Hydra Wall Street Library: Integrate with Real-World Finance

[Proposal setup] Proposal title

Please provide your proposal title

Hydra Wall Street Library: Integrate with Real-World Finance

[Proposal Summary] Budget Information

Enter the amount of funding you are requesting in ADA

80000

[Proposal Summary] Time

Please specify how many months you expect your project to last

4

[Proposal Summary] Translation Information

Please indicate if your proposal has been auto-translated

No

Original Language

en

[Proposal Summary] Problem Statement

What is the problem you want to solve?

Cardano lacks an open source library to integrate Hydra with real-world finance. Developers need tools to test, learn, and build financial apps in a Wall Street-style sandbox

[Proposal Summary] Project Dependencies

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

No

Describe any dependencies or write 'No dependencies'

No dependencies

[Proposal Summary] Project Open Source

Will your project's outputs be fully open source?

Yes

License and Additional Information

MIT License

[Theme Selection] Theme

Please choose the most relevant theme and tag related to the outcomes of your proposal

Developer Tools

[Campaign Category] Category Questions

Mention your open source license and describe your open source license rationale.

We will use the MIT License, an OSI-approved license.

MIT is simple, permissive, and widely adopted in the Cardano ecosystem.

Allows anyone to freely use, copy, modify, and distribute with minimal restrictions.

Encourages maximum adoption and contributions while keeping outputs fully open.

Chosen to ensure transparency, collaboration, and easy integration with other open source projects.

How do you make sure your source code is accessible to the public from project start, and people are informed?

A public GitHub repository will be live from project start with the MIT license clearly included.

Initial commit will contain setup instructions, contribution guide, and documentation.

Code updates will be frequent, with clear commit history and tagged releases.

How will you provide high quality documentation?

Documentation will be written in Markdown and hosted in the GitHub repo.

Includes setup guides, API references, code samples, and tutorials.

Clear visuals (architecture diagrams, flowcharts) will simplify complex concepts.

[Your Project and Solution] Solution

Please describe your proposed solution and how it addresses the problem

Hydra Wall Street Sandbox, an open source paper trading environment that demonstrates Hydra’s ability to support real-world financial use cases. This sandbox will allow developers to test high-frequency trading (HFT) strategies, simulate market conditions, and anchor trading summaries on-chain for verifiability without requiring custody of assets or risking capital.

The project provides both developer libraries and a ready-to-use environment so teams can experiment with Cardano-native Hydra Heads in financial applications. It aims to bridge the gap between Hydra’s technical potential and practical, finance-oriented developer tools.

Core Features

• Hydra Integration
• Users can join or spawn their own Hydra Head.
• Each Hydra Head acts as a high-speed micro-ledger for execution, with final settlement anchored on Cardano.
• Summaries (state hashes, P&L, logs) are posted on-chain for audit and tamper evidence.
• Off-Chain Order Book
• Implements a traditional price-time priority matching engine.
• Supports limit, IOC (immediate-or-cancel), cancels, and partial fills.
• Provides deterministic replay to ensure reproducibility across test runs.
• Designed to showcase Hydra’s latency and throughput advantages compared to on-chain execution.
• Synthetic & Delayed Data Feeds
• Sandbox includes synthetic market data generators (equities, FX, crypto) to seed realistic trading scenarios.
• Optional delayed real-world feeds allow developers to replay historical data or test with near-live conditions.
• Pluggable schemas ensure developers can extend the sandbox to custom assets.
• Customizable Market Configurations
• Markets can be defined using YAML or JSON.
• Configurable parameters include trading hours, tick size, lot size, holidays, and halt conditions.
• Enables simulation of Wall Street-style equity markets, 24/7 crypto exchanges, or bespoke environments.
• APIs and SDKs
• REST and WebSocket APIs for strategy integration.
• Python and TypeScript SDKs to support both quant developers and web developers.
• SDKs include helper libraries, backtesting tools, and ready-made strategy templates.
• Developer & User Interface
• A lightweight Web UI for interaction:
• Order ticket
• L2 depth (market depth visualization)
• Trade tape
• P&L tracking
• Latency and throughput HUD
• Hydra Head status panel
• Designed for both developers (debugging tools) and demo purposes (easy visualization).
• On-Chain Anchoring
• Regular anchoring of state hashes ensures that trade logs and execution results are tamper-evident.
• Provides verifiable audit trails, which is crucial for financial-grade testing.
• Demonstrates how Hydra can combine off-chain speed with on-chain trust.

