There’s a comprehensive update on the IOG blog covering the v1 release of Hydra, which enables a copy of the main ledger state to be modified among selected participants in a state channel or head. The hydra head allows fast and low cost transactions that can be periodically settled (or flushed) back to the Cardano blockchain. The blog notes:
This design makes Hydra ideal for high-throughput and time-sensitive use cases such as gaming, micropayments, auctions, or collaborative tools, where speed and responsiveness matter most. This capability has been recently showcased through the Hydra vending machine – a real-world demonstration of blockchain scalability. The machine enabled near-instant, gamified transactions using a local currency at major events such as Rare Evo in Las Vegas and TOKEN2049 in Singapore. By leveraging a layer 2 state channel, it offered users a seamless experience where blockchain operated in the background, proving Hydra’s potential for fast, intuitive interactions at scale.
It’s good to see that this technology has now reached a production ready milestone, having been successfully used in the recent Midnight Glacier drop.
We would also note that this technology permits a typical architecture for trading and clearing operations used by financial markets and exchanges to be readily implemented on Cardano.
Olga has more details on the blog which are worth a read.