Polis

All right, we're live. GM, GM, GM everybody. Welcome to what's going to be another great DevNTell. So if you didn't know, DevNTell is a 30-minute window for builders to showcase something they're passionate about or been working on in Web3. It's going to be an awesome project you've been working on, demonstrating testing best practices, automation goodies, smart contracts, how to structure a project, etc. So if you've got a passion for something, this is your opportunity to share it with the Web3 community. And today I am ecstatic to have the Rapid Application Development team and DevRel from Consensys. Meowy, Alejandro, Eric, welcome to the show. Pleasure to have all of you on. And yeah, would you all like to start with a brief introduction about all of yourselves, your background in Web3, how you got into Web3, what you do at Consensys?

Okay, I guess I'll start. I mean, you all know me probably by Meowy. My name is Sushmita, but as I go by Meowy, I'll just use that. My Web3 journey started with Developer DAO. I guess that's already common. So yeah, and after a year and a half I joined Consensys, the RAD team, which is contracted with Consensys. And what we focus on building is like using the use cases based on the products we have, and it's all open-source applications. And we kind of want to focus on the builder's experience side. So that's what we mostly do, just building. And I'll pass it to Alejandro.

Okay. Hi. I'm Alejandro. I'm from Venezuela and yes, in my case I started coding a long time ago, but then I quit and I focused on other stuff. And after the pandemic I started like building again because, I mean, I've been always pretty close to building stuff. So in the pandemic I said, 'Okay, I want to come back to code.' So I started like learning Web3 stuff since it was like a big bump there. So yes, and I've been working for Consensys for seven months. And yeah, really fun creating stuff and all that like open-source code. It's pretty nice. So yes, that's me, actually. So let's go with Eric.

Cool. Yeah, so I'm working really closely with the Rapid Application Development team, as they said, they've been contracting with us for, you know, at least six months and building awesome open-source projects for the Web3 community. So it's been really good to work with them. I'm the Developer Relations Manager at MetaMask. I've been here for a year and a half. I got started coding in 99-2000, mostly doing freelance stuff for probably ten plus years. And then, you know, got into Web2, kind of tech industry, worked for SolarCity and Tesla. But when I left there, I got into Developer Relations. I've worked for about three companies since then for six years. And I've been doing Web3 work since probably 2021, so just after the pandemic got started, mostly because I was working for a database company as a Node.js developer advocate and I was just moonlighting in Web3. But yeah, joined Consensys and MetaMask back in the first month of 2022 and it's been a sweet ride.

Awesome. Yeah, sounds like everyone has had their own kind of interesting journey to this point and I'm ecstatic that you all have converged at this point onto DevNTell to show off your latest and greatest project called Polis. So gang, in the interest of time, do we want to just get into the content?

Yeah, definitely. Let me just present. Okay. Are you able to see my screen, like with the Polis? Okay, awesome. So this is one of our latest dApps that RAD team created. So our main thought behind this creation was that in Web3, if you have boilerplates, templates or anything, they're kind of like shadowed out or siloed out, like they're not really discoverable. So our idea behind that was to have a place where anyone can come in and add probably their open-source project, their boilerplates or their templates. So it works, let me go through the walkthrough of how it works. So it's just, it's all in decentralized storage, we'll get there. So if I connect my wallet, like I have the ability to submit my own application. So let's just say 'dev x tell'. Something, something very cool. And if we just get our wallet around here, you'd go to the media part and upload your images and then get started with it. I'm not going to upload right now because I don't want to spam our database with that, but yeah. But that's how you get started with submitting your own application. And once you submit your application, it's going to show up around here. So and we do have already a couple of applications submitted for us, which is like how, like we have the option if we can show it as Editor's Pick, but as the submission isn't that much yet, so we haven't updated that. But we do want to get there and we do want more community submissions and for our tools. And we mostly used Web3 storage while we are storing all of these. Maybe Ale can get to that part for a bit. Ale, do you want to explain how we use that?

Yeah. Well, basically what we built was a decentralized storage for our dApp. We wanted it to be easy to use. I mean, we don't want users to have that feeling that they are using a Web3 app, but it is a Web3 app. So we wanted to make it as smooth as possible and usable as possible. So we used Infura for IPFS because we're storing with IPFS and IPNS. We want the data to be mutable, so on IPFS we don't have that mutability. So basically we went to IPNS and what we did was creating a file, which is a JSON. It's a big JSON there. It won't be a problem if the app grew too much, but that's a problem for the future. But yeah, basically what we do is to create a record and we update like uploading the whole record again. So if we have the same name on the IPNS part, this will just update the record with that exact name on the database. So that's how we can edit these apps and upload and delete them also. So yes, so it's kind of nice because our idea was to create a smooth dApp that was also decentralized and a place for showcasing these projects and all this. So yeah, it's basically it. I don't know if you have any questions.

