About ink!
What is ink!?
ink! is a Rust-based domain-specific language (DSL) for writing smart contracts on chains built with the Polkadot SDK . Created by Parity Technologies, ink! extends Rust with specialized functionalities to ensure seamless, Polkadot-ready smart contract development.
History of ink!
YEARS
The early years — a squink is born
In 2019, ink! started out as a small project at Parity Technologies (the company that stewarded Polkadot). From the very beginning, ink! and Polkadot were developed side by side, resulting in a powerful smart contract language that natively taps into the powerful features of the Polkadot ecosystem. Over the years, ink! grew into a sophisticated ecosystem with a community of passionate teams and individuals.
In April 2024, ink! moved out of the Parity umbrella. It is now developed and maintained by an alliance of independent developers, companies, and community teams. You can read more about the transition here.
The alliance continues to collaborate closely with Parity by contributing code to Parity-led initiatives and staying in sync with core developers. Parity remains actively involved as well: in late 2024, SRLabs and Parity’s security team conducted an audit of ink! v5 (read more here).
YEAR
Introducing the Alliance
The ink! Alliance meets bi-weekly to plan development priorities, explore product improvements, and manage community projects—such as developing the new ink! website (more info). Meeting notes are publicly recorded in this repository.
To manage intellectual property, the Alliance established Use Ink Ltd. in the UK. Much of the funding comes from the Polkadot Treasury, and the proposals are fully transparent—the latest major one can be viewedhere.
Once approved, treasury funds are transferred to a multisig wallet, maintained by six curators (requiring 4 approvals).
If you'd like to contribute to ink!, join the ink! Developers Group on Telegram or pick up one of our Good First Issues.
TODAY
TRANSITION TO A Community Project
The ink!ubator is a community-driven funding program for advancing the ink! ecosystem. The first round of projects was completed in autumn 2024! A final summary was posted by Toma, one of the curators, on the Polkadot Forum here.
Applications for the second round are currently open. For the latest updates, visit the ink!ubator 2.0 repositoryon GitHub.