How Sailfish Works

Sailfish follows a simple cycle: users express what they want to trade, Sailfish matches orders off-chain, Echo verifies the results, and Cardano settles the final balances.

Order Lifecycle

1. Users submit order intents through their Smart Account. An intent describes the trade a user is willing to make (e.g. "sell 100 ADA for at least 50 USDC"). These are Sailfish-specific intents that execute on the L2 matching engine rather than on Cardano L1.
2. Sailfish matches orders off-chain — the execution engine continuously matches compatible orders with low latency.
3. Balance changes are batched into a snapshot — rather than settling each trade individually, Sailfish groups results into an efficient batch. This snapshot-based approach is similar to the model used by Hydra state channels, where off-chain state is periodically captured into a signed commitment.
4. Echo verifies the batch — the batch is submitted to the Echo consensus network, where participants independently replay all signed order intents and verify that every balance transition is correct. Once a threshold agrees, they collectively produce a single cryptographic signature over the snapshot.
5. Settlement on Cardano — the signed snapshot is committed on-chain as a single Cardano transaction, similar to how rollups batch many off-chain transactions into a single L1 submission. On-chain validators verify the Echo signature, independently reconstruct the balances from the actual transaction inputs and outputs, and update user accounts atomically.

Sailfish Accounts

Every Sailfish user has a Sailfish account on Cardano L1. These accounts mirror the custody model of Pond Smart Accounts — your assets remain under your control at all times, secured by the same self-custodial guarantees.

The key difference is what you can do with them. While your Pond Smart Account handles L1 operations like DeFi and staking, your Sailfish account accepts Sailfish-specific intents — order types that execute on the Sailfish L2 matching engine instead of on Cardano's base layer. This gives you the speed of off-chain execution without giving up custody.

Because both account types share the same custody model and are tied to the same owner, funds can flow between them seamlessly. Your Sailfish account is effectively your trading account within the same self-custodial ecosystem.