Oh, the thing about our dApps that we build is that our main goal was to get more people to join in, like sharing their templates and like boilerplates, because we Web3 community, everyone is doing really cool stuff on the side, but sometimes it doesn't get discoverable by everyone or like we just don't know who did what. So our idea was like, let's build something and make it so that anyone can fork that and create their own version of that. So we're not asking you that, 'Hey, submit your all of your boilerplates over here.' No, just you can just fork it, create your own and just do something with that. And that was the main idea and goal behind this. And we RAD team, we kind of focus on building use cases and like all the developer's experience, so we love to gather feedbacks and then work from there. But also at the same time we wanted a place to showcase whatever we can build. So like, this is probably the first place we are introducing this live and like really early stage. So it's like an alpha thing, but yeah. That was the main goal and that's just how it is. It's a really simple way to say that it's something that you can get your applications in and yeah. Like if we look into like Web2, they have so many things going on, so many templates, even Vercel has their own templates on the side, you can just fork and copy, but in Web3 we don't really have something from the community. So that was our way to try to give back to the community.

So I have a question already. And I know a little bit, so I'm kind of leading here with this question, but I think it's an important one to ask. So as a dApp developer who's building in Web3, is this a place that I want to add my project to? Let's say that I join a hackathon or something and I build something really cool but I'm not doing anything with it afterwards. Do I want to upload that project there or link to it from there? Or should I be kind of trying to create something that's more of a template, something that's a starting point for someone else to start off with? Does it matter which one I link to? Would there be any issue if I did one versus the other?

On that note, I have another question for you. Are you okay with, like let's say you build this really cool project at the hackathon, are you okay that if I fork it and make something with that?

Yeah. So I'm thinking what I might want to do is make like a fork of that application and maybe strip some basic things out of it, but like maybe I've started off from like a really interesting place that I think is useful for other people and I could kind of strip that down, add it to Polis as kind of more of a template. So it kind of answers my question. But I think it's, your answer is kind of, it could be whatever you want, just know that once you link it to the Polis, that it's for the community use. It's a community good at that point that is open source and anyone can fork and do what they want with.

Yes. Totally.

Okay.

Excellent. I love the banter. I guess, a question from my end. This kind of looks to me like a very great foundational starting place for a decentralized App Store. And why I say that is you have the ability for people to upload their projects and with IPNS, you have a natural way to update versions of said project. Like, do you guys foresee that as being a potential fork of Polis or maybe this is what Polis becomes down the line?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, this is an open-source project that is open to everyone who wants to fork it. I mean, we built it with that purpose, you know? We want this to be a project that, I mean, you can show your projects here also if you want, they could be open source. And this is for the community.

I think there's kind of two approaches, right? Like so one, we've created an app that does what we've shown you right now. And you can interact with that application because we pushed it, it's deployed. People can add their own projects to it with their templates. But since it is open source, you could potentially fork the Polis app and use it for a slightly different reason. You could make that marketplace if you wanted to. And I don't think that we have any issue potentially iterating on the app in the future, especially if we gain traction with the community. But what we do at Consensys with the RAD team is we're building out use cases and examples for the community. Sometimes that helps us as DevRels to be able to just take an existing application that the RAD team has built for us and go out and share them and maybe I don't have to do all the work of building that app myself, but it showcases some of the different Consensys technology. So its primary function is these various use cases that our RAD team has built for the community to show off using all these Consensys products together. However, kind of what people do with that is really up to them because it's all open source. So again, you could fork it, you could interact with it the way it is, the way it's deployed. Yeah, that's kind of the way I see it. But yeah, this is just one of the several use cases that we're building. We have other ones as well. Maybe we do another DevNTell at some point with one of our other apps.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. There are a few new people that are rolling in. Meowy, would you mind if you shared the app one more time for the folks perhaps who didn't see it the first time around?

Oh, okay. Yeah, of course.

