates were added to Apillon’s NFT website template library on GitHub, topping the initial JavaScript-based template and bringing greater flexibility to designing fully decentralized NFT-showcasing websites.
🔑 The Apillon development team successfully reached Milestone 2 of the Substrate Builders Program and finalized another chapter in the SBP-backed pursuit of product’s technical expansion.
🔑 Schrödinger’s NFT for unlocking encrypted files with NFT key embodied three Polkadot parachains’ capabilities and demonstrated the use of cryptographic NFT keys in various scenarios.
🔑 Apillon launched w3ndi, a w3n-based digital address index, in collaboration with KILT Protocol. w3ndi first launched on Nova Wallet to deliver easy contact browsing and selection based on KILT’s DIDs for faster crypto transfers. See 👉 w3ndi guide
🔑 And, to top the UX off with another KILT-based feature, the Apillon dashboard integrated KILT-based log-in option via DID, Sporran wallet or mnemonic phrase, for everyone eager to safeguard their data privacy with decentralized identity.
New website
For all the newcomers as well as the Web3 veterans seeking more information on the world of possibilities with Apillon, the apillon.io website now dons its best look so far.
But it’s not just about what meets the eye. In numerous instances, it conveys the message of the new-gen Web3 building method through videos, tutorials, solutions, and even recipes.
Web3 Recipes
True to the name, Apillon’s Web3 Recipes are condensed tutorials guiding users through the process of creating various Web3 delicacies using the Apillon dashboard — from a decentralized alternative to a popular video platform to an online game with a Web3 backbone.
If you lack inspiration or just want to play around with certain Web3 ingredients, skim through the distilled list of ideas or deep-dive into the first couple of long-form guides (more to come!).
1.4 Events
The Apillon team was active on a couple of occasions where the developer community got together in search of new aha moments, inspiration, and possibly an extended list of contacts.
📍 At sub0 2023, the Polkadot Developer Conference, the word of Apillon was spread twice — first, CTO Tadej Vengust took the Schrödinger’s NFT prototype to the stage, and second, Apillon’s Showcase Station demonstrated what the platform has to offer to users first-hand.
📍 Fast forward a couple of weeks, it was time to bring the developer crowd under our very own roof. Apillon hosted 50 Shades of NFTs, the latest in the series of Polkadot-oriented events in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The talks touched upon different aspects of NFTs, from applications in the art world to technical capabilities and new opportunities for developers to bridge the tangible and digital worlds.
1.5 Community
📜 Following the initial submission of Apillon’s Polkadot Bounty Proposal #81, the revised Apillon Polkadot Treasury Proposal #161 passed successfully, with a strong community conviction in the team’s vision to deliver much-needed features to streamline the Web3 adoption.
The funds will fuel efforts to achieve pre-set product development milestones and boost the adoption of both the Apillon platform in the developer community as well as Web3 technologies in everyday applications.
And, as a (non-fungible) token of appreciation, Apillon issued a series of thank-you NFTs for all the aye-sayers who backed the team’s vision and determination.
Success stories
To date, the Apillon platform has attracted over one thousand developers, both aspiring and well-versed. Of course, some registered just to test the waters before setting off to serious Web3 building. No rush.
Some projects, on the other hand, took the opportunity to build with Apillon by the horns. We’re extremely proud to have been a part of their Web3 architecture and continue working on providing new opportunities to up their decentralized game.
Here are some of them. 👇
Join in and take your leap into Web3.
2 Polkadot ecosystem
One of the most vibrant Web3 ecosystems, the Polkadot chain and its family of parachains, kept a stable pace of building, grinding, testing, and launching.
- 2.1 Polkadot
- 2.2 Crust Network
- 2.3 KILT Protocol
- 2.4 Moonbeam Network
- 2.5 Phala Network
- 2.6 Astar Network
2.1 Polkadot
The vigorous development energy of the Polkadot Network was going strong, with new users flocking in daily in four-digit numbers. The landscape of daily new accounts registered on Polkadot in Q3 resembled the trend of Q2; similarly, the number of daily active accounts.
Some spikes, however, were noticeable, with 25k active accounts registered in mid-September. Based on the number of all public key addresses in the ecosystem, Polkadot now hosts over 4.3m users.
Taking into account all on-chain events across all parachains, the network has hosted over 190m events to date, while Polkadot repositories registered more than 49,000 GitHub code commits.
Another metric, the on-chain XCM activity on Polkadot, demonstrated the value of interoperability across the space. Compared to Q2, the Q3 landscape shows a 20% increase in messages transferred cross-chain.
