Looking Forward — Community
Written by Paul Pomerleau — Developer Relations at BOTLabs GmbH, the company that initially developed KILT Protocol.
Last year was the most exciting to date in KILT’s short history. With incredible support from the community, the KILT crowdloan cap of 220,000 KSM was achieved hours after the parachain slot auction began. On September 8, 2021, KILT won its slot and went live as a Kusama parachain. Staking, governance, and a Treasury were then added to the KILT blockchain, along with decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable credentials to provide developers with the tools to create businesses around identity and credentials. After testing and auditing, on November 10, 2021, KILT transitioned to a decentralized network. Ways to store and stake KILT were launched and the community of KILT Coin holders started participating in active governance. It was a busy four months!
The Way Ahead
2022 is already shaping up to be another whirlwind. SocialKYC, a service that uses KILT to provide a way to regain control over your digital identity, was launched in January, and more services are on the way. Even more exciting is the way the KILT community is evolving as it begins to imagine and build real products and use cases. The prime direction of the KILT community is now clear — driving development and adoption. That can be achieved quickly by ignoring the noise, removing friction, and staying laser-focused on outcomes. This is where the fun really starts!
There are several things of note:
- KILT is ready to go. It’s past the concept stage and the infrastructure already exists to allow anyone to build a real service on it for real-world use.
- The KILT blockchain is live and running as a Kusama parachain in the Polkadot ecosystem. Polkadot has addressed a lot of problems — such as interoperability, security, and stable transaction fees — that hampered blockchain use to date.
- Entrepreneurs and developers who want to build real-world products around digital identity can harness the advantages of blockchain without any blockchain experience. The KILT software development kit (SDK) uses JavaScript.
- The KILT SDK can be downloaded free from the KILT website, and extensive technical documentation is already available.
The Power of Community
The community around KILT is constantly growing and forming support systems for those interested in building on KILT. Anyone who wants to run a successful business and tap into blockchain to do it can join the conversation and collaborate on Discord, the community hub that already has over 2,000 members. The newest community addition, Trello, provides a platform for individuals and teams to share information, with areas leading through ideas for projects, to practical support when building, to showcasing work.
Check it out to get more details on some of the projects being built, including
- Burma Academy, a MOOC (massive open online course) platform built by a team in Myanmar that provides education and will implement KILT for login and Credential issuance
- YAZGİT (Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing Community), a project at the Konya Technical University in Turkey that is creating Arduino-powered smart locks that use KILT DIDs and Credentials + RFID Cards to allow users entry
- Public Land Protocol, who are building the ORGO App, a mobile application that will gamify and incentivize land maintenance and remediation. ORGO will use KILT DIDs and credentials to attest completed tasks & accomplishments which can unlock perks and earnings.
- Doggo DID, a project focusing on credentials for dogs to certify hard traits like ID and vaccine status, as well as soft traits like skills, disposition, etc. The project is exploring existing NFC Collars and future-facing UWB technology. It also plans to interoperate with existing Web2 registries in order to tap into an existing user base.
Some of these projects, including Doggo DID and ORGO, are actively seeking contributors! Message the teams in Discord by role or in their collaboration channel.
Treasury Funding
KILT also has a Treasury, a store of on-chain funds available for creating infrastructure or initiatives that benefit the network, contributing to its long-term sustainability. These can cover a wide range of projects, from software or infrastructure development to community outreach programs. Any KILT Coin holder can create a proposal and request funds from the Treasury.
Since KILT is at the beginning of this exciting phase, in order to support a culture of “abstract and open source” the KILT Distillery was created. This is a cookbook of recipes and tools that will allow devs to quickly spin up projects leveraging the work and learnings of others. So as a new member of the community building your business, you can engage with more experienced members for advice on finding abstractions that you can use to create open-source code and contribute to the ecosystem. You can also apply for Treasury funding for your outcomes. For example, Burma Academy is using a tool called OpenEDX and are exploring creating an KILT <> OpenEDX auth plugin, YAZGİT may explore Arduino modules, Doggo DID an NFC <> DID resolver, etc. This creates a win-win situation, with the project obtaining support and the KILT community gaining a growing ecosystem of modular libraries and tools that entrepreneurs and developers can use to quickly bootstrap their business or use cases. Obviously, the common goal of the community is adoption, and together it can happen quickly.
Looking Forward
KILT was built to counter monopolies and their poor handling of user data, specifically addressing the issues of digital identity that face us in Web3, the next generation of the internet. Building on KILT goes beyond one blockchain or network; KILT provides ways to make an active contribution to Web3. Entrepreneurs and developers can build a better way for the user, while still having a successful and sustainable business model.
Discover more about KILT on the website and blog. Be inspired by the new Trello board, get to work in Discord, or just follow KILT on Twitter to keep up with the latest news. Join the growing community to be part of the unfolding internet revolution.
Find Paul Pomerleau on Twitter, LinkedIn and Discord to engage with him.
Looking Forward — Community was originally published in kilt-protocol on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
