Application to join the Polkadot Technical Fellowship

Background information of the applicant

My name is Kunal Drall, and I am a blockchain developer with hands-on experience in Rust, Go, and Python. I have been actively involved in the Substrate and Polkadot ecosystem through hackathons, grants, and open-source development, focusing on building practical, production-oriented systems.

I recently graduated from PBA-X Wave 5, where I gained a strong foundation in decentralized systems, cryptography, governance, interoperability, and hands-on usage of the Polkadot SDK. This experience significantly strengthened my understanding of Polkadot’s architecture and governance model.

Motivation(s) for applying to the Polkadot Technical Fellowship

I am applying to join the Polkadot Technical Fellowship because I want to contribute to the long-term technical development and governance of the Polkadot network.

I strongly align with the Fellowship’s guiding principles:

Upholding Polkadot’s long-term interests
Respecting its technical philosophy and governance processes
Collaborating openly and respectfully with the community

The Fellowship represents a technical collective where I can learn from experienced contributors while progressively adding value through sustained open-source work.

Area(s) of interest in relation to the Polkadot ecosystem

My primary areas of interest include:

Substrate & FRAME development
Runtime development and core components for parachains
Development of CoreJAM and virtual machines
Smart contracts, particularly through Pallet Revive, to reduce onboarding friction for developers from other ecosystems
Improving developer experience while preserving protocol robustness

I am especially interested in the intersection of infrastructure and accessibility within the Polkadot ecosystem.

Contribution(s) to Polkadot SDK (if any)

While I am currently at an early stage of direct Polkadot SDK contributions, I am actively building within the ecosystem.

I am currently working on Powergrid Network, a virtual power plant solution on Polkadot, applying Substrate-based design patterns to real-world infrastructure coordination.

My near-term contribution goals include:

Solving beginner- to intermediate-level Polkadot SDK GitHub issues
Improving documentation and developer tooling
Gradually contributing to runtime- and pallet-level code

Link to the GitHub profile of the applicant

GitHub: https://github.com/kunal-drall
Project (Powergrid Network): https://github.com/kunal-drall/powergrid_network

Polkadot address with a verified on-chain identity