In other news…
👉 Agile Coretime, a sale-based periodic method of assigning Polkadot coretime, has been greenlit for further development before being approved by Polkadot governance. With Agile Coretime, one of the effects of asynchronous backing, Web3 projects would be able to access Polkadot’s computing power more flexibly, regardless of their size and scope. In its shift from a chain-centric model to an application-centric one, Polkadot aims to provide utility similar to cloud computing services with efficient, demand-based server space allocation. Read more
👉 Polkadot’s asynchronous backing, a way of streamlining the parachain block generation and validation process, is approaching its release on the Rococo testnet. The upgrade could increase Polkadot’s scalability eight-fold, with 1M+ transactions per second, and put into motion a series of other upgrades, including the aforementioned Agile Coretime. Read more
2.2 Crust Network
👉 After launching the EVM Storage Module, Crust extended its storage protocol to the entire EVM ecosystem by combining the Crust mainnet, Polkadot relay chain, and EVM contracts. The brand new Crust protocol is designed to provide storage services for any EVM public chain and subsequently a more comprehensive and flexible storage architecture for the Web3 ecosystem. Read more
👉 Soon after, Crust started supporting the Arbitrum ecosystem, making it the one-click storage protocol across four public chains: Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrub, and zkSync. The Arbitrum support is now included in the EVM Storage feature of Crust Cloud, allowing users to utilize W3Buckets and W3Gateways at much lower fees. Read more
👉 Crust also launched their support of the Astar ecosystem as its storage infrastructure, allowing users to seamlessly store data or pin it via the Crust network. Read more
2.3 KILT Protocol
👉 Apart from using KILT SDK and adapting the open-source code of KILT’s apps, users can now integrate KILT Protocol also via TypeScript code examples for Attesters and Verifiers using the KILT Credential API. Read more
👉 The KILT Suite introduced OpenDID, a no-code solution for integrating KILT log-in to websites, and the CType Hub for existing and new credential types. These latest additions to KILT’s tech stack further simplify users’ interaction with the W3C-compliant decentralized authentication technology and allow them to integrate it without prior experience in Web3. Read more
2.4 Moonbeam Network
👉 Moonbeam’s delegated voting system went live, allocating more tokens to governance to boost decision-making and quorum. Community members can now be represented by experts using flexible delegation options for various voting purposes. Voters with limited time or expertise on a subject can thus still have their say in Moonbeam-based governance, strengthening the role of decentralized decision-making and community opinion. Read more
👉 The network also launched Moonbeam Ignite 2023, a new program pouring liquidity into Moonbeam-based projects. The initiative supports selected platforms and solutions built on the Moonbeam Network with grants to boost their liquidity and spur on-chain activities. Read more
2.5 Phala Network
👉 Phala upgraded LensAPI Oracle’s to Lens v2 and successfully integrated it into the Lens Protocol documentation with a redesign of the underlying architecture. The LensAPI Oracle allows developers to seamlessly access off-chain data for their smart contracts within the Lens ecosystem, now backed by Phat Contract, Phala’s off-chain programming model for making smarter smart contracts. Read more
👉 Phala’s Smart Cookie, a decentralized autonomous agent powered by Phat Contract, was created and launched in just 36 hours. Its personalized Web3 cookie recommendations that preserve data ownership and respect privacy with secure Web3 data storage and AI governed by smart contracts were recognized and awarded by Filecoin and The Graph. Read more
👉 Phat Contract underwent some key upgrades. Tracking Phat usage has become easier with a new analytics page, and a refreshed Bricks UI enhances the user experience. Testnet support is now accessible at bricks-poc5.phala.network, and the Consumer Contract template was redesigned. Watch more
2.6 Astar Network
👉 Prior to the long-awaited Astar’s Supernova release, the Astar Tech Stack was unveiled. It was designed to offer enterprises a seamless way to build their own blockchain networks and related products, utilizing popular programming languages, such as Rust, and ensuring high security and code safety. The Astar Tech Stack has already been utilized by Sony’s Web3 Incubation Program and Toyota’s Web3 Hackathon. Read more
👉 Soon after, Astar’s zkEVM Supernova hit the Web3 shelves, breaking new ground in collaboration with Polygon. Astar’s Supernova is one of the latest Ethereum scalability solutions, combining cutting-edge zero-knowledge (ZK) technology with Ethereum’s security, scalability, and interoperability. Read more
Busy times ahead
With a revised set of developments milestones, the Apillon team is kept busy ticking one task at the time, each adding a piece to the puzzle. More news on the platform upgrades and solutions built in collaboration with our ecosystem partners will be released soon, so stay in the loop.
Get ready for the exciting times on the horizon for the Web3 and crypto worlds and leave a mark with your project. Apillon has got you covered.
⧓ About Apillon
The Apillon platform serves as a unified gateway to the Web3 services provided by linked Polkadot parachains. Following the multi-chain vision, Apillon powers the transition of developers to Web3, simplifying its adoption in the real economy, and expanding its versatility as the ecosystem grows. With Apillon, Web3 services are within reach for every developer, regardless of their background and experience with blockchain technology.
Website | Wiki | GitHub | Twitter | Discord| LinkedIn | Reddit