build-tools-index.md

id	title	sidebar_label	description	keywords	slug
build-tools-index	Tool Index	Tool Index	Reference point for a list of tools to support your development.	tools clients libraries explorers monitor data SCALE	../build-tools-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:

• Substrate Awesome maintains a list of SCALE codex implementations.

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.