On-Chain polkadot.com¶

Introduction¶

On-chain polkadot.com is polkadot.com itself, served as a Polkadot Product. It is the discovery layer for the ecosystem, a directory that points at other Polkadot Products, but it is not hosted on a centralized server. It is published as a bundle, resolved through DotNS, and loaded by Polkadot Web or Polkadot Desktop into the Host sandbox, the same way any other Product is.

This page explains what makes the on-chain polkadot.com Product different from any other Product, and where it fits in the larger publishing flow. Mechanically, it is not different, and that is the point.

Why an On-Chain Discovery Layer¶

A Polkadot Product is addressed by its .dot name, but .dot names alone are flat. A user has to know the name before they can visit it. Discovery is the layer above that: showcases, categories, recommendations, search.

Putting discovery on-chain as a Polkadot Product itself has two properties an off-chain discovery site does not:

• Verifiable provenance: The directory's contents are addressable and verifiable; a user can confirm that the discovery layer they are looking at matches the on-chain CID that DotNS resolves to, and the same shield-state checks that apply to any other Product apply here.
• Composability: Other Products can read the same on-chain discovery state through the chain client surface (see Read Chain State), without needing a private API to a centralized directory.

Implications for a Product Developer¶

If you are building a Product, two things matter about on-chain polkadot.com:

• Publishing target: The flow for getting your Product listed on the canonical discovery surface goes through whatever submission and curation process on-chain polkadot.com defines. The Product-side how-to for the underlying publishing steps is Register and Publish.
• Model to copy: Any Product that wants to be a discovery surface for a specific category, such as a games directory, a wallet directory, or an asset explorer, can follow the same pattern: publish a Product whose state is the directory, read it from chain, and let the Host render it the same way.

Where to Go Next¶