AMM

Automated market makers are the workhorse of decentralized trading - and the source of most of the friction. Pondora's intent model accesses AMMs differently and offers a new kind of liquidity position alongside them.

How a classical AMM works

A classical AMM (Uniswap-style constant-product, for example) is a smart contract that:

• holds a pool of two tokens at a price set by their ratio,
• lets traders swap directly against the pool, paying a small fee,
• pays that fee to liquidity providers who deposited the pool's reserves.

The model is permissionless and elegant. It also locks LPs into a single pool for as long as they want to earn fees.

The friction

For traders:

• Slippage scales with trade size against pool depth.
• Sandwich / MEV attacks are easy on public mempools - your trade is visible before it confirms.
• No conditional execution. You either swap now at the current price, or you don't swap.

For liquidity providers:

• Funds are locked. The LP position can't trade, deposit elsewhere, or earn yield in another protocol simultaneously.
• Impermanent loss is permanent unless prices revert.
• Per-action network fees for deposit, withdraw, and rebalance.

How intents change AMM access

For a Pondora trader, an AMM is just one of several routes the matcher can use to satisfy an intent. You don't choose the AMM; you sign what you want, and the matcher picks the AMM, the order book, or some combination - whichever delivers the best price.

	Classical AMM access	Pondora
Route choice	User picks the pool	Matcher picks the best route across all pools and orders
Custody before swap	Funds approved to / deposited in router	Funds stay in your Smart Account
MEV	Mempool-visible	Off-chain matching + batched settlement removes the visibility window
Cancellation	Per-tx revoke (network fee)	Free - just let the intent expire

Intent-driven liquidity provision

Pondora introduces a new kind of LP position via Sailfish's pool primitive: a constant-product pool whose state lives on Sailfish and whose liquidity comes from intents you sign from your Smart Account.

• Liquid LP positions. Your LP intent is a signed message; the underlying assets stay in your account until they're matched against trades. You can adjust without an unwind transaction.
• Composable. An LP position is just another intent your account holds. It can coexist with limit orders, scheduled payments, and other strategies.
• Same trust model. Settlement runs through Echo-verified Sailfish snapshots; the on-chain validator enforces the conditions you signed.

For the underlying mechanics, see Sailfish - How It Works.