NOTE: We have recently made significant changes to our repository structure. In order to streamline our development process and foster better contributions, we have merged three separate repositories Cumulus, Substrate and Polkadot into this repository. Read more about the changes here.

The Polkadot SDK repository provides all the resources needed to start building on the Polkadot network, a multi-chain blockchain platform that enables different blockchains to interoperate and share information in a secure and scalable way. The Polkadot SDK comprises three main pieces of software:

Implementation of a node for the https://polkadot.network in Rust, using the Substrate framework. This directory currently contains runtimes for the Westend and Rococo test networks. Polkadot, Kusama and their system chain runtimes are located in the runtimes repository maintained by the Polkadot Technical Fellowship.

Substrate is the primary blockchain SDK used by developers to create the parachains that make up the Polkadot network. Additionally, it allows for the development of self-sovereign blockchains that operate completely independently of Polkadot.

Cumulus is a set of tools for writing Substrate-based Polkadot parachains.

The Polkadot-SDK has two release channels: stable and nightly. Production software is advised to only use stable. nightly is meant for tinkerers to try out the latest features. The detailed release process is described in RELEASE.md.

stable releases have a support duration of three months. In this period, the release will not have any breaking changes. It will receive bug fixes, security fixes, performance fixes and new non-breaking features on a two week cadence.

nightly releases are released every night from the master branch, potentially with breaking changes. They have pre-release version numbers in the format major.0.0-nightlyYYMMDD.

Below are the primary upstream dependencies utilized in this project:

• parity-scale-codec
• parity-db
• parity-common
• trie

The security policy and procedures can be found in docs/contributor/SECURITY.md.

Ensure you follow our contribution guidelines. In every interaction and contribution, this project adheres to the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct.

• For monitoring upcoming changes and current proposals related to the technical implementation of the Polkadot network, visit the Requests for Comment (RFC) repository. While it's maintained by the Polkadot Fellowship, the RFC process welcomes contributions from everyone.