Addressing the Problem

The Hydra Wall Street Sandbox addresses multiple pain points in building financial applications on Cardano:

• **Reducing Risk: **Developers and institutions can test high-frequency trading strategies, order book mechanics, and Hydra scaling without custody or exposure to real assets.
• Reducing Complexity: Provides a single integrated stack — Hydra, order book, APIs, SDKs, and UI — so developers don’t need to stitch together multiple components.
• Cutting Time to Market: Ships with ready examples, seeded scenarios, and documentation, drastically lowering setup time for new developers.
• Improving Reliability: Includes testing harnesses, fuzzing, and built-in metrics for latency and throughput to ensure confidence in performance.
• Enabling Global Reach: Provides flexible templates to replicate traditional Wall Street markets, crypto exchanges, or entirely new structures all without vendor lock-in.

Why Hydra?

Hydra is designed for low-latency, high-throughput scaling on Cardano. Financial markets are one of the most demanding environments for transaction systems. By demonstrating Hydra in a Wall Street-style sandbox:

We prove Hydra’s practical viability beyond theoretical benchmarks.

We showcase realistic trading use cases where Hydra’s micro-ledger design is uniquely well-suited.

We provide the Cardano developer ecosystem with reusable open source libraries that can seed further experimentation and innovation.

This project not only demonstrates Hydra’s capabilities but also accelerates adoption by reducing barriers for developers.

Engagement & Beneficiaries

Cardano Developers: Gain an open source SDK and environment to experiment with Hydra and finance-specific use cases.

Quant & Algorithmic Traders: Can prototype and backtest strategies in a Hydra-powered sandbox without risking funds.

**Researchers & Academics: **Obtain a reproducible environment for studying market microstructure on Hydra.

Cardano Ecosystem: Benefits from having Hydra showcased in a practical, finance-relevant domain.

**Community Contributors: **Can extend the library with new data feeds, market templates, or APIs.

Demonstrating Impact

We will demonstrate impact through:

Public GitHub Repository: All code open source under MIT license from Day 1.

Metrics: Documented latency, throughput, and reliability of Hydra in trading scenarios.

Examples & Tutorials: Prebuilt strategies and replay scenarios to help onboard new developers.

Community Outreach: Forum posts, demos, and guides to encourage experimentation.

Success will be visible when:

Developers use the sandbox to prototype financial applications on Cardano.

Hydra’s performance is validated in realistic finance-style conditions.

Community members contribute to extending the sandbox and SDKs.

Why This Matters to Cardano

Financial applications demand both speed and trust. Hydra provides the technical foundation, but adoption requires practical, developer-friendly tools. By creating a Wall Street-style sandbox, we:

Translate Hydra’s abstract capabilities into concrete use cases.

Strengthen the Cardano developer ecosystem with reusable SDKs and libraries.

Showcase Cardano’s ability to handle finance-grade workloads, boosting its credibility in institutional and developer communities.

In short, the Hydra Wall Street Sandbox is more than a demo — it is a foundational open source toolkit that will reduce barriers, accelerate adoption, and expand Cardano’s real-world relevance in finance.

[Your Project and Solution] Impact

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

The Hydra Wall Street Sandbox will positively impact the Cardano community by turning Hydra from a theoretical scaling solution into a practical tool that developers can adopt immediately.

Value to the Community

Provides the first open source finance-focused Hydra toolkit, lowering barriers for developers to experiment.

Strengthens the Cardano developer ecosystem with reusable libraries, APIs, and SDKs.

Demonstrates Cardano’s ability to meet financial market-grade performance, increasing credibility with institutions.

