R0GUE's 2024 Year in Review

At R0GUE we have been building tirelessly over the past year and would like to take a moment to pause and reflect on everything that has been achieved since spinning out of Parity. In 2024, we have dedicated ourselves to advancement of the following initiatives to support and grow the ecosystem, with a primary focus on enhancing developer experience:

• Pop Network
• Pop CLI
• ink! Advancement
• Paseo Maintenance
• Advisory Services

We have made excellent advancements in achieving our objectives of creating better DevEx and promoting the use of ink! as a forward thinking smart contract language within the Polkadot ecosystem. Additionally, we also provide an update on our plans for Pop Network and Pop CLI in early 2025 below!

Pop Network

Since our inception, our primary objective has been to enhance the developer experience on Polkadot, predominantly by providing first-class support for Polkadot-native smart contracts (ink!) with Pop Network. We introduced this vision on the Polkadot forum in late ‘23, presented it at Sub0 Asia in March ‘24, secured treasury funding for it in May '24, presented at Polkadot Decoded Asia in September ‘24, and showcased the novel cross-chain smart contract functionalities possible for developers using messaging and ink! at Sub0 Reset Bangkok in October '24.

Pop Network went live on Paseo testnet at the end of March ‘24. You can obtain Paseo (PAS) tokens here, transfer them to Pop here, and deploy a contract by following our excellent developer documentation! We have focused on creating smart contract APIs that are versioned and stable to allow immutable smart contracts to safely use Pop Network’s functionality. This infrastructure is designed for adding runtime-level building blocks for smart contracts to use.

Before starting with our future plans for Pop Network, we want to highlight some of the challenges, and pivots we have decided to make. One of the biggest changes is the introduction of the PolkaVM and pallet-revive. As these groundbreaking features approach release we have necessarily redirected our efforts to accommodate them within Pop Network, Pop CLI and ink!. This has resulted in a postponement in delivering the originally intended features for Pop Network.

Enthusiastically looking forward, we are aiming to launch Pop Network in Q1 of 2025. We are excited to provide one of the first smart contract platforms using the innovative PolkaVM (PVM). Our first launch will be focused on PVM contracts, along with helping to shape the ink! tooling to work with PVM. Additionally, ink! contracts will have first-class support enabling a new generation of contracts that can natively use cross-chain messaging.

In parallel, we will also work on finalizing more features, such as more comprehensive messaging support. This will provide an even more powerful cross-chain messaging API, allowing contracts to use and query data from other chains for trustless interactions and utilization of the Polkadot ecosystem. This messaging approach will use a hybrid of XCM and ISMP to enable two-way cross-chain interactions, realizing the interoperability vision central to Polkadot.

Despite the challenges and setbacks, we are more optimistic and relentless than ever in the pursuit of our objectives and will soon release an updated roadmap for 2025!

Pop CLI

In 2024 we also introduced the Pop CLI, a command-line interface designed to enhance the Polkadot developer experience. Parachain developers can rapidly scaffold new projects, generate new pallets, launch multichain local networks in seconds, and more. Pop CLI also has comprehensive support for ink! smart contracts with starter templates, automatic node management for one-command deployment & testing, in addition to seamless contract interactions. Pop CLI empowers developers to perform complex parachain and smart contract development tasks with ease, boosting productivity and reducing development time.

Key features include:

• Developer-Friendly Toolkit: 8 parachain templates including both the OpenZeppelin Generic Runtime & EVM templates, easy pallet creation, developer environment setup, wallet integration, parachain onboarding to Paseo, and more.
• Comprehensive Testing Environment: Launch a local network in seconds, set up cross-chain channels (HRMP), or even interact with a chain to test functionality.
• Seamless Smart Contract Development: Support for ink! smart contracts with 9 starter templates, automated node management, contract deployment interaction, wallet integration, and more!

Pop CLI has seen noteworthy success and adoption in the community since launch. In this New Year, Pop CLI has:

• ~273 monthly active users.
• 3,093 installations from crates.io.
• 3.62k usages in the past 30 days, ~21k total.

Furthermore, we were honoured that the Web3 Foundation awarded a Decentralized Futures grant to Pop CLI in August ‘24, recognizing its potential to revolutionize developer onboarding by simplifying the creation, testing, and deployment of parachains and smart contracts through simple command line operations.

We did not do this alone and have received external contributors from 9 individuals contributing several thousands lines of code.

