Getting Started

No matter your level of familiarity with blockchain development, we are here to get you started and ready for the hackathon!

A structured learning pathway with consolidated resources is made available for you to go through at your own pace. Read and watch all that has been provided to help you gain a better understanding of what awaits you in the Dotsama ecosystem!

What is Polkadot?

Polkadot is a layer-0 protocol and multichain network founded by Dr. Gavin Wood, co-founder and former CTO of Ethereum. Polkadot provides security, scalability, and interoperability to a diverse network of layer-1 blockchains called parachains. Polkadot offers several advancements over legacy blockchain networks, from governance to customization, upgradeability, energy efficiency, and more.

What is Kusama?

Built on nearly the same codebase as Polkadot, Kusama is a layer-0 protocol and multichain network. Kusama provides security, scalability, and interoperability to a diverse network of layer-1 blockchains called parachains, and serves as Polkadot’s ‘canary net’. Designed for radical innovation and experimentation, Kusama is used both as a live, value-bearing proving ground for Polkadot technology and as a deployment environment for early-stage startups and experimental blockchain use cases.

What is Substrate?

Substrate is a blockchain development framework for building and customizing parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem, as well as standalone or ‘solo’ chains. It features a completely generic state transition function and modular building blocks for common blockchain components like consensus, networking, and asset creation. By building with Substrate, development teams can significantly speed up production, reduce the cost of building a blockchain, and get much more power and flexibility than building on a smart contract platform.

Join our community

• Join the developer community on the Substrate StackExchange
• Join the Polkadot Community Discord server and participate in hackathon dedicated channel

Learning Materials for Hackathon Participants

Get started with Polkadot Pathways

To simplify your onboarding experience we designed an amazing learning and building journey in Polkadot Pathways. Spicing things up, you can gather points for each completed challenge and compete for some awesome Polkadot swag!

The challenges are mostly based on the Polkadot Wiki and the Substrate Knowledge Map for Hackathon Participants. Please reach out to our team members if you don't see the Learn, Build and Polkadot Hackathon: North America channels after joining.

Technical Support

• Reach out to the Polkadot support engineers on the Polkadot Community Discord Channel. 
• For commonly asked questions, you can also take a look at Substrate StackExchange. You can ask here as well, but please make sure to follow the guidelines. 
• Take part in the hackathon office hours.
• Attend hackathon workshops.

Documentation

• Official Devhub Documentation - The entry point for learning about Substrate, including conceptual and reference material.
• Tutorials - Hands-on tutorials to learn everything needed to start building your own Substrate blockchain.
• How-to Guides - Step-by-step implementation guides of common patterns when developing with Substrate.
• Rustdocs - API reference documentation.
• Polkadot Wiki - Polkadot’s official documentation portal, covering everything you need to know about building and interacting with Polkadot.
• Kusama Guide - Everything you need to know about building and interacting with the Kusama Network.

Primary GitHub Repositories

• Substrate
• Polkadot

Ecosystem Challenge resources

FYI. All of our ecosystem teams have a channel open for support on our Discord.