Offers a safe environment for learning, testing, and teaching high-frequency and real-time trading concepts.

How We Measure Impact

Adoption: number of developers cloning, forking, and contributing to the GitHub repo.

Engagement: activity on GitHub Issues/Discussions and Cardano forums.

Usage: downloads of SDKs, API calls, and replayed market scenarios.

**Community Growth: **number of external pull requests, tutorials, and strategy contributions.

Sharing Outputs

Public GitHub repository under the MIT License from day one.

Regular documentation, tutorials, and video walkthroughs to onboard developers.

Demonstrations at Cardano community calls and developer meetups.

Forum posts and articles summarizing Hydra sandbox performance benchmarks.

Long-Term Impact

By creating an open source financial sandbox, we equip the Cardano ecosystem with tools to explore DeFi, institutional finance, and experimental markets on Hydra. This project becomes a foundation that others can extend, adapt, and commercialize — ensuring Cardano remains a leader in scalable, real-world financial applications.

[Your Project and Solution] Capabilities & 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?

Our team has deep expertise in building open source financial and blockchain infrastructure. Collectively, we have over five years of experience across distributed systems, high-performance trading engines, and blockchain scaling solutions.

We have successfully delivered multiple projects involving order books, SDKs, APIs, and sandbox environments for blockchain developers. This includes contributions to EVM and SVM based networks and financial-grade systems, giving us practical knowledge in latency-sensitive and fault-tolerant architectures.

For the Hydra Wall Street Sandbox, our approach ensures feasibility through:

Proven experience with matching engines, market data feeds, and developer tooling.

Incremental delivery: publishing a working GitHub repository from project start, with continuous integration and transparent commits.

Validation via benchmarks: latency, throughput, and replay reproducibility will be measured and shared publicly.

Community accountability: open repository, MIT license, and regular updates shared on Cardano forums and social media.

With this background, we are confident in our ability to deliver the Hydra Sandbox on time, at high quality, and in alignment with the Cardano Open funding goals.

[Milestones] Project Milestones

Milestone Title

Project Launch Document:

Milestone Outputs

**Landscape Review: **Hydra tooling, Cardano node and Ogmios options, global market data licensing, synthetic data needs, community expectations.

**Technical Assessment: **Hydra Head interfaces over WS and HTTP, Head lifecycle, snapshot anchoring, determinism requirements, containerization and CI plan.

Requirements Documentation: functional and non functional specs for order book, data adapters, SDKs, UI, telemetry, quests and leaderboards, and on chain anchoring.

Acceptance Criteria

Detailed analysis captures latency and throughput targets, replay determinism, licensing risks, and operations needs.

Defined project boundaries and goals with measurable success metrics and timeline.

Key challenges identified with initial mitigations for sync loss, data gaps, and replay correctness.

Evidence of Completion

Launch and requirements documents committed to the public github repository and link submitted to catalyst MS eviewers

Delivery Month

1

Cost

15000

Progress

10 %

Milestone Title

Architectural Planning

Milestone Outputs

Execution Flow: join or spawn Head, order lifecycle, snapshot and anchor, failure and recovery paths.

**API and Integration Points: **REST and WebSocket surfaces, TypeScript SDK functions, UI hooks, telemetry schemas, event models.

Security and Scalability: rate limits, permissioning, replay protection, resource budgets, reconnect rules, and cost model.

**Risk Evaluation: **Head closure, feed outages, clock skew, halt logic, and licensing constraints with mitigations.

System Architecture Blueprint:

**Diagrams: **services, matching engine, data adapters, SDK gateway, anchoring service, dashboards.

Acceptance Criteria

Feasibility validated against Milestone 1 requirements.

Risks and dependencies documented with fallback strategies.

Integration readiness for wallets, dApps, and data sources without custom forks.

Robustness and security considerations address scale and crash safety.

