How to Build a dApp on Polkadot: The Ultimate Guide for Polkadot Startups
Wondering how to build a dApp on Polkadot? This article will guide you in the right direction so that you can take your dApp to the market faster.
Decentralized apps (dApps) are growing at a faster pace. Most high-value business sectors like decentralized finance (DeFi), real estate, security documentation, health care, education, digital assets, and supply chain are prioritizing dApps.
If you have also decided to build a dApp for your business that needs to serve B2B clients, direct customers, or internal staff, Polkadot is the right choice.
This article will help you understand some challenges you might be facing, how Polkadot resolves those bottlenecks of dApp development, and the pathway to building a dApp on Polkadot.
Challenges in dApp Development
The primary challenge is in figuring out how to make your decentralized app cross-compatible. The popular blockchain for dApps is Ethereum and it suffers from many issues. Network congestion, high gas fees, interoperability, etc., are some of the common issues.
When you rely on non-interoperable blockchains, you can not send data or digital assets through your dApp from one blockchain network to another. You need to develop different dApps for all the popular blockchains to attract all the customer bases.
You can however build bridging solutions. That affair is complex, costly, and rarely customer-friendly. The customer wants seamless operation on a single app. They specifically do not like to swap through multiple apps and complex workflows.
Scalability is also an issue for dApp development using widely-used dApp development platforms like Ethereum. When your customer base is small, the transactions on the Ethereum main net are manageable.
But if your app becomes a superhero in the market and everyone wants to send transactions through it, you will be in big trouble. Operational costs will increase drastically. For instance, the CryptoKitties went viral in December 2017, and subsequent network congestion on the Ethereum network.
Reasons to Build a dApp on Polkadot
Due to the above obvious challenges, you have chosen Polkadot for scalable, flexible, secure, and user-friendly dApp development. Now explore some strong reasons why various industries are relying on Polkadot.
1. Cross-Blockchain Compatibility
Polkadot enables you to keep multiple dApps in sync from different Parachains of the network. Also, through cross-network bridges, it lets your dApps communicate with other blockchains like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and so on.
2. Sharded Blockchain
Its sharded or parallel design of multiple blockchains centered on the Relay Chain facilitates multiple transactions thereby reducing network congestion.
3. Agile Upgrades
Polkadot supports fork-less blockchain upgrades. You do not need to pause the operation of the blockchain while your blockchain developers are upgrading the whole system.
4. Governance Transparency
All DOT token holders have a say in the Relay Chain’s governance policy. While owners of all the Parachains can have their unique governance policies.
5. Cross-Chain Collaboration
Polkadot’s Parachain model enables software developers, startups, and enterprises to use blockchain for various use cases. Now, these blockchains and their respective dApps can communicate with each other securely for collaboration.
For example, syncing a banking app to communicate with a KYC app for customer authentication while these apps are on different Parachains of Polkadot.
6. Supports Multiple Programming Languages
If your blockchain programming language is WebAssembly compatible, you can use it in the Polkadot runtime environment.
7. The superiority of Parachains Over Smart Contracts
You can put multiple complex reasoning in one Parachain, like unique fees system, DAO procedures, dApp monetization schemes, etc. This would otherwise require multiple smart contracts on the Ethereum network and incur more delays and fees.
8. Settles Transactions Faster
Since the Relay Chain itself handles all the security measures, Parachains can do more on business logic, user experience, etc. Since Parachains have nothing to do with security validations, they process transactions truly fast.
Build a dApp on Polkadot: The Prerequisites
1. Substrate
Substrate is the popular software development framework for dApps. It offers node templates that you can recycle for dApp development. The tool minimizes the development time and allows you to focus on user experience and business logic. It offers almost everything you need like:
- Blockchain development module
- Authoring blocks
- State transition functions
- The networking and database layer
- Queues for transactions
2. Other Requirements
- Create a development environment by installing and configuring Rust
- Expert knowledge of WebAssembly and Wsam interpreter
- Expertise to read and understand the development guidelines of Polkadot
- Coding on a programming terminal
Build a dApp on Polkadot: Understanding the Network Architecture
The following components will take part in the consensus roles of the Parachins:
1. Relay Chain
It is the backbone of the primary decentralized ledger of the Polkadot blockchain. It facilitates security, network consensus, and interoperability.
2. Parachains
These are independent blockchains connected to the Relay Chain with their own token system. Also, these chains can communicate with each other.
3. Network Bridges
A protocol to sync data and digital assets between Polkadot and other blockchains like Ethereum.
4. Nominators
These are the individuals who will stake DOT token in the system and gets voting rights to choose reliable validators.
5. Collators
Collators are individuals who collect shard transactions, maintain shards, and produce proofs for validators.
6. Validators
These individuals stake DOT and participate in validating transaction proofs sent via collators. Validators essentially keep the Relay Chain secure.
7. Fishermen
Collators and Parachain full nodes perform the role of network monitoring to bring malpractices to the validators’ notice and are known as Fishermen.
Build a dApp on Polkadot: The Steps
1. Create a Blockchain App on Substrate
Substrate has many preformatted dApp templates. Pick one that matches your business needs. You can clone the template from GitHub.
Once you have imported a clone, go to its destination folder and open the Rust repository. Here, you can inject more features, remove features, and customize functionalities.
Now, you can compile and run the Parachain node inside the development environment.
2. Create a Front-End Interface
In this phase, you need to create a front-end application through which the users will interact with the Parachain node.
3. Test the dApp
Once the app is ready, you need to test it extensively before you can take it to the public. For Polkadot parachain testing purposes you can use Rococo or Westend. Rococo is the most widely-used Polkadot parachain testnet since it uses the consensus mechanism known as proof-of-authority.
4. Deploy the dApp
If the dApp’s performance metrics are satisfactory, you can publish the app on Web 3.0 platforms like Submit Dapp, DappRadar, TokenPocket, etc.
Wrapping Up
Now you know the holdups you could face in developing a dApp and how Polkadot blockchain helps you to eliminate those. You have also explored the steps to build a decentralized blockchain application on Polkadot.