And I suppose in the meantime, what was the overall kind of driving force to create something like this? Like, I'm sure you've all been in various hackathons and whatnot and were people asking for this type of thing as you were going through all of your chats and whatnot in the conferences? Yeah, I just want to hear kind of the inspiration story behind this.

Well, I mean, I will just share the link that probably you can share with the people there, they can iterate through their devices and check this out. So for building this, I think one of our main drive was to have something that community, our community can use. Also, one other thing that we thought that our RAD team keep building, we keep building these use cases, like one thing after another. And we thought that okay, so what if we have somewhere where we can just put all of these, give them a home? And that was also another driving case for this.

Yeah. So one of the, our RAD team is a unique team over at Consensys. And what we do is we have all of these ideas for projects that as a team and with some other folks at Consensys we kind of vote on. Once we finish building one, we have all these other ideas and we kind of vote on which one we want to make next. Now depending on kind of what, we might have new products coming out. So we have Snaps, we have the MetaMask SDK, we have new features of Linea, we have also a new L2 chain that just came out. So we're always trying to figure out ways that we can use these various products together. And knowing kind of how we want to use all those together, we kind of come up with these various ideas of use cases. And yeah, and we pretty much just all collaborate to put those into a list of apps to vote on. We vote on it and then we just start building it. So it does a few things for us. One is the RAD team, and we also have ambassadors here at Consensys, but the RAD team is really like, they're our in-house group of developers who are testing out not only our existing products but the ones that we're maybe just releasing or iterating on. So it gives us a team in-house to start working with these various products, to give us feedback, like super valuable feedback. So the feedback that we get out of a conference at a hackathon of someone hacking on like the SDK or something is super valuable. It's a whole another level of valuable for a team that's within Consensys who are just consuming all of these different products, figuring out different ways to use them together, potentially coming up with new use cases that we didn't think of. And so it's valuable to the company, it's valuable to the products in giving feedback to them. And it's also valuable to the DevRels because something they might build may either inspire me or give me the ability to kind of take it and run with it to do demos or to showcase. So that's pretty much the level of thought that goes into it. Beyond that, it's all just, 'Oh, we voted on this one, let's build it out and let's bang our heads on it until we figure it out.' So it keeps us working, it keeps us building. And we come up with really cool stuff. And each of them, they're not really demos. These applications are all meant to be pushed to production. They're built in a way that are production-ready. So as a developer out there who might come across Polis or one of our other applications, you kind of know that if you fork it and pull it down and clone it, aside from some basic configuration, that the code is written in a way where you could potentially deploy it. Whereas as a DevRel, I'm usually more creating demos that sometimes aren't meant for deployment. They put a lot more work into their apps than I do in some of my demos. So that's really cool.

Yeah, I mean, one of our goals is that users can clone it and deploy it. So if someone did that, that would be like really great for us and give us some feedback and tell us about the process and if they need more information or something like that. That would be super, super helpful for us. So yes. Excellent. Narb: And I guess maybe an obvious question with an obvious answer, but will all these mastermind use case apps, when they're built, be uploaded to Polis?

We've actually discussed that. So it's like it's weird because it's like here's an app that we build that we can potentially just add all the other things that we create. And even me as a DevRel, I can create something, I have a workshop that I give that uses SDK, Linea, Infura, MetaMask, and and it really is like a starting point for a dApp. So I'm probably going to upload that to Polis. And most of the projects that I build are those kind of, they're apps that are meant to get developers started on a fully built app that uses some of you know a specific technology or maybe multiple of our technologies. So absolutely. We've thought about that and we will probably be putting most of our dApps from here on out in Polis as at least examples. Excellent.

That's what I would do. Excellent. And I may have missed it before, but does it cost anybody anything to be able to upload to Polis?

No, nothing, it's completely covered. Okay, got you.

Yeah, that's one of the perks of using IPNS because it's free. I mean, we thought on working with smart contracts and save all the info on a smart contract, but that would cost, you know. So we wanted to get rid of that. So yes. Got you.

And was the cost factor one of the driving factors, sorry, for choosing one decentralized storage provider over another? Or yeah?

Yeah, yeah. Totally.

It was.

Got you. Yeah, most of our decisions rely on making sure that whatever we're building is as accessible as possible. Now, of course, if you fork something and then go and want to deploy it or something, that there may be some costs involved on your end, but as far as adding that dApp to our Polis, it's pretty simple. We're just saving some links and and maybe adding an image to represent it, but outside of that, it's pretty lightweight. So there's no reason to charge anyone anything for it.

