If you want to become a Hero in the Polkadot Developer Heroes program, you are at the right place. The following process is used to evaluate a candidate for Hero status.
Each candidate is scored based on proof(s) of work in four areas. These areas encompass the core competencies a hero is expected to have to varying degrees to be part of the program as a Hero. These areas are:
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Technical expertise: Are they active contributors to the Polkadot ecosystem, with code contributions, educational efforts, documentation work, technical publications, do they have a strong presence on StackExchange?
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Community involvement: Are they highly engaged in the Polkadot community, actively participating in various ways such as forum contributions, event attendance, hackathon participation and wins, mentoring in the Heroes program, holding an ambassador role, or are they contributing to community moderation?
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Content creation experience: Have they contributed significantly to the Polkadot community through technical blog posts, interactive educational content, videos, podcast appearances, (multilingual) educational materials, infographics, or public speaking engagements at Polkadot-related events?
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Leadership experience: Are they deeply involved in leading the Polkadot community, organizing events, leading projects, judging or mentoring at hackathons, or possibly managing a Polkadot-focused publications?
The team reviews nominations on a rolling basis. Review cadence might change in the future, depending on number of nominations received. We commit to responding to every nomination within two weeks after receiving the nomination.
Evaluation will be based on the following criteria and questions. The scoring framework should assist the evaluators in providing a reasoned score for each category for the candidate. Candidates need to first meet one of four criteria, which assesses their coding skills. Then candidates will be evaluated based on a comprehensive evaluation framework. The framework has a maximum of 51 points.
Those candidates that score 25 or more points will be promoted from Rookie to Hero.
Note: The total number of points and scoring limit for requirements are subject to change in the future.
To qualify as a Hero, a Candidate must meet at least one of the following criteria:
- They have made contributions to the code of the Polkadot SDK repository (Polkadot, Substrate, Cumulus) by having more than one merged pull request in the past quarter.
- They have contributed code to more than one merged pull request in an open-source Substrate-based chain project. If this is not an open source project, please reach out to us separately to walk us through the commits.
- They have contributed substantial code to more than one merged pull request in a widely used open-source library or tool within the Polkadot ecosystem. This may be e.g. libp2p, rust, WASM, etc.
- They have contributed substantial code to more than one merged pull request in a dapp within the Polkadot ecosystem.
Note: for these contributions we need to see code contributions that affect the functionality, such as bug fixes, features improvements, or performance optimization changes. Grammatical or stylistical changes that do not affect any functionality do not count here.
Furthermore, points can be collected via the following criteria, if the candidate:
| GitHub activity related to Polkadot - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Is an owner or maintainer of any other open-source Polkadot ecosystem project (where the project is not the Polkadot SDK, not a Substrate based chain, not a tooling or library project, or not a dapp) |
GitHub link(s) | 3 |
| Technical Education - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has taught a coding workshop or training session on Polkadot and/or Rust in the past quarter |
Event link(s) | 1 session = 1 pt 2 sessions = 2 pts 3+ sessions = 3 pts |
| Has contributed more than once to documentation for Polkadot or a Polkadot ecosystem project in the past quarter |
GitHub link(s) | 2 |
| Has published a technical research paper or article about Rust or Polkadot with more than 60% of own content |
Content link(s) | 2 |
| Is in the top 10% on StackExchange | StackExchange profile link |
1 |
| Has been graduated from the Polkadot Blockchain Academy | Year - Location | 2 |
| Activity on the Polkadot Forum - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has authored more than one topic on the forum in the past quarter | Forum profile link | 1 |
| Has added more than one comment to topics on the forum in the past quarter | Forum profile link | 1 |
| Polkadot forum technical contribution - Tech talk category | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Created a technical topic for discussion in the tech talk section of the forum in the past quarter (Non tech topics can still be submitted in this category, but will not count here.) |
Forum profile link | 1 |
| Gave technical responses to 3 or more topics in the tech talk section of the forum in the past quarter | Forum profile link | 1 |
| Attendance at Polkadot-related events - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has attended two or more Polkadot-related events in the past quarter (e.g. meetups, other community events that's not sub0, Decoded or a hackathon) |
Event link(s) | 1 |
| Has attended most recent sub0 | Event link(s) | 1 |
| Has attended most recent Decoded | Event link(s) | 1 |
| Participation at a Polkadot hackathon (Polkadot-focused or has a Polkadot track) | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has participated at a hackathon with a submitted project in the past quarter | Event and project link(s) | 1 |
| Won a hackathon with a submitted project in the past quarter | Event and project link(s) | 1 |
| Mentoring within the Heroes program | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has been mentoring folk(s) within the Heroes program | Name(s) | 1 mentored = 1 pt 2 mentored = 2 pts 3+ mentored = 3 pts |
| Polkadot Ambassador Program | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Is a Polkadot Ambassador/Senior Ambassador/Head Ambassador | Name | 1 |
| Community moderation | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Moderator or active contributor in Polkadot-focused online communities (e.g., Telegram, Discord) |
Name | 1 |
| Written content - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has produced more than one technical blog post in a Polkadot specific topic | Content link(s) | 2 |
| Has produced any interactive educational content related to Polkadot (e.g. coding challenges, quizzes) |
Content link(s) | 1 |
| Has produced any Polkadot-related educational content in other languages than English | Content link(s) | 2 |
| Has created and shared Polkadot-related infographics or visual content in the past quarter | Content link(s) | 1 |
| Recorded content - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Produced more than one technical-focused video on own Youtube (or other platform) or podcast channel in the past quarter | Content link(s) | 2 |
| Has been a guest speaker on a Polkadot-focused YouTube (or other platform) channel or podcast in the past quarter | Content link(s) | 1 |
| Public speaking - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Served as a speaker or panelist at conferences or events on a Polkadot-related topic in the past quarter |
Event (or recording) link(s) | 1 event = 1 pt 2 events = 2 pts 3+ events = 3 pts |
| Organization of or participation at Polkadot-related tech focused events - in the past quarter | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Has organized or hosted a Polkadot related technical community meetup in the past quarter | Event link(s) | 2 |
| Has organized or hosted a Polkadot related technical workshop in the past quarter | Event link(s) | 2 |
| Has organized other community initiatives (eg. Polkadot-focused hackathon or coding challenge) in the past quarter |
Event link(s) | 2 |
| Served as a judge or mentor at Polkadot hackathons in the past quarter | Event link(s) | 1 |
| Active involvement in Polkadot based projects | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Founded or is leading a Polkadot-related working group or special interest group | Link(s) for more info | 2 |
| Is holding an engineering leadership position in a Polkadot-based project | GitHub or other Link(s) for more info | 2 |
| Leading discussions in the online space | Scoring via | Points to earn |
|---|---|---|
| Is creating and managing a Polkadot-focused media outlet or publication (Including discussion starters, with twitter threads, acive discussions started in chat rooms, forums, or productions similar to DotLeap, AAG, any newsletters etc.) |
Link(s) Username |
1 |