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4-Month DotCodeSchool Stewardship & Improvements
š§ The Situation
Batman, the original creator of DotCodeSchool - the platform every PBA and PBA-X student goes through, is stepping back from active maintenance. While he may still contribute occasionally, heās no longer in a position to maintain or drive the project forward.
DotCodeSchool has already proven its value:
- 500+ registered users (many more unregistered)
- Actively used during PBA/PBA-X
- Stable, functional platform ready for more growth
Without active stewardship, it risks stagnating, becoming harder for new devs to benefit from and harder for contributors to engage with.
šÆ My Proposal
Iām committing 4 months to actively maintain, improve, and prepare DotCodeSchool for long-term community sustainability.
My focus will be:
- Embed New Rust State Machine Video Tutorial (Month 1-2)
- Iāve already recorded āThe Rust State Machineā by Shawn Tabrizi - an 80+ video hands-on tutorial (watch here).
- 5+ weekends of recording were my personal investment. A give back to the Polkadot ecosystem for supporting my PBA journey.
- Funding covers the integration work: embedding videos into DotCodeSchool, linking them with exercises and resources for a smooth learning experience.
- Codebase Refactor(Month 2-4)
- Restructure and clean the codebase to lower the barrier for contributors.
- Improve documentation, standardize testing/linting, and ensure contributor onboarding is straightforward.
- Ongoing Maintenance (All 4 Months)
- Keep dependencies up to date, fix bugs, ensure platform stability, and respond to community needs.
š Discoverability & Access
DotCodeSchool is open to anyone.
However, feedback from the community shows that too few people know it exists.
The proposed work will lay the technical foundation for future discoverability efforts. Once the platform is refactored and video content is integrated, it will be in a stronger position to run targeted outreach campaigns. Potentially in collaboration with community members experienced in marketing
š Accountability & Transparency
I will publish a monthly progress report with:
- Task
- Duration
- Time
- Date
Since Iām new to the Treasury process, Iām open to suggestions from the community on where these reports should be hosted.
If thereās no preferred place, Iāll post them publicly on LinkedIn and X for transparency, and also share the links in the relevant Polkadot forum thread so theyāre archived in one place.
š” Why Fund This?
This is not a one-off feature drop. Itās 4 months of active stewardship, ensuring that:
- DotCodeSchool stays stable and up to date
- The codebase is ready for new contributors
- The platform gains valuable new learning content in the form of a high-quality, embedded video tutorial
Without this work, the risk is that DotCodeSchool will stagnate, making it harder for new devs to benefit from it or contribute.
š° Requested Compensation
- Time Commitment: 20 hours/week
- Rate: $70/hour
- Duration: 4 months
- Total: $22,400
DotCodeSchool belongs to the community and this proposal is about keeping it alive, improving it, and setting it up for a sustainable future.
Comments (17)
Requested
Proposal Failed
Hey Andrzej, thanks for bringing this up, having a few questions for you.
generally I think having this product make sense
I would actually prefer to commit for a full year. But from the feedback Iāve seen the community clearly favors smaller sprints with well-defined deliverables. Since my name is not yet well-established in the ecosystem, I understand that members may hesitate to entrust me with a large, long-term commitment right away. Thatās why I proposed a 4-month scope: itās concrete, transparent, and gives the community the chance to evaluate my work based on visible results and metrics. If this proposal is successful and the community is satisfied with the outcomes, Iāll be in a much stronger position to extend the work with another proposal.
In the long run, my goal is not to hold onto DotCodeSchool forever but to hand over maintenance to someone else, while making sure it doesnāt fall into disrepair. It would be a pity to let it depreciate, especially since itās both a valuable learning tool and the community has already invested around $153k into it.
I assume you mean distribution to students.
Iāll continue spreading the word through my socials (YouTube, etc.) and by creating more learning content. That said, I know this alone wonāt be enough, weāll need a proper strategy from someone experienced in marketing. Iāve already been in touch with Hope Clary (here), whoās open to supporting a campaign on that front. Still, I believe the immediate priority is to fix and refactor the codebase. Every student is also a potential future contributor, and we shouldnāt miss the chance to welcome them into a clean, well-structured project.
@Andrzej SulkowskiĀ no my point is that, even you got the funding to run, but at somepoint, if the web app down, itās your responsibility to fix it even itās not on your period. to build this app is not rocket science and 70$ per hour is considerably high to contribute back to community through light maintenance (fix bug) even if letās say you fail to get the next proposal.
For distribution, as I provided feedback to Batman before, itās also your job to bring your project to light through community parrtnership proactively