The Developer Tooling & Ecosystem working group is focused on making Flow the most user-friendly Web3 developer platform. Success for this group will translate into higher developer satisfaction, reduced friction, and ultimately more applications launched on Flow.

Increase developer productivity

Flow requires robust tools that support the most important developer environments, simplify the development lifecycle, enable fast iterations, and increase developers’ confidence. This area focuses on improvements to various tools, including SDKs, libraries, CLI, Emulator, and the VSCode Extension. Specific projects include, but are not limited to:

• Flow Go testing framework
• Conditional, dynamic, and composable NFTs
• Flow React hooks library
• Flow CLI commands to set up projects and spin up a local developer environment
• Flowser CLI integration to manage blockchain emulator, inspecting the current state & interacting with the network

Faster & easier developer onboarding

Developer education is critical to onboard millions of Flow developers. There is a need to build best-in-class documentation and samples, and a cutting edge developer playground. This requires understanding developer journeys and information architecture as much as the content. Priorities for this working group are:

• Building a Cadence code search engine to analyze and learn from deployed contracts
• Providing deeper on-chain insights through a new blockchain explorer
• Creating developer onboarding content and scaffold projects
• Building an enhanced version of the Flow Playground
• Using sample projects to highlight composability through on-chain logic

Enable engaging native consumer experiences on mobile

Mobile applications have the potential to increase user engagement and reach mainstream consumers through app stores. With Flow, mobile developers can improve security through support for Secure Enclave & Keystore, minimize their needs for backend service by building on-chain logic, and ramp up quickly to Cadence – Flow’s smart contract language inspired by modern languages like Swift and Kotlin. This focus area is concerned with bringing the value proposition to light by

• Delivering support for audited transactions and verified projects to improve user confidence when signing transactions inside wallets
• Integrating WalletConnect into FCL for mobile wallet support
• Providing native SDKs for Android and iOS
• Lighthouse open-sourced projects live on app stores
• Unlock progressive user onboarding with world-class mainstream experience

The self-custody is perhaps the single most important feature of a web3, but the next billion blockchain users don’t have self-custodial wallets yet. Flow has the potential to unlock the real barrier to mainstream adoption, which is first-time user experience (FTUE). For most new users, the crypto scene currently feels a bit like the wild, wild west. There is a myriad of situations where they are uncertain of how to interact with the wallet and they lack trust and security in the services they are attempting to use.  Flow needs to provide tooling for developers to onboard users with wallet-less onboarding via email or social identities so they can get immediate value seamlessly and then upgrade to self-custody when they’re ready or as the app demands it.

Demonstrate Flow’s unique value proposition through on-chain gaming

Demonstrate service-less dapps to eliminate platform risks, create trust, and unlock new experiences

Flow was designed to enable new experiences through composable building blocks that improve transparency. Getting more on-chain logic on Flow is critical to enable this future. Flow’s account model, modern smart contract language, and multi-node architecture enable on-chain mechanics with great user experiences without needing backend services. This focus area will use gaming as the primary use case by delivering:

• Native SDKs for .NET, Unity, and Unreal
• Sample contracts demonstrating on-chain game mechanics
• Non-custodial wallet support to securely sign transactions without prompts during gameplay

Improve the developer ecosystem through community contributions

Flow is building a vibrant ecosystem of builders to fill essential web3 building blocks, like tools and services. The Developer Grants program is allocating FLOW tokens to support the development of these ecosystem gaps.

Some of the projects listed above are driven by Flow community members who received grants to support their efforts.

If you are interested in participating in the program, you can:

• Review wishlist items and submit a proposal, as these are important ecosystem gaps that have been identified and need a solution.
• Submit a wishlist item for a gap that you have identified. You don’t need to work on it yourself, but you can help identify others who can/will.
• Review proposals submitted by others in the community by upvoting or commenting on the GitHub issue. More feedback from the community is always helpful.

‍Flow contributors include: Bjarte Karlsen, Alexander Zwerner, Matt Hichana, Tyron Brand, Maggo, Emerald DAO, Inconfido, Flowser, Outblock, GetBlock, SoulMade, Dapper Labs, Dev Spotlight & independent researchers. The working group is building in public and coordinating via the Developer Grants program and GitHub.