Upgrading Our Site, Docs & DevEx: Web3 Developer Tools Overview

Particle Network dev community,

The last few months have been full of announcements and deep dives on our upcoming ecosystem. If you’ve kept an eye on our channels, you may also have seen that, as a part of our transition to a full-blown token-centric economy, we’ve dedicated considerable time and effort to bootstrapping The People’s Alliance’s project, which is now the largest community Inscription in history.

However, we haven’t forgotten the life and blood of our project –developers. We’ve been working relentlessly on all aspects of our developer experience, producing countless tutorials, integrating new chains into our Smart WaaS modular stack, upgrading our documentation, and refining our Web3 developer tools.

In this article, we want to give you an overview of how we’re going above and beyond to improve our DevEx, starting with an intro to our new website and docs.

New Particle Network website

We won’t go too deep into this one, as we really want you to check it out at particle.network.

We just launched a huge revamp of our website. With a homepage full of interactive components to help you learn about the different components of our ecosystem, as well as multiple pages dedicated to reviewing each of them in-depth, we are gearing up for what’s coming in full style.

Again, we won’t say more here. Go and check out the new website for yourself!

Upgrading our documentation: Resources

We can now say it: Our new documentation is live at developers.particle.network!

Even though our previous documentation helped us onboard over 800 projects across multiple chains (leading to the generation of over 17 Million wallets), we wanted to continue reducing DevEx friction, making the process of integrating with Particle Network faster and easier.

To do this, alongside a large suite of new technical and semi-technical explanations of our tech stack and upcoming ecosystem products (which will be constantly updated), we’ve integrated multiple interactive and informational features to get you started with our tech stack in just a few minutes. Some of the additions that make us proudest include (in order of appearance):

1. An interactive “Getting Started” widget, leading you to the exact information you need for your particular goals. With it, you can simply answer a few questions and get redirected to the pages containing what you need to begin integrating Particle Network within your dApp.

2. Quickstart guides for every component of our tech stack. These cover everything from the technical aspects of our products to the networks they support, as well as customization guides containing just the necessary amount of information to get started. The goal of our Quickstart is to help you integrate and understand the basics of any product from Particle Network in under 5 minutes.
   
   With a concerted effort on DevEx, mixed with straightforward resources to quickly integrate Particle, this is another step advancing us in the competition to make our Web3 developer tools the friendliest in the market.

3. Walkthrough videos. For visual learners, our new documentation is also overflowing with videos showcasing ways of integrating Particle Network. These range from general Particle Auth and Connect implementations to specific guides on how to utilize Account Abstraction on multiple chains and, as we’ll cover later, are a cornerstone of our DevEx efforts.

4. Code examples. We have put great emphasis on showcasing the step-by-step process of integrating Particle’s solutions, including code examples for you to either learn from or use within your own project. Our new documentation extensively features such examples, guiding you through the step-by-step process of integrating our Smart Wallet-as-a-Service Web3 developer tools.

5. Straightforward informational guides on our existing and upcoming technological components. We’ve repurposed all the information available in our blog about the Particle Network product ecosystem into simple guides about these products. These guides include technical details for released items and the direction, motivation and goals behind soon-to-launch ones.
   
6. Interactive demos. In some areas, such as the sections dedicated to our two connection modules –Particle Auth and Particle Connect–, we’ve included interactive demos showcasing their implementation. This makes exploring the different components of Particle Network easier and more approachable for new users and developers through hands-on learning.
   
   With these, you can begin familiarizing yourself with Particle Network’s products and what they look like in live implementations, directly within our documentation.

Upgrading our documentation: APIs & SDKs

Of course, we did not just add information about our products and cool widgets to our documentation –everything surrounding our APIs and SDKs got revamped and expanded. We’ve supercharged the information surrounding every one of our APIs and SDKs, on every platform we support, with the same components mentioned above, plus a few developer-oriented interactive tools.

Examples of this are:

1. Extensive SDK information. Particle Network covers Web, Android, and iOS, as well as the most popular game-building platforms, and you can now easily navigate through multiple pages featuring the 32 SDKs available for them. Our SDK documentation dives deep into the details of every one of these development kits, ensuring no stone is left unturned when it comes to integrating or troubleshooting Particle Network’s products within your dApp.

The specific pages for the different Particle Network SDKs are also built to help developers learn all the necessary details about them and how to use them, including code examples, step-by-step guides, and links to additional resources. 

2. A dedicated Samples section where you can find bite-sized tutorials meant to get you started with various different usage scenarios in just a few minutes. These interactive walkthroughs take you step-by-step through the process of leveraging different products from Particle Network and its partners across numerous mediums.

Each Recipe within this section contains a complete walkthrough of the code, detailing each step, why it's happening, and what you need to do to replicate it within your own project. For those short on time, Samples are a great place to learn complex concepts and start applying them in as little time as possible.