Excellent. And is it restricted to just like the Ethereum ecosystem? If someone builds something on Solana or Near protocol, can they upload their project to Polis?

Yes, totally. Yeah. It's open for everyone that has an open-source project that wants to share with the community.

Yeah.

Love it. And I suppose how, how would you prevent, say a company that wants to upload a non open-source project to your to the marketplace? Is there a way to police that at the moment or?

Well, that's a conversation we had and yes, I mean, right now it's just us like checking on that. But yeah, we if it grows and and we have users, we'll definitely look into that because I mean, we're creating example dApps and we have to move forward although on that. So yes. That's a thing we're now looking but yeah.

As apps get added, there's review, but go ahead, Sushmita.

Yeah, like we wanted to add something that where we can review for the dApp that's being added, but currently it's mostly us and like the dApps that are like, we get good vibes from that are being added, so we haven't done that, but as RAD team, like we work from from one dApp to another, so we had to move to our next one. But if there is a demand for it, we plan to add that then. Sweet.

But we're keeping tabs on it. So, you know, things that we're looking out for is stuff that doesn't belong, stuff that could be malicious, anything like that, right? But there's there's not really an automated process to where if you if you upload, if you add one of your projects, but we we could remove it if we if we needed to if it's something that's harmful to the community or doesn't represent our core values or something like that. But for the most part, we want everyone to be able to use it and as long as it's legit, yeah, it could be Solana, it could be Ethereum, it could be anything. We're also moving kind of Consensys and MetaMask into a kind of a more multi-chain future, so we definitely want, we would love to see people from other communities and other ecosystems adding projects there. We want to help everyone.

Awesome. I love to hear that. And so suppose all the fine Developer DAO folks that are watching today have their open-source projects that they want to share on Polis. Is there any, once they upload it, I remember you showed there's a potential like Editor's Pick, if one of these projects gets tagged with an Editor's Pick, is there any type of like marketing that Consensys would do for those apps to get more spotlight on them? Or what's in it for the end dev for uploading their project to your platform?

You want me to take that one?

Yep.

Okay. So it's I think if you wanted to get showcased, adding your application now would be a really great idea, being one of the first ones in, you're more likely to probably end up on our Editor's Picks because we don't have a lot to choose from right now. Absolutely, one of the things that we're we want to do is as as applications are added, I kind of call them linked rather than uploaded, but um as as as we link to these other dApps and these templates and these starter projects, if we see something really cool, one we're going to add it to the Editor's Pick and two we're going to find ways to socialize that through our social medias at the very least, if not maybe contacting those folks and seeing what we could do further than that. Um so that's completely on the table, but you know, they they would have to add it first and see where things go, but we really like to showcase um great use cases and really cool dApps, especially if it's if it's valuable for the community and valuable for dApp developers, no matter what ecosystem, yeah, we're eager to share it and and to pump them up a little bit. Awesome.

Basically you got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Alejandro: It's one more place to socialize your application or your ideas and your work. Go ahead, Alejandro. No, no, no, I was just going to to confirm what you said, it's nothing to lose and it will be great. Sweet. And folks, the link to Polis, the app, will is on the description of this video, and I believe the GitHub is also there, if it's not, it will be added shortly after this. But unfortunately that brings us to time. What a wonderful conversation and I love seeing this type of thing being built out. So thank you so much for sharing this alpha on DevNTell here, and really looking forward to folks uploading their apps and getting more spotlight and continuing to see how people fork, fork this and kind of mold this to to what they want to build.

Thank you for having us. Narb: My pleasure.

Yeah.

It was great. Thanks.

And before everybody leaves, I want to share the QR code for everybody to scan for being an attendee here at DevNTell. Gang here, I have a separate one that I'll share with you after the fact, but you're free to scan this one as well if you'd like. But essentially what you want to do is you want to scan this with your regular QR code scanner, fill out the the form so you will have your chance to get, well actually you will get your attendee NFT for being a attendee on DevNTell today, airdropped to you within a couple of days. You'll have an hour and a half from right now to be able to claim before the form closes, so definitely get on that. And with that again, Eric, Alejandro, Meowy, thank you so much for coming on the show, I really appreciate you guys taking the time and yeah, with that I want to wish everybody a Happy Friday, Happy weekend, and that we will see you back here next week. All the best. See ya. Alejandro: Bye. Meowy: See ya.