diff --git a/.github/workflows/release.yml b/.github/workflows/release.yml
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2cdfe5d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.github/workflows/release.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
+name: Build and Publish Python Package
+
+on:
+  workflow_dispatch:
+    inputs:
+      version:
+        description: 'Version to release'
+        required: true
+        type: string
+
+jobs:
+  build:
+    name: Build Python distribution
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    steps:
+    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
+    
+    - name: Set up Python
+      uses: actions/setup-python@v4
+      with:
+        python-version: '3.10'
+
+    - name: Install dependencies
+      run: |
+        python -m pip install --upgrade pip
+        pip install build wheel twine
+
+    - name: Build package
+      run: python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel
+
+    - name: Check if package version already exists
+      run: |
+        PACKAGE_NAME=$(python setup.py --name)
+        PACKAGE_VERSION=${{ github.event.inputs.version }}
+        if twine check dist/*; then
+          if pip install $PACKAGE_NAME==$PACKAGE_VERSION; then
+            echo "Error: Version $PACKAGE_VERSION of $PACKAGE_NAME already exists on PyPI"
+            exit 1
+          else
+            echo "Version $PACKAGE_VERSION of $PACKAGE_NAME does not exist on PyPI. Proceeding with upload."
+          fi
+        else
+          echo "Error: Twine check failed."
+          exit 1
+        fi
+
+    - name: Upload artifact
+      uses: actions/upload-artifact@v3
+      with:
+        name: dist
+        path: dist/
+
+  approve-and-publish:
+    needs: build
+    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
+    environment: release
+    permissions:
+      contents: read
+      id-token: write
+
+    steps:
+    - name: Download artifact
+      uses: actions/download-artifact@v3
+      with:
+        name: dist
+        path: dist/
+
+    - name: Publish package distributions to PyPI
+      uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@release/v1
+      with:
+        verbose: true
+        print-hash: true
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..07681b1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+## 1.0.0rc1 /2025-01-13
+
+## What's Changed
+* New Async Substrate Interface by @thewhaleking and @roman-opentensor in https://github.com/opentensor/async-substrate-interface/tree/main
diff --git a/pyproject.toml b/pyproject.toml
index 6843e6a..0c383d9 100644
--- a/pyproject.toml
+++ b/pyproject.toml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 [project]
 name = "async-substrate-interface"
-version = "1.0.0"
+version = "1.0.0rc1"
 description = "Asyncio library for interacting with substrate. Mostly API-compatible with py-substrate-interface"
 readme = "README.md"
 license = { file = "LICENSE" }
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index e5e27a7..1b84e79 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 setup(
     name="async-substrate-interface",
-    version="1.0.0",
+    version="1.0.0rc1",
     description="Asyncio library for interacting with substrate.",
     long_description=open("README.md").read(),
     long_description_content_type="text/markdown",