Aquarium

Aquarium is a work-in-progress innovative protocol that allows Cardano users to pay transaction fees (normall paid in ADA) with custom tokens.

What does it do

This solution is being made for the whole Cardano community and it is being developed to accomplish 4 critical tasks:

  • Feeless transactions on Cardano: users can avoid paying transaction fees to user dApps, services and send money to other users;
  • Custom native tokens used to pay for transaction fees: stablecoins and any custom 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 this solution allows an incentivized automation of any transaction on Cardano;
  • Use ADA and other native tokens to pay for transactions on Cardano sidechains: deploy feeless dApps on any Cardano sidechain, paying the fees in ADA;

We are basically hiding the blockchain complexity to revolutionize 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.

This MVP shows the core principle of the solution: on Cardano Preview network, any user can send 7tADA to any other user without having to pay any transaction fee! Please note that sending gasless transactions to Smart Contracts is not yet supported, but it will be in the final version.

How it works

Aquarium Lambdas

They will enable feeless transactions:

  1. Any dApp or project (here called "the Creator") that wants to allow its users to use feeless transactions must create a FeeTank
  2. Only the Creator and the FluidTokens Validators Network will have access to the FeeTank
  3. The Creator specifies the conditions to allow using the FeeTank during transactions such as whitelisted addresses, chain conditions, transaction content, etc.
  4. The Creator adds a few lines of Lucid code in its platform to allow the users to use the gasless transactions
  5. The FluidTokens Validators Network will ensure to use the proper FeeTank and that the conditions are correctly met
  6. User will sign the tx but won't pay any fee in ADA

Aquarium Rules

They will enable automatic Smart Contracts and transactions:

  1. Fill your FeeTank
  2. Create an Aquarium Lambda
  3. Specify the conditions to trigger the Lambda (every x seconds, at chain event, with external source of info, etc.)
  4. The FluidTokens Validators Network will ensure to use the proper FeeTank and that the conditions are correctly met
  5. The FluidTokens Validators Network will execute the transaction for you, resulting in true decentralized automation

An economycal sustainable solution

Cardano Aquarium has the crucial role to guarantee a safe and decentralized way to allow feeless transactions and to fully automate Smart Contracts. To accomplish this, an open network of Validators will have the duty to submit the correct transactions with the correct values to the Cardano blockchain. As compensation for their work, Validators are rewarded with a small fraction of the transaction fees cost, taken directly from the Creator FeeTank.

MVP technical details

Please check: Aquarium official page

This MVP is running on Cardano Preview network, so we are not using real ADA.

This page shows the basic mechanism of the Aquarium Lambdas allowing feeless transactions. These transactions are sponsored by a FluidTokens FeeTank and each transaction sends exactly 7 tAda from your address to the one you specify.

FeeTank public address: addr_test1vr5xnps9u3gpaw2k5c2wzyugpdd5nmfyl5rnudjmamhj0hgjker25

To show the basic concept of Aquarium Rules, an automated transaction updates a simple counter at our dummy target Smart Contract every 72 hours.

Automated Smart Contract address: addr_test1wqgrssem2n3ty8zh49ne8vsj6h6saxxfj0raj3xnekyxuyc0p3agy Automated Smart Contract repo: https://github.com/FluidTokens/ft-cardano-automatic-sc-mvp