Sublab proposal #KSM-1: Foundation. Mobile SDKs for SCALE codec, Substrate client, fully covered with tests and provided with documentation

Dear community,

We're proud to present our very first proposal from the Sublab team which primary focus is on developing tools for developers in Substrate ecosystem.

Please feel free to read the full proposal document at this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cvQw2bf2uH3qEJR2594Hj5FtmsxbcaKoodZYyKwJkx4/edit?usp=sharing

Context of proposal

sublab.dev is the company designated to develop fully native open-source libraries for mobile platforms in Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems, covering everything with reliable unit-tests and providing rich documentation to the developers community.

We’re a team of 3 engineers at this moment, consisting of 1 Senior iOS Engineer; 1 Support Engineer; and former Fearless Wallet Technical Lead, proficient in both iOS and Android development since 2010, who led Mobile Departments in several companies, including his own, and knows everything about mobile apps architecture. Our goal is to reach the current state of ecosystem needs in our libraries as soon as possible, starting with a few people to build a strong and reliable foundation to be used further to develop as many APIs and different chain clients as possible. Last, but not least, we want to provide technical support in our Telegram chat for developers having questions about integration to their mobile apps.

Right now, we would love to start with the development of SCALE codec as this is the one of the basic dependencies to do anything in the ecosystem. As stated in Substrate Docs there are no existing ready-to-use libraries for this purpose in Swift or Kotlin. Even though such implementations already exist in a couple of live mobile wallets, it’s not covered with documentation, has outdated unit-tests, and strongly tied to existing libraries codebase which are very specific for wallets needs. And then finalize the current milestone with basic Substrate client implementation.

What we're trying to accomplish within this milestone

Right now there are only a few mobile apps in the ecosystem, and almost no ready-to-use tools for new players in the market. Existing apps share their source code, but it would take huge efforts and a big amount of time for even very strong developers to dive into the ecosystem development, because if they’re not familiar with the ecosystem philosophy and technical aspects, they will definitely need to learn from the beginning. So, basically speaking, only the strongest developers could easily (or not so) step into the development inside the Polkadot and Kusama ecosystems.

Thus, as we see it, to make it possible for the ecosystem to grow more and attract more mobile developers to it, there is a need for strong, reliable, open-source, well documented libraries to kickstart more innovative projects. With the tool set of easy-to-use transparent libraries, we believe that the entry threshold into the ecosystem will fall down and will let even more developers start working with it.

Existing SCALE codec implementations for mobile platforms do not provide any documentation, have outdated unit-tests, have a redundant interlayer of JSON key-based serialization which is a specific requirement for their app needs, though not follow pure SCALE responsibility and designation.

At the very beginning, we want to solve this problem by making fully native open-source libraries which give both options to end developers:

• Work with SCALE codec as it was designed
• Work with SCALE codec by slight transformation with interlayer between

On top of it, we’re planning to build Substrate client libraries, which by using the SCALE toolset will cover basic messaging with any potential Substrate-based network. At this stage, we would like to exclude the signature routine from this library, because this requires more time to make architectural solutions regarding support of different signature methods and how to properly inject them depending on various chains already out there. However an existing set of signatures in the ecosystem by the date of publication will be supported within this milestone.

Our mission

We want the Substrate ecosystem developers to just do brand new features to make the ecosystem richer and be recognizable by even more people around the globe, while we can hold their backs by doing a great infrastructural work. We want to see more mobile apps in the ecosystem either from existing parachains to launch their own apps or absolutely new mobile wallets with more innovative functions. Same we want to help existing applications by solving their core issues within our works and help them adopt our products. Also we aim to partner with as much as possible existing networks and/or companies who already deliver their services to ecosystem, so that even their products might be easy accessible via reliable SDKs.

Proposal financing and deliverables

We're requesting $81,900 for the current milestone which includes both SCALE codec implementation and Substrate client library implementation. Both parts are planned to be released separately and sequentially along with publications to public package managers' repositories, as well as on our GitHub for a review. Also we're planning announcements on our Telegram channel and future Medium blog with a brief description of deliverables. And in the end when we finish documentation part we're going to publish on-chain report with appropriate links to the open source code, package managers' repositories, our articles on Medium, and links to documentation website.

Epilogue

We look forward to hearing from you any constructive feedback and/or questions regarding our planned works. Feel free to refer to our proposal document

Sincerely,
Sublab team