3. Debug guides, covering the most common API and SDK errors and how to solve them. These contain specific details and direct references to other pages within our documentation that may be relevant, ensuring you can find the source and potential solution to an error as quickly as possible.
4. Interactive API endpoints. For every API endpoint, you'll find pages for each of its methods. These pages include information about how the method is used, a code example, and adaptive widgets that you can tweak in real-time to test the endpoint across various languages and parameter configurations. Thanks to this, you can begin the process of customizing your code and learning hands-on right within our docs.

5. Interactive FAQs. Within this section, you can ask a question directly to Particle Network for one of our team members to answer. You can also upvote and comment on others’ questions, which allows us to offer an in-depth and social experience within the docs.

Beyond our docs: Upgrades and updates to SDKs, tons of content, and more!

Besides revamping our docs, our work on improving the Particle Network DevEx has primarily focused on:

1. Technical content abundance and quality. We aim to have easily accessible, in-depth information and guides that developers can find at every step of their integration process.

2. Improving our integration experience (reducing programmatic friction).

To these ends, we have also made the below additions.

Addressing our DevEx mission 

As a part of our mission to create more and better content for developers, we put together a mixture of key information about our flagship product –-Modular Smart Wallet-as-a-Service– and developer resources for a developer-oriented Particle 101. As such, this article is an excellent starting point for those getting started within the Particle Network ecosystem.

You can read the article here. 

A new desktop SDK: Particle Auth Core

As mentioned, we want to reduce friction for developers to the minimum. To achieve this, we started an effort to significantly improve UI/UX flexibility, introducing the Particle Auth Core Web SDK.

The Particle Auth Core SDK provides an alternative implementation path while improving popup handling and enabling a greater degree of customization over the standard Particle Auth SDK. Specifically, Particle Auth Core is an answer to the feedback we’ve received from developers over the past few months. It cements itself as a stable and flexible solution while still retaining its predecessor’s –Particle Auth– straightforward, natural integration flow. Currently, Particle Auth Core has SDKs for every major platform that we support, with additional features on Desktop.

Along with this revamp, we’ve already put together numerous resources for developers to begin working with and integrating this SDK into their own projects. These resources include various interactive code samples, GitHub repositories, and tutorial videos.

New components: BTC Connect, Omnichain Paymaster and our open-source Particle Bundler

To further strengthen our native AA support, Particle has introduced new components to its ERC-4337 tech stack, namely:

• BTC Connect, the first account abstraction protocol for Bitcoin.
• The open-source ERC-4337 Particle Bundler: This Bundler implementation is high-performance, highly stable, with a wealth of rich features covered in the article above. It has processed over 1M UserOperations across different chains, serving as a catalyst for account abstraction, further cementing Particle Network as a leading player in this regard.
• Our Omnichain Paymaster, enabling cross-chain gas sponsorships, also natively integrated into our tech stack.
• Added support for session keys (via Biconomy), expanding Modular Smart WaaS’ flexibility.

With a modular AA stack, developers leveraging ERC-4337 AA through Particle Network can use the above tools natively within our stack, or plug into their preferred implementations for a highly customizable experience. And, with BTC Connect, we’re bringing the magic or ERC-4337 AA for the first time. To learn more about this, check out our dedicated article.

Extensive demos

We have also put extensive hours into developing demos on integrating Particle Network across different chains, for all of our various SDKs provided.

A repository of these demos can be found within our documentation, showcasing nearly 50 total demo applications and associated open-source repositories. Since they’re often accompanied by dedicated videos and threads, make sure to follow our Developer Relations’ Twitter account and the Particle Network Youtube channel to get notified once a new one goes live!

Video tutorials and examples

We’ve mentioned videos a few times throughout this article, and this is because they consistently prove to be a powerful medium for technical content, allowing viewers to follow the reasoning and thought process behind application/demo structures, thus making learning far easier.

Because of this, videos have been a major focus of ours and will continue to be. Since we’ve already plugged our Youtube channel above, we’ll leave you with one of our favorites, allowing you to discover more videos yourself! 

Other SDK fixes and upgrades

Several of our SDKs have been upgraded to introduce bug fixes, altering the Smart Account constructor within Modular Smart WaaS, and more. You can learn more about these changes by visiting our Github.

Developer-targeted events

Last, but not least, our Developer Relations and Tech team have hosted and attended a variety of real-world events, talks, hackathons, and meetups, as well as X Spaces. Some of our favorites were:

• Singapore’s Token 2049.
• Istanbul’s Devconnect.
• Amsterdam’s Solana Breakpoint.
• India Blockchain Week.
• Paris’ EthCC.
• Messari’s Mainnet & ETHGlobal in New York City.

Exploring further and getting in touch

Hopefully, by the time you’re done reading this article you’ll be as excited about these new additions as we are about releasing them.

Make sure to visit our new site, as well as our documentation, and check them out for yourself. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out through our new FAQs, or get in touch with a team member by scheduling a call to discuss your specific needs using the widget below.

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About Particle Network

Particle Network powers chain abstraction, addressing Web3's fragmentation of users and liquidity. This is enabled by Particle's Universal Accounts, which give users a unified account and balance across all chains.

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