Aquarium
Aquarium is the innovative protocol that allows Cardano (and soon Bitcoin and EVM) users to pay transaction fees - normally paid in ADA - with custom tokens. It is the very first open and decentralized fee market on Cardano.
Find here the current demo in Cardano Preview network
Aquarium smart contracts are open source and you can find them here
What does it do
Aquarium accomplishes 5 critical tasks:
- Feeless transactions: users can avoid paying transaction fees when using dApps, services or when sending money to other users;
- Custom native tokens used to pay for transaction fees: stablecoins and any custom Cardano token can be used to pay for transaction fees;
- Automatic Smart Contracts: a lot of dApps need automatic actions (for ex. batchers and sequencers, but also limit orders) and Aquarium allows an incentivized automation of any transaction on Cardano;
- Use ADA and other native tokens to pay for transactions on Cardano Layer 2s (COMING SOON): deploy feeless dApps on any Cardano Layer 2, using Aquarium like you already do on Cardano Layer 1;
- BTC and ETH used to pay for transaction fees (COMING SOON): interact with Cardano dApps directly from Bitcoin and EVM wallets, thanks to cross-chain transactions to execute without the need to hold any ADA.
Aquarium hides the blockchain complexity to drastically improve the user experience. For example, this solution is highly needed to create enterprise and business use-cases where users are not crypto experts. Projects and marketplaces also benefit from this, as they can manage stablecoins or custom tokens without having to directly deal with ADA.
Aquarium is a decentralized solution, where the open network of validators compete to execute Aquarium operations following the user's requests, while the users and projects funds are held in a smart contract.
For users
Any user can create an Aquarium Tank and fill it with ADA for one of the following purposes: * Offer his ADA liquidity to the Aquarium protocol in exchange of a amount of custom native tokens. For example, Alice could offer 1000 ADA to anyone who would need them as transaction fees in exchange for 1.5USDM; * Use the Tank privately to schedule transactions that should automatically happen in the future.
Tanks are onchain utxos that only the original creator can manage. Users can create, refill and withdraw their tanks in any moment.
When creating a Tank to offer ADA liquidity, the user can choose between a static ADA/custom tokens ratio (for example offering 1ADA always for 1.5USDM) and a dynamic ratio calculated by FluidTokens oracles (for example offering 1ADA for 1.2x the ADA/USDM ratio).
For projects and dApps
Projects and companies can use Aquarium inside their dApp simply querying the Aquarium endpoint to get the latest available Tanks to use for sponsoring their users' transactions and then create a transaction that includes the need Tanks. The Aquarium smart contract already ensures that the user sends the required amount of custom tokens.
Projects can also create private Aquarium Tanks that only whitelisted addresses can spend, avoiding the eventual extra fees of the open market and managing directly the amount of ADA available for sponsoring their users' transactions.
Aquarium Validators
Aquarium transactions are executed only by an open network of validators who compete to timely execute the users' transactions. Anyone can become an Aquarium validator staking enough $FLDT in the proper Aquarium smart contract. The accumulated fees are periodically split among the validators that have the correct amount of $FLDT staked and that have actually executed transactions for the users. Validators can remove themselves from the network in any moment, withdrawing their staked $FLDT and forfeiting any potential revenue.
Both the required $FLDT staking amount and the minimum number of executed transactions are dynamic parameters decided by the DAO of FluidTokens.