What is Substrate Connect?
A fast, secure, and decentralized way to interact with Polkadot, Kusama, and their parachains right in the browser, Substrate Connect helps you build better end-user experiences for Web3 apps.
Substrate Technology
Light Client Based
Light clients allow you to interact with a blockchain in a less resource-intensive way than running a full node. Because they can quickly sync with a blockchain and run locally in browsers and on mobile and IoT devices, light clients are set to power the future of decentralized applications.
Effortless Connectivity
Running a full node requires a lot of knowledge, effort, and resources, and connecting to remote third-party nodes can be insecure and unreliable. Substrate Connect is the most convenient way to securely and trustlessly connect your app to any Substrate-based chain.
More on light clients
The Browser Extension
The Substrate Connect Browser Extension is using Substrate Connect and Smoldot light client node modules and upon browser initiation updates and synchronizes in the well known substrate chain specs (Polkadot, Kusama, Rococo, Westend), keeping them to the latest state inside the extension, for faster chain sync. When a dApp (e.g. PolkadotJS/apps) that integrates Substrate Connect starts in a browser's tab, it then receives the latest specs from the Extension instead of wrap-synching from the last imported inside the dApp; At the same time, the dApp will appear inside the Extension as "connected" - meaning that it is using the Extension's bootnodes and specs; You can download and Firefox extensions below or find more information on the Github repo.
Developer Docs
Supported Networks
Supported
Polkadot
Scalable sharded chain and the first protocol that provides a secure environment for cross-chain composability.
Supported
Kusama
A network built as a risk-taking, fast-moving ‘canary in the coal mine’ for its cousin Polkadot.
