ink!

ink! is a toolkit for developing smart contracts on @Polkadot. With Rust 🦀 and WebAssembly!

[ink! @ink_lang]

🎊 ink! on PolkaVM is finally here, and in partnership with @joinwebzero the The Blockspace Synergy Hack at the @Web3summit gave us our first glimpse at what’s possible on @Polkadot. 🚀

This hackathon brought all the good developer vibes ✨

The journey has begun. 🧵

[ink! @ink_lang]

💜

[Lauren Lee @LoLoCoding]

And who could forget when we played the @ink_lang game at @AcademyPolkadot??

It was the BEST way to introduce and teach smart contracts and get students hands on experience quickly!

omg and when Dima turned the team all into NFTs??

damn, maybe gone, but def not forgotten❤️‍��

[Lauren Lee @LoLoCoding]

long live ink! 😢
The best team I worked with at @paritytech
Exceptional engineers, thoughtful humans, deeply committed to the ecosystem, the builders, and developer experience.
Grateful for what I learned the @ink_lang team.

[niftesty 🫐 @niftesty]

When I first met you in 2022 at PBA, you were still part of parity. The uniqueness could be found in every small details. It was hard to write real apps with ink first. But it became better and better. And in fact one of the few reasons to be on Polkadot were rust smart contracts

Goodbye. All the best to the developers who created maintained and sweated ink

[chris-anatalio.eth.dot ⭕️ @CAnatalio]

@stakenode_dev Ink! Was a really well-made framework

[ink! @ink_lang]

Thanks for the comment, we have a long history in the ecosystem and would like to provide the following information to help confirm we are a good actor,

Stewardship:
In terms of good stewardship and funds management, please find the following evidence as confirmation:

In September 2024, the community voted for ink! development to continue with the objective of it being launched on the Hub (then Plaza). Development continuity was funded under the following proposal for 6 months of development, and in addition to the scope of this proposal being delivered, additional scope such as Solidity ABI compatibility to help synergistically integrate ecosystem objectives was delivered.

The funding duration of that cycle was 6 months (Q4 '24 - Q1 '25), however, anticipating delays in the Hub's launch, through careful resourcing and good stewardship, the Alliance extended those funds to cover operations to September 2025. 12 months.

After this, core development work did continue to December '25, however much of the Alliance effort, and all operations since September '25 were carried out on an unfunded basis in attempts to save ink!. Please refer to the timeline and forum post for additional context. https://t.co/5CJZFvN5a8

Ecosystem Contributions:
ink! has a fully auditable and publicly itemised record of deliverables including core upstream contributions, including direct work on PolkaVM, pallet-revive, and alloy-rs (Parity-aligned objectives). All tracked and verifiable:
• PolkaVM: https://t.co/qBibYCXpc6
• pallet-revive: https://t.co/IADqghtp6n
• alloy-rs: https://t.co/Q9m6KbzuaZ
• ink! repository: https://t.co/CVoy3pgCdv

A full itemisation of unfunded Q4 2025 work undertaken by the Alliance is itemised here, and development work is tracked in GitHub links therein: https://t.co/nMGPMYcQYn

Strategic Necessity:
Beyond being able to fully evidence work, less trust more truth, ink!'s valid strategic need in the ecosystem is verified by its applicability to DevX.

If the ecosystem would like to onboard Rust developers to PolkaVM, ink! and its tooling are a strategic necessity - bare-Rust is not advisable for general adoption: https://t.co/CzccQqylqv

As ink! has now been formally discontinued. This information is purely for education purposes.

[ink! @ink_lang]

After months of sustained effort, we’re sharing difficult news:

The Alliance is discontinuing ink! language development.

This decision was not taken easily. 🧵👇

[ink! @ink_lang]

In September 2024, the community voted for ink! development to continue with the objective of it being launched on the Hub (then Plaza). Development continuity was funded under the following proposal for 6 months of development, and in addition to the scope of this proposal being delivered, additional scope such as Solidity ABI compatibility to help synergistically integrate ecosystem objectives was delivered.

The funding duration of that cycle was 6 months (Q4 '24 - Q1 '25), however, anticipating delays in the Hub's launch, through careful resourcing and good stewardship, the Alliance extended those funds to cover operations to September 2025. 12 months.

After this, core development work did continue to December '25, however much of the Alliance effort, and all operations since September '25 were carried out on an unfunded basis in attempts to save ink!. Please refer to the timeline and forum post for additional context.

https://t.co/5CJZFvN5a8

[ink! @ink_lang]

Thank you for the clarification, we take our stewardship responsibilities very seriously.

Truly, we would have loved to continue to work on ink! but personal circumstances and ecosystem prioritisation of it have made the situation unsustainable. Building a language is not an easy thing.

It is an unfortunate situation because the DevX a language like ink! brings to onboarding Rust developers is critical in our opinion.

How and ever, thank you again for your clarification. We appreciate it. All the best!

[ink! @ink_lang]

Thank you to everyone who built with ink!, contributed, reviewed, asked hard questions, supported the work, and shared our passion.

We wish everyone well. All the best.

Forum Announcement
👉 https://t.co/ErO7ITZJPA

[ink! @ink_lang]

We believe the community deserves a full, transparent account of:
• what happened
• why decisions were made
• what this means going forward

That context is shared in the forum post below.

[ink! @ink_lang]

Happy New Year from ink! 🐙💜

May your contracts be safe, your builds fast, and your ideas bold.

Have a wonderful 2026✨

[ink! @ink_lang]

Merry Christmas @Polkadot 🎁🎄✨

[ink! @ink_lang]

ink!: Status, Context, and Why It Matters for Polkadot

We’ve published a detailed update covering the current state of ink!, recent progress, ecosystem impact, and the risks ahead.

https://t.co/eKes6Teudp

[ink! @ink_lang]

Rust safety. @Polkadot security.
ink! v6 brings them together for decentralized systems that just work. 🐙⚡️