Solidity on Polkadot Course: Unexpected Gains from Classroom to Ecosystem Building

Recently, we launched a course titled "Solidity on Polkadot," originally intended to test the popularity of the PolkaVM development toolchain. To our surprise, the number of enrollments reached 219, with an assignment completion rate of nearly 38%. While these figures are indeed impressive, what is even more intriguing is that we have identified the future direction of the Polkadot Chinese developer ecosystem.

This article will share the insights we gained from this new course, as well as how to outline a roadmap towards "ecological construction".

Course Intention: Exploring Real Needs

Polkadot is advancing its 2.0 upgrade, focusing on cross-chain unification, lowering barriers, and enhancing the developer experience. PolkaVM, as an Ethereum-compatible execution environment, may serve as an entry point for Web2 or EVM developers to engage with Polkadot. However, in the Web3 world, technical narratives often become superficial, with very few willing to give it a try. Many people's impressions of Polkadot still linger on stages such as "complex," "difficult to understand," and "high barriers."

We hope to understand through this course:

1. The real focus of developers on the new VM environment
2. Is PolkaVM an opportunity or a challenge for them?
3. Can the toolchain support actual project development?
4. Which stage of the development process is most prone to issues?

This course is not a deep lecture aimed at experts, but an experiment that allows developers to experience it firsthand. We hope to be guides for beginners, accompanying them through the initial stages.

Four Unexpected Discoveries

1. High enthusiasm for learning

Surprisingly, most participants are not here for rewards or certificates. 80% are from the post-90s generation, and a quarter are current students who voluntarily spend 1-2 hours a day learning. This intensity of learning indicates that they genuinely want to try and master this technology.

Some people start learning from scratch just to deploy a contract by themselves; others hope to add the experience of "successfully deploying a DApp in the PolkaVM environment" to their resumes. They are not only concerned with the technical strength of Polkadot but also want to use this friendly environment to verify whether they are suitable for entering the Web3 field.

2. Being experienced does not mean it is easy to get started.

Many participants with rich development experience, and even practical experience in EVM projects, may still feel confused by some terminological differences after entering the Polkadot ecosystem. For example, they may question the concept of PolkaVM, the positioning of AssetHub, the difference between gas limit and Ethereum, etc.

The problem is not about not understanding the code, but rather that the familiar cognitive models suddenly fail, requiring a re-understanding of a bunch of concepts, which discourages many people.

Our course has alleviated this cognitive gap to some extent, making participants realize that the development experience of PolkaVM is actually not difficult; it's just that the concepts and approaches are different. This is crucial because many people abandon an ecosystem not because they can't program, but because they give up at first glance when they don't understand the documentation.

This reminds us that development documentation should not only provide knowledge but also help users complete cognitive transitions. In the future, we plan to add key differences between PolkaVM and other mainstream VMs (such as EVM) in the documentation to help more people avoid detours and increase those "aha" moments.

3. The learner becomes an "invisible contributor"

Although most participants are newcomers to contract development, they are bold in asking questions, reporting bugs, and daring to test the technical boundaries. For example, someone pointed out that Remix compiled without issues, but the on-chain deployment failed. This feedback directly prompted us to submit multiple toolchain issues to Parity, which facilitated the improvement of documentation and bug fixes.

Experienced developers may have gotten used to bypassing certain small issues, but novices are more likely to encounter difficulties. This, in turn, makes the course a valuable problem collector. For participants, the course serves as a buffer; for us, these real issues are the most intuitive thermometer for measuring the PolkaVM ecosystem experience.

4. The overall process experience determines whether developers will continue.

Many people leave not because they "cannot learn", but because they "encounter problems that cannot be solved". For example, the same code may fail in different environments, various development tools may behave inconsistently across different environments, documentation may lack the necessary information, and error messages may not be intuitive, all of which can lead developers to give up.

We recognize that developer experience (DevEx) is not just about a smooth coding process, but encompasses the entire workflow from environment setup, problem solving to deployment results, and even future upgrades, whether it is smooth and reliable. Any issues at any stage can lead to a loss of confidence among developers. Therefore, this is not only a technical issue but also a design issue related to emotions and trust.

Course Value: Connecting Tools, Users, and Expectations

In the early stages of the ecosystem, the significance of developer courses goes far beyond one-way knowledge transfer, nor is it solely to cultivate the next Web3 entrepreneurial star. We achieved three valuable outcomes from this course:

1. Chain Pressure Testing: The Uniswap V2 contract migration exercises in the course exposed many unexpected issues, such as gas inaccuracies, path bugs, and inconsistent performance of development tools. These issues are obstacles for developers and represent "early symptoms" for us, helping to identify and address problems in a timely manner.

2. User Profiles and Conversion Clues: By understanding the questions and concerns of the students, we have learned about their needs regarding architecture, development efficiency, and tool compatibility. This information helps us improve the user guide for PolkaVM.

3. Establish Product Expectations: The course acts like a multi-episode advertisement, demonstrating the user experience and value of PolkaVM through practical demonstrations. Even if certain features are not yet fully developed, having people use and wait is a positive signal for the development of the ecosystem.

In the past, people often said that Polkadot lacked users. In fact, the main users were the infrastructure teams building the chain, not DApp developers. With the launch of PolkaVM, contract developers can finally get involved. Although new technologies always raise doubts, it is precisely this "new" that provides small teams with the opportunity to overtake on a curve.

We successfully migrated Uniswap V2 to PolkaVM in the course, sparking a heated discussion in the community. This is not because Uniswap itself is particularly novel, but because it is the first time we see it running on Polkadot. Considering that Polkadot is still a high market cap ecosystem, with ample financial support and a large number of DOT holders, this could be a blue ocean opportunity worth exploring.

We are preparing the content for the next course. If you are interested in certain modules or project practices, feel free to leave a message and let us know.