Tool

Tool Index

Here, we provide a list of tools available for your development needs. They are sorted by context. If you're actively maintaining a tool that might be useful to other Polkadot, Kusama or Substrate developers, feel free to add it in.

Wallets​

Please see the Wallets page.

Block Explorers​

• Polkadot-JS Apps Explorer - Polkadot dashboard block explorer. Supports dozens of other networks, including Kusama, Westend, and other remote or local endpoints. Access via IPFS

• Polkascan - Blockchain explorer for Polkadot, Kusama, and other related chains. Repo.

• Subscan - Blockchain explorer for Substrate chains. Repo.

• DotScanner - Polkadot & Kusama Blockchain explorer.

Network Monitoring & Reporting​

• Polkadot Telemetry Service - Network information including what nodes are running the chain, what software versions they are running, sync status, and location.

• Polkabot - Polkadot network monitoring and reporting using Matrix (Riot / Element) chat. Users may create custom bot plugins. Blogpost.

• Ryabina's Telegram Bot - A Telegram bot for monitoring on-chain events of Substrate chains. GitHub Repository

• PolkaStats - Polkadot network statistics (includes Kusama). Shows network information and staking details from validators and intentions. GitHub Repository.

• Panic - A node monitoring and alert server for validators.

• OpenWeb3/Guardian - A CLI tool and JS library to monitor on chain states and events.

Clients​

• Polkadot - The original Rust implementation of the Polkadot Host.

• Kagome - A C++ Polkadot implementation of the Polkadot Host developed by Soramitsu.

• Gossamer - A Go implementation of the Polkadot Host developed by ChainSafe Systems.

• TX Wrapper - Helper functions for offline transaction generation.

Tools​

• Substrate - Blockchain development platform written in Rust. The Rust version of the Polkadot Host is being built with Substrate.

• Substrate Docs - Comprehensive documentation and tutorials for building a blockchain using Substrate.

• Substrate VSCode plugin.

• Substrate Debug Kit - A collection of debug tools and libraries around substrate chains. Includes tools to calculate NPoS elections offline, disk usage monitoring, test templates against chain state and other pallet-specific helper.

• Diener - A tool for easy changing of Polkadot or Substrate dependency versions.

• Polkadot Launch - A tool to easily launch custom local parachain-enabled Polkadot versions.

• Halva - A Truffle-inspired local development environment for Substrate.

• Fork-off Substrate - Copies the state of an existing chain into your local version and lets you further experiment on it.

• srtool - A tool for verifying runtime versions against on-chain proposal hashes.

• sub-bench - A tool to spam your node with transactions for the sake of benchmarking.

• substrate-devhub-utils - A set of JavaScript utilities making life with Substrate a little easier.

• sub-flood - A tool to benchmark Substrate by flooding it with requests.

UI​

• Polkadash - VueJS-based starter kit for custom user interfaces for Substrate chains. Tutorials.

• Polkadot JS Apps UI - Repository of the polkadot.js.org/apps UI.

• Substrate Front-end Template - ReactJS-based starter UI for custom user interfaces for Substrate chains.

• Polkadot JS Browser Extension - Key management in a Chrome extension.

Libraries​

Polkadot-JS Common​

Polkadot-JS Common provides various utility functions that are used across all projects in the @polkadot namespace and is split into a number of internal utility packages. The documentation and usage instructions are provided at Polkadot-JS/Common API Documentation.

• @polkadot/keyring This allows you to create and load accounts in JavaScript. It is helpful for creating wallets or any application that will require the user to write to chain. Examples.

• @polkadot/util Utility functions like checking if a string is hex-encoded.

• @polkadot/util-crypto Useful cryptographic utilities for developing with Polkadot.

CLI Tools​

• @polkadot/api-cli Command line interface for the polkadot API. Documentation.

• @polkadot/monitor-rpc An RPC monitor for Polkadot. See the RPC tools below for additional information.

• @polkadot/signer-cli A Tool to construct, sign, and broadcast transactions. Signing can be done offline.

• Polkadot API Cpp - A С++ API for Polkadot, can build clip, a command line tool.

• Subkey - Command line utility for generating and inspecting key pairs.

WASM​

WebAssembly related tools and projects.

• ink! - An eDSL to write WebAssembly based smart contracts using the Rust programming language.

• parity-wasm - Low-level WebAssembly format library.

• wasm-utils - Collection of WebAssembly utilities used in pwasm-ethereum and substrate contract development.

• wasmi - A WebAssembly interpreter conceived as a component of parity-ethereum (Ethereum-like contracts in Wasm) and Substrate.

RPC and API Tools​

• @polkadot/api/rpc-provider Demonstrates how the JS tools interact with the node over RPC.

• RPC documentation - Documentation of Substrate RPC methods.

• Polkadot API Server by SimplyVC - A wrapper around the Polkadot API which makes it easier to make Polkadot API calls from any programming language.

• Go: Subscan API - Go API for Polkadot.

• C++ Polkadot API - С++ API for Polkadot.

• .NET Polkadot API - Polkadot Substrate API for .NET.

• Python Polkadot API - Polkadot library for Python.

• GSRPC - Substrate RPC client in Go, a.k.a. GSRPC.

• Substrate API Sidecar - An HTTP wrapper for Substrate, abstracting some complex RPC calls into simple REST calls.

• Subxt - A Rust library to submit extrinsics to a Substrate node via RPC.

SCALE Codec​

The SCALE (Simple Concatenated Aggregate Little-Endian) Codec is a lightweight, efficient, binary serialization and deserialization codec.

It is designed for high-performance, copy-free encoding and decoding of data in resource-constrained execution contexts, such as the Substrate runtime. It is not self-describing in any way and assumes the decoding context has all type knowledge about the encoded data.

It is used in almost all communication to/from Substrate nodes, so implementations in different languages exist:

• Ruby

• Rust

• Go

• C++

• TypeScript

• AssemblyScript

• Haskell

• Java

• Python

Data Crawling and Conversion​

The following tools help you extract and structure data from a Substrate node.

• Polkascan PRE Harvester (matching explorer for harvested data) - Transforms raw blockchain data into relational data.

• Parity's Substrate Archive - Can be run alongside a Substrate node to archive all blocks, state, and extrinsic data into PostgreSQL database.

• Subsquid Archives - Generate a GraphQL database from a Substrate chain's data with rich filtering and querying capabilities. The data (events, extrinsics, blocks) for most parachains is readily available though public archive GraphQL endpoints, kept in Squid Archive Registry

• Polka-store - A tool which scans a Substrate chain and stores balance-relevant transactions in an SQLite database.

• Substrate-graph - A compact indexer for Substrate based nodes providing a GraphQL interface.