⭐Beginning of Story

Explore the origins of KodaDot, an open-source NFT marketplace in the Polkadot ecosystem, and learn about the founders' mission to create a collaborative and inclusive platform.

KodaDot's Co-founder, yangWao, discovered the potential of the Polkadot ecosystem while researching Substrate developers. He decided to delve deeper and built a web-based Subket. With this tool, users could:

• Create a Substrate account from a mnemonic and hex seed

• Load their account

• Sign data

• Verify signatures

During his project, yangWao encountered challenges and identified a lack of resources for Vue native developers in the Polkadot ecosystem.

To address this issue, he teamed up with Co-founder Viki and created https://vue-polkadot.js.org, featuring Vue.js libraries, utilities, and classes. Their efforts received a grant from the Web3 Foundation in 2019.

KodaDot's Evolution: From Experimenting to NFT Marketplace

Although successful, yangWao and Viki wanted to make their creation more practical and useful for themselves. They tried different ideas, such as an Automated Registry and visualizing blockchain blocks in AR/VR. However, these projects didn't meet their expectations for continuous innovation and community collaboration.

Their path changed when they found Bruno Skvorc's work on the RMRK.app for the Kusama Network. They studied the rmrk-spec repository and realized the flexibility of Substrate Data. The duo built an RMRK.app NFT reader, which gained traction within the crypto community. This accomplishment inspired them to develop KodaDot, and, after submitting a proposal to become an NFT explorer, it emerged as the first public good in the Dotsama ecosystem.

To learn more about KodaDot's inspiring journey and growth, read here.