Developer-ecosystem reports usually count things: GitHub stars, monthly active developers, hackathon submissions. This one counts what exists and what a developer can rely on, because on a testnet that carried its first signed transaction two weeks ago, that is the honest measure.
What works
Polkadot.js. Connect Polkadot.js Apps to wss://rpc.testnet.empooriochain.org, and the runtime metadata loads: 140 pallets, their calls, storage and events. Developer → Extrinsics lets you submit any call; Chain state lets you read any storage. This is the lowest-level and most complete surface, and it works today.
MetaMask, Hardhat, Foundry. Since runtime 211 the chain accepts standard Ethereum transactions. Chain id 2026, RPC https://rpc.testnet.empooriochain.org, symbol DMS, explorer https://empooscan.com. Solidity 0.8.x deploys unmodified; the public-sale contract was verified on Sourcify. Gas is 1 gwei as of runtime 220.
Rust SDK (empoorio-sdk) and CLI (emp-cli). In the chain repository under sdk/rust/. The SDK exposes typed clients for high-value flows — EmpoorioClient (core), EmpDomainsClient, MusicNftClient, TokenizedFundClient, AiServingClient, AccountAbstractionClient — plus dynamic Subxt calls for everything else. The CLI runs an interactive dashboard with no arguments and works non-interactively with subcommands (domains resolve alice.emp, staking nominate …). Both are built from source; neither is on crates.io, by explicit decision — nothing is published there without prior discussion.
Dart SDK (empoorio_chain_sdk). Under EmpoorioChain/sdk/dart/: 1,212 Dart files, with types generated from the chain's SCALE metadata. It is what Eoonia Wallet runs on, and it encodes the two custom signed extensions correctly. It is marked publish_to: none — usable as a path dependency, not from pub.dev. Its README is still the 39-line dart create template, which is the single most embarrassing file in the SDK and is on the list.
Eoonia Wallet. In production on Google Play (com.gnoosis.eoonia, version 1.3.0). 35 of 43 native extrinsics in its integration matrix verified against the live chain; 43 of 43 on the EVM side. It is the reference client for the extrinsic format.
What does not exist yet
@empoorio/sdkon npm — 404. A TypeScript SDK is referenced in older documents; it is not published, and where it exists in source it covers 3 of 143 pallets. Use Polkadot.js API directly for now.- A public faucet. None deployed. Testnet DMS for development is obtained from the team.
- A published
emp_*RPC reference. The node exposes custom methods (emp_getAiModelStatus,emp_getBlobData,emp_getDomainOwner,emp_getTrackInfo,emp_getValidatorScore); they have not been enumerated againstrpc_methodsand documented for publication. - ink!/Wasm contracts.
pallet-contractsis declared as a dependency but is not inconstruct_runtime!. Wasm smart contracts do not run. Solidity via Frontier is the contract path. - Client diversity. One node implementation.
Documentation
The chain repository holds the engineering documentation this blog draws on, and much of it now carries a last verified against the live chain header with a spec version. Documents without that header are documents nobody has run. The public developer site is being rebuilt from these sources; until it is, the repository is the reference.
The number that matters
On 7 September 2026 the testnet had 102,912 blocks and zero signed transactions in its history, because no client encoded the extrinsic envelope correctly. Today Eoonia, the Dart SDK and the Rust SDK all do, and the chain has settled its first swap and registered its first DID. The developer surface is small and it is real. That is the state.
Based on ARCHITECTURE.md, GETTING_STARTED.md, RED.json and the September 2026 documentation audit.