Hlabs: a radically different approach for AMM swaps, trustless and deterministic (1 tx)

[GENERAL] Name and surname of main applicant

[GENERAL] Are you delivering this project as an individual or as an entity (whether formally incorporated or not)

[GENERAL] Please specify how many months you expect your project to last (from 2-12 months)

[GENERAL] Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated into English from another language

[GENERAL] Summarize your solution to the problem (200-character limit including spaces)

We propose to prototype a radically different approach to allow for AMM swaps in a single, deterministic Cardano transaction.

[GENERAL] Does your project have any dependencies on other organizations, technical or otherwise?

[GENERAL] If YES, please describe what the dependency is and why you believe it is essential for your project’s delivery. If NO, please write “No dependencies.”

No dependencies.

[GENERAL] Will your project’s output/s be fully open source?

[GENERAL] Please provide here more information on the open source status of your project outputs

The project will be source-available.

In the sense that the code will NOT made freely available for possible modification and redistribution.

But still the source code of the implementation will be public so that anyone will be able to verify the contract they are using.

[SOLUTION] Please describe your proposed solution

Since Cardano had introduced

smart contracts capabilities to the protocol,

many teams have tried to build a Decentralized Exchange (DEX)

that allows the exchange of different native assets.

Since then, two main designs have been established:

Order Books and Automated Market Makers (AMMs);

but each comes with different tradeoffs,

that in some cases can not guarantee the execution of an order,

or in other cases requires (ofthen trusted) third parties

to execute them for the user.

We propose a new design

for Decentralized Exchanges based on AMMs,

that can execute swaps in a single, deterministic, transaction

without involving third parties,

thus staying trustless and permissionless.

[IMPACT] Please define the positive impact your project will have on the wider Cardano community

The new design will make extensive use of the eUTxO features to make this possible

relying minimally on offchain infrastructure to perform actions on behalf of the user.

a single transaction per swap also implies a better perception of the speed that the cardano blockchain can truly ofter; showcasing the true power of the eUTxO model.

[CAPABILITY & FEASIBILITY] What is your capability to deliver your project with high levels of trust and accountability? How do you intend to validate if your approach is feasible?

Michele Nuzzi has been part of the Cardano ecosystem at the beginning as a single stake pool operator and later as developer. In this time he wrote and still maintains numerous dependecy free typescript libraries that require a low level understanding of the Cardano protocol.

A non-exhaustive list list of some of the projects would be:

• plu-ts: a typescript framework for the creation of Cardano Smart contracts
• plutus-machine: typescript library for the evaluation of contracts off-chain
• cardano-ledger-ts: collection of classes and functions for Cardano specific data types and respective serialization and deserialization in CBOR format.
• ouroboros-miniprotocols-ts: library for low level interactions with the cardano-node based on the ouroboros mini protocols specification.

And more recently actively developing an alternative implementation of the cardano-node, thanks to previous catalyst funding.

[PROJECT MILESTONES] What are the key milestones you need to achieve in order to complete your project successfully?

Produce a withepaper (meant for the general public) and a yellow paper( meant for the technical reader)

Write the onchain logic

Prepare the offchain infrastructure

Produce a frontend to interact with the contracts

Close out report and video.

[RESOURCES] Who is in the project team and what are their roles?

1) Michele Nuzzi

• X.com (former Twitter)

Additionally, Hlabs is looking to expand the team to better handle the various ongoing projects.

New personnel working on this proposal in case of approval would meet the following requirements:

Senior Typescript developer, 5 years experience, deep understanding of computer science fundamentals and with solid understanding of the different Javascript runtimes and relative main APIs

[BUDGET & COSTS] Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Assuming 2 engineers working for a period of 12 months, for a wage of 5750 $/month

at the current rate of exchange of about 0.46 USD per 1 ADA

we have

2 x 5750 x 12 / 0.46 = 300000 ADA.

[VALUE FOR MONEY] How does the cost of the project represent value for money for the Cardano ecosystem?

please see "IMPACT" section above