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139 | 139 |
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140 | 140 | I have been an active builder in the Polkadot ecosystem for years and developed [Subalfred](https://github.com/hack-ink/subalfred), a previous W3F-funded project. Subalfred is a developer-oriented **toolbox for Substrate**, offering a collection of practical CLI utilities such as account encoding/decoding, storage key helpers, and other “small but useful” commands. It was built for developers and received positive feedback for simplifying day-to-day technical work. |
141 | 141 |
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| 142 | +Part of the motivation for starting this project came from my reflection on the [discussion here](https://github.com/w3f/Grants-Program/pull/2373#issuecomment-2316583336). |
| 143 | +After delivering Subalfred, I kept using it myself and saw how stable and useful it had become, but also realized an important limitation: **being a CLI tool naturally limits adoption**. |
| 144 | +Most users prefer to open a simple webpage or interact through a chatbot instead of installing a command-line program. |
| 145 | +Even though Subalfred can compute hashes or query chain data easily, it still feels inaccessible to many. |
| 146 | + |
| 147 | +That feedback made me rethink how such developer tools could reach a broader audience. |
| 148 | +Polkagent is a direct response — a next step that keeps the reliability and precision of Subalfred’s utilities but adds **an AI-friendly, natural-language layer**. |
| 149 | +Users and agents can now “ask” rather than “type”, and the tool can later evolve into web or conversational forms without losing its Substrate foundation. |
| 150 | + |
142 | 151 | With **Polkagent**, I want to take that same experience further — this time not just for developers but for **all Polkadot users**. The idea is to bring the convenience of Subalfred’s tooling into an **AI-driven, natural-language experience**, where users can interact with the blockchain simply by asking questions instead of running technical commands. |
143 | 152 |
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144 | 153 | In the past few years, I’ve observed, both as a long-time Substrate developer and as a moderator on Substrate Stack Exchange, that **the ecosystem has lost momentum**. Many teams have left Polkadot, and new users find it very hard to get started. The technology remains powerful, but the **entry barrier is high** — you need to understand runtimes, metadata, storage layouts, and upgrade cycles before you can do anything meaningful. |
@@ -211,7 +220,7 @@ Personal. (no legal structure entry) |
211 | 220 | ### Overview |
212 | 221 |
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213 | 222 | - **Total Estimated Duration:** ~1 month |
214 | | -- **Full‑Time Equivalent (FTE):** ~3.5 |
| 223 | +- **Full‑Time Equivalent (FTE):** ~2.5 |
215 | 224 | - **Total Costs:** **30,000 USD** |
216 | 225 | - **DOT %:** **50%** (vested DOT), remaining **50%** in **USDC (Polkadot AssetHub)** |
217 | 226 |
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