Pop CLI 2024: Key Development Milestones and Feature Highlights

• March ‘24: MVP
  • Unveiled Pop CLI at Sub0 Asia.
• May ‘24: v0.1.0 Released
  • Introduced parachain project instantiation from templates for rapid project creation.
  • Enabled detection and installation to help developers seamlessly set up their Polkadot development environment.
• June ‘24: v0.2.0 Released
  • Integrated the secure and audited OpenZeppelin parachain templates.
  • Made smart contract development easier by automatically launching a local node to deploy and test contracts.
• July ‘24: v0.3.0 Released
  • Introduced new ink! smart contract starter templates.
  • Simplified build, test, and deployment processes for smart contracts. Help from Moliholy.
• October ‘24: v0.4.0 Released
  • Launched a mechanism to generate a new pallet with guided customization, generating a solid foundation for further innovation. Contributed by tsenovilla.
  • Several bug fixes and DevEx improvements
• November ‘24: v0.5.0 Released
  • Integrated OpenZeppelin EVM template along with general UX improvements.
• December ‘24: v0.6.0 Released
  • Introduced wallet integration for secure signing using a browser wallet.
  • Introduced functionality to call a chain or contract with ease.
  • Enabled HRMP channel setup for seamless cross-chain testing.

Finally, looking forward, by April ‘25 we will deliver our 4th and final milestone for the grant awarded by the Web3 Foundation which will expand parachain support. As an added bonus, we will add support for PVM-based ink! contracts.

Check out the CLI and install it here to spin up your first project! Additionally, please find the docs for installation here.

ink! Advancement

We are passionate promoters of ink! as the smart contract language of choice for leveraging the capabilities of Polkadot. At R0GUE we want to write code in Rust and have provided numerous workshops, webinars, and talks to educate the developer community about ink!’s benefits and capabilities.

ink! is a Polkadot-native Rust based smart contract language that shares the same ideals, security, and resilience as Polkadot. It uses the same code libraries and technology as the Polkadot SDK, allowing for seamless integration with runtimes and Polkadot’s multichain composability. ink! enables developers to leverage Polkadot’s native functionality while maintaining robust security inherited from Rust. In 2024, ink! was transitioned from Parity to the stewardship of the ink! Alliance. We are thankful to have worked with such strong proponents of ink! in 2024 and are looking forward to building on our collaborations in 2025!

In addition to the ongoing development of Pop Network we have engaged in the following community initiatives to help promote and grow the ink! community:

• ink! Alliance: we became one of the founding member teams of the ink! Alliance which benefits the ink! community as a whole through a commitment to its advancement, pushing the boundaries of what is possible with smart contracts. Among other objectives, the foundational ink! Alliance proposal also contained scope to enable ink! compilation to PVM and make it compatible with Plaza!
• ink!ubator: we are enthusiastically anticipating our new role as curators for the ink!ubator 2.0.

Paseo Maintenance

As part of our commitment to the Polkadot ecosystem, we have continued to be one of the main contributors and maintainers of Paseo, Polkadot's community testnet. This ensures a robust and reliable testing environment for all developers.

We have provided ongoing support services via the Paseo Testnet Support channel in addition to supporting 51 onboarding support issues on the Paseo Testnet Support repository.

Through this commitment we support new project onboardings to Paseo on an ongoing basis and have had the pleasure to support the following projects during 2024: Ajuna, Amplitude, Aventus, Bifrost, Darwinia, Koi, Frequency, Hydration, Hyperbridge, Ideal Network, Integritee, KILT, Laos, Litentry, Mythos/Muse, Myriad Social, NeuroWeb, Nodle, EWF/PEX, Watr, Xode, Zeitgeist, RegionX, and Pop Network!

Advisory Services

In 2024, we worked with a number of select projects on an advisory basis. Beyond our core community focused educational and technical contributions, we provide technical advisory and development services for projects building with the Polkadot SDK / Substrate. Our services are provided on either a managed service or team augmentation basis and tailored to meet client needs.

If you are planning a new project with ink!, the Polkadot SDK / Substrate or would like to better understand the advantages of building Web3 technologies with us, feel free to reach out and have a conversation. We are always excited to explore new projects and collaborations!

Closing Thoughts

For R0GUE, 2024 has been a year of foundational achievements and collaborations with teams in the Polkadot ecosystem. As we enter 2025 we are very excited to build on these efforts, launch Pop Network on mainnet and begin the next phase of Polkadot adoption!

Happy New Year! 🎊

Go R0GUE with us and help drive the future of Web3 innovation!

X: @gor0gue X: @onpopio Linkedin: r0gue Website: r0gue.io TG: Pop Network Updates TG: Pop Technical Support