Evidence of Completion

Feasibility report and architecture blueprint published in the github repo with ADRs and diagram sources

Delivery Month

2

Cost

15000

Progress

20 %

Milestone Title

Development

Milestone Outputs

**Matching Engine Alpha: **price time priority, partial fills, cancels, IOC and limit, deterministic replay.

Data Path: synthetic map runner and optional delayed feed adapter, pluggable schemas for equities, FX, and crypto.

Custom Market Configs: YAML or JSON for hours, tick size, lot size, halts, and holidays.

**Anchoring Service: **periodic state hash commits on chain with verify endpoint.

UI and SDKs: minimal React UI for ticket, L2, tape, P&L and latency HUD, Python and TypeScript SDK alpha.

**Testing Environment: **containers, local scripts, seeded scenarios, and CI test suites.

Acceptance Criteria

End to end seeded run that places and cancels orders, produces fills, and anchors verifiable summaries on chain.

Stable alpha runs with reproducible CI and no critical crashes.

SDK quickstarts work on a clean machine and expose metrics endpoints.

Evidence of Completion

Development docs and usage guides in the repo, CI passing badge, demo recording, test reports, and a tagged alpha release.

Delivery Month

3

Cost

20000

Progress

80 %

Milestone Title

Release and Project Conclusion

Milestone Outputs

Public beta feedback addressed and issue triage complete.

Security hardening with threat model, fuzz tests, and stability runs.

v1 release: hosted docs site, versioned SDK packages, integration playbooks and operations runbook.

Acceptance Criteria

All high severity defects are fixed and retested.

Public demo meets uptime target and anchors are visible and verifiable on chain.

Documentation is clear and complete for external teams who might want to use it.

Evidence of Completion

Final report and slide deck in the repo, release tags and published packages, links to docs and demo, anchor transaction references, and workshop recording linked from the README.

Delivery Month

4

Cost

30000

Progress

100 %

[Final Pitch] Budget & Costs

Please provide a cost breakdown of the proposed work and resources

Milestone 1

Total: 15,000 ADA

Senior Hydra Engineer: 9,000 ADA

Full Stack Engineer: 6,000 ADA

Milestone 2

Total: 15,000 ADA

Senior Hydra Engineer: 9,000 ADA

Full Stack Engineer: 6,000 ADA

Milestone 3

Total: 20,000 ADA

Senior Hydra Engineer: 12,000 ADA

Full Stack Engineer: 8,000 ADA

Milestone 4

Total: 30,000 ADA

Senior Hydra Engineer: 18,000 ADA

Full Stack Engineer: 12,000 ADA

Grand Total: 80,000 ADA

[Final Pitch] Value for Money

How does the cost of the project represent value for the Cardano ecosystem?

Value for Money

Our request of 80,000 ADA is tightly scoped to deliver a complete, open source Hydra Wall Street Sandbox that strengthens the Cardano developer ecosystem. The budget is distributed across four milestones (15k, 15k, 20k, 30k), with clear deliverables at each stage and proportional allocation to senior engineering expertise.

Why this represents value:

Lean Team, High Output: Two engineers (Senior Hydra Engineer + Full Stack Engineer) deliver the full system, SDKs, APIs, and UI. This minimizes overhead and maximizes direct development impact.

Open Source, MIT Licensed: All code, documentation, and SDKs will be fully open from day one, ensuring the community can freely reuse, extend, and build upon the work.

**Industry Benchmark Costs: **Senior blockchain engineers typically cost $80–$120/hr. Our milestone allocations (approx. 400–450 hrs per milestone) reflect competitive global developer rates.

Reusable Deliverables: The sandbox provides not only a demonstration but also libraries, APIs, and templates that other projects can adopt, reducing future development costs for the ecosystem.

**Direct Community Value: **The project reduces barriers for developers, accelerates Hydra adoption, and strengthens Cardano’s reputation in real-world finance — outcomes far exceeding the requested budget.

In short, this proposal delivers maximum leverage: for the cost of funding two engineers over four milestones, the Cardano ecosystem gains a reusable open source sandbox, SDKs, documentation, and benchmarks that will continue to generate value long after delivery.

[Required Acknowledgements] Consent & Confirmation

Terms and Conditions:

Yes