Polkadot & Astar Network SpeedRun

Astar Initiatives
1

Hello Astar Network team and community, sending you a warm greeting!

I am Carlos Rodríguez, currently the only Astar Network technical (lead) ambassador in LatAm. I am also a DevRel, technical writer, and manager of Spanish-speaking development communities.

On this occasion, I am presenting on behalf of @EzioRed and myself to share the results of our recent technical workshop in the city of Valencia, Venezuela, the country’s second-largest city, and to request a small budget that will allow us to advance with this project.

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On Friday, July 28th and Saturday, July 29th, we held an intensive technical workshop we called “Polkadot SpeedRun”, in this workshop, we focused on showcasing and teaching about Polkadot architecture, Substrate SDK, development toolings, XCM and XVM, and smart contract development using Astar Network and the Swanky suite.

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During the two days, developers learned about Polkadot.js, Substrate SDK, ink!, swanky CLI and swanky node, Shibuya testnet, Astar portal, and Astar SDK.

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For the event, we had the participation of 6 qualified and pre-selected developers. We ensured that their skills were adequate to digest the content delivered during the workshop. At the end of the two-day workshop, we began the construction of a small project that is still in progress, with the aim of putting into practice what was learned during the workshop.

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Now, we want to continue and expand this program. Therefore, we have created a Telegram group to organize events, conduct virtual workshops, build community projects, and create tools that serve as scaffold code for hackathons. Here are our most important resources:

Luma of the event: Workshop para aprender a desarrollar en Blockchain - Polkadot SpeedRun · Luma
GitHub repository: GitHub - Juminstock/polkadot-speedrun: Intensive technical workshop focused on the certification of Polkadot technology.
Kanban workspace: Polkadot SpeedRun 🏃🏻‍➡️ · GitHub

We want to make Astar shine in LatAm! We started with this great group of developers but over time we want to expand and get a larger portfolio of developers.

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IMPORTANT: this was a work done thanks to the ambassador applicant @EzioRed and with the support of Polkadot’s treasury.

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Awesome guys!!! Congratulations?

When zkEVM? I think DOT and WASM narrative didn’t catch the boost everyone was expecting - even us (Astar). I would love to see you guys trying to boost zkEVM ecosystem and development.

Thanks again.

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Great, thank you.
The report says July, is June correct?

Also, how are the workshop participants doing afterwards?
Do you think you can continue to develop and contribute in any way?

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@pitcoin777
Thanks for sharing your thoughts here mate. We mainly focused on Astar L1 in this workshop because it was originally a workshop focused on Polkadot, its tools and ecosystem. During the whole workshop we used Astar L1 as the number one contract building blockchain network within Polkadot, mainly because it is the ecosystem in which I have more knowledge and experience.

We brought the results here to show the whole community the work we have been doing with Astar @EzioRed and myself.

But, of course we did! If everyone agrees, in a couple of weeks I would like to request funds from the treasury to focus 100% on Astar and its networks (Substrate and zkEVM), we have a community of 10 super active developers that is growing exponentially, we keep building dev community around Astar!

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@you425
Oh my bad, sorry hahaha, thanks for catching it!

The participants are really excited to keep contributing, they are thrilled to have met the Polkadot ecosystem and want to do great things, @EzioRed and I have some plans to keep them active and motivated, as I mentioned above, in a couple of weeks I would like to apply for some funds from the treasury to have this team of developers super focused on the Astar ecosystem.

We are even working on this: Polkadot SpeedRun 🏃🏻‍➡️ · GitHub

It will be our working board for events, virtual workshops, community projects and more.

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The efforts of both Juminstock and EzioRed in Latin America are impressive. Their region-specific approach, technical depth, and ongoing engagement are particularly noteworthy.

Their transparent project management using GitHub will likely contribute to community growth. If treasury funding comes through, we can expect even further development. I support this initiative and have high hopes for its future.

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Okay, thank you!
Well, I look forward to your proposal!

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@bao
I really appreciate your post, mate, that’s right! We are extremely focused on LatAm and I am sure that in the near future we will prove to Astar that this region is worthy of more attention.

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It seems like an interesting event that offers knowledge and also feels warm and intimate. In any case, thank you very much. =)

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10

Great Job, and thanks for the report ! :slight_smile:

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Amazing!
Really good job!
Continue to build and educate others :muscle:

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I appreciate, buddy!

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Oh yeah! :sunglasses:

Thank you, GuiGou!

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Community, I have created a proposal to do something big around the Astar zkEVM brand. It involves an entire content program, sponsorship of a hackathon, and the establishment of the Astar House, all centered around one of the largest and most important events in LatAm, Ethereum Mexico. Check out the proposal here! :point_down:t3:

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I am super excited to check the next workshops, man! Please keep building the dev community. Thanks for it.

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@pitcoin777
That’s the way it’s going to be, my friend! I will keep the focus on educating and promoting more educational spaces for hackers in the ecosystem. Based on that goal, I ask you to see our proposal to hold a hackathon with Astar as a sponsor in Mexico:

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Incredible work, Carlos!

Like @pitcoin777 mentioned, we are seeing some moves from Astar and even Polkadot to not focus on Ink/Substrate anymore. Even the Polkadot JAM will change the virtual machine to RiscV and not WASM anymore. Do you think it would be better to just focus on Solidity and maybe the new Polkadot VM that will eventually be released?

The risk is focusing on educating new developers in a language that probably will not have great demand in the future.

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@defiguy
While Polkadot JAM and Agile Coretime are set to change many rules of the game, we must not forget that Polkadot is built with the Substrate SDK. Substrate has modules made with Rust, and ink! is 100% targeted at these modules, so it won’t become obsolete as we might think :slight_smile:

Polkadot SpeedRun is a program created to educate new developers or guide current developers to a higher level. If Polkadot changes its virtual machine, the program will adapt to educate around that new topic. We will use Astar’s Substrate network for this program whenever possible because it is one of the most robust contract layers in the ecosystem.

Astar SpeedRun will be the sister program to this current one and will focus on showcasing all of Astar’s networks (Substrate and zkEVM). I will create technical guides, tutorial videos, and a strong community that generates events (like the hackathon we want to sponsor and more).

In conclusion, while Polkadot JAM is set to change much of the current architecture, there is still time before we see real implementations of this. In the meantime, we will continue learning and using ink! Once JAM is implemented, we will steer the program in that direction :muscle:t2:

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Hello, dear community and fellow ambassadors and core team members.

Following the rules of our governance model and having passed the 7 days of discussion, I have taken the trouble to create the vote for the hackathon proposal in Townhall. I kindly ask you to deposit your opinions in the vote.

Thank you very much!

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Joined successfully. Thank you very much. =)

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