SailFish · DeFi exchange on EDU Chain
SailFish is the first native veDEX on Open Campus EDU Chain. I designed the product end to end (swap, liquidity pools, voting, bribes, bridging and campaigns) so a new ecosystem could bootstrap liquidity without asking users to master DeFi first.
Context
EDU Chain is a Layer 3 blockchain built on Arbitrum Orbit by Open Campus, designed for education apps and what its community calls EduFi. Its testnet was busy: about 86 million transactions and 358,000 active wallets across 47 apps. But a new chain without a place to trade is a city without a market. Tokens had nowhere to swap, new projects had no way to attract liquidity, and liquidity providers had no reason to bring their capital.
SailFish set out to be that market. It's a veDEX (vote-escrowed decentralised exchange): people who lock the SAIL token as veSAIL vote on which pools receive SAIL rewards, and in return earn 100% of those pools' trading fees. Projects can add "bribes", extra rewards, to attract votes to their pool.
How do you design a veDEX for an ecosystem with no existing liquidity, and users who've never used one?
On Ethereum or Base, a veDEX can assume its users already understand locks, gauges and emissions. On EDU Chain, many users were students and educators trying DeFi for the first time. The design had to make a powerful model feel simple, show rewards clearly enough that LPs would commit capital, and feel safe on a chain nobody had traded on before.
Discovery
Discovery ran in three streams: a competitive analysis of established veDEXs, interviews with liquidity providers, traders and protocol founders, and a look at how early EDU Chain users behaved on testnet.
Desk research
EDU Chain's testnet showed real demand, with tens of millions of transactions and hundreds of thousands of wallets, but almost no DeFi infrastructure. Most activity was learning apps and quests. When mainnet launched in January 2025 with over $150 million in total value locked, much of that capital needed somewhere to go.
Getting assets onto the chain was its own hurdle. EDU tokens lived mainly on BNB Chain and had to travel through Arbitrum to reach EDU Chain: two bridges, three networks and plenty of room for mistakes.
These four ideas sit at the heart of every veDEX. The design had to make each of them readable without a glossary.
Competitive analysis
| Platform | Strengths | Weaknesses | Opportunity for SailFish |
|---|---|---|---|
| Velodrome (Optimism) | Effective bribe mechanics | Little transparency in how rewards are calculated | Show estimated earnings before anyone commits |
| Aerodrome (Base) | High governance engagement | Confusing LP and staking flows | Streamline add, stake and manage into one path |
| Thruster and other Blast DEXs | Strong token incentives | Overly complex, dense UI | Simplify staking and reward visualisation |
| Uniswap v3 | Mature concentrated-liquidity tools | Price ranges intimidate new LPs | Preset ranges and plain-language warnings |
The pattern was clear. veDEXs win on incentives and lose people on comprehension. SailFish needed to be simpler, cleaner and more educational than its peers while still offering the advanced tools experienced users expect.
User research
I sat down with liquidity providers, traders and protocol founders, the three groups SailFish had to serve. Each walked me through the last time they added liquidity, made a trade or tried to attract liquidity to a token.
Business goals
Synthesis
I mapped how SailFish's parts connect: a personal asset manager at the centre, V2 and V3 AMMs, a voter contract, gauges, veSAIL, and integrations with partner protocols. Every screen had to explain one part of this system without making the user learn all of it.
Target audience
A veDEX only works when three groups show up together: LPs bring liquidity, traders bring fees, and protocols bring incentives. Three personas kept each of them in view.
Chases yield but is sceptical of new chains. Needs to see exactly what he'll earn before committing capital.
Pain points
Moves between DEXs and chains looking for low slippage and fast execution. Leaves the moment a platform feels slow.
Pain points
His protocol needs deep liquidity. Sees veDEXs as the answer but finds governance and bribes confusing.
Pain points
The design
The MVP had to change mid-project when smart contract constraints forced us to deprioritise some designs and re-scope. What shipped follows a user from getting onto EDU Chain, to their first swap, their first pool, and their first vote.
Bridge
Bridging EDU used to mean leaving for other sites and hopping from BNB Chain to Arbitrum to EDU Chain. SailFish's bridge sits in the same panel as Swap and Buy Crypto, labels each hop "Step 1 of 3", and warns when the connected wallet is on the wrong network before anything can go wrong. $95k was bridged in its first week.
Swap
The swap panel keeps the essentials together: balance shortcuts (10% to 100%), the "To get" estimate and one button. A smart split router finds the best route across pools to reduce price impact. Experienced traders get a full chart and a token ticker across the top; first-timers get numbered steps explaining what happens at each stage.
Staking EDU to mint stEDU later joined the same family of simple, single-form actions.
Liquidity pools
The pools list leads with what LPs care about: APR, volume, pool balance and fees, with filters for Stable, Volatile, Meme and EduLaunchbox pools. A "How liquidity pools work" panel sits above the table in plain language: deeper pools mean less slippage, LPs earn SAIL, and veSAIL voters earn the fees.
Pool wizard
Creating a pool starts with one choice: V2 classic pools or V3 concentrated-liquidity pools. Fee tiers are labelled by how often they're chosen, and price ranges come with presets (0.1%, 0.5%, 1% or full range), so new LPs don't have to calculate a range from scratch. A warning appears if a position won't earn until the price moves into range.
The Portfolio then gathers every V2 and V3 position with its range and fees, alongside the top pools by TVL.
veSAIL and voting
Locking SAIL for veSAIL is a single swap-style form, with an explanation of why locking pays. The Vote page shows your veSAIL balance and remaining voting power at the top, then every pool with its bribe APR, volume of votes and estimated reward per year. You choose where to vote by comparing rewards, not by reading a governance proposal.
Bribes
For founders like James, adding a bribe is a short form: pick the pool, choose the reward token and amount, set the distribution period, and see the reward per day and per hour before confirming. Top bribed pools and the total bribes per day sit beside the form, so founders can see what it takes to compete.
Campaigns
To bring in the first users, campaigns award XP for social, crypto and on-chain tasks, with referral links and a leaderboard. Trading and liquidity competitions paid out in SAIL and Yuzu Points, EDU Chain's ecosystem-wide reward, which tied SailFish into incentives users already cared about.
Outcome and reflection
SailFish went from a hackathon MVP on testnet to EDU Chain's first live veDEX on mainnet. It won the EDU Chain Open Semester Hackathon and partnered with ecosystem projects such as OpenTask AI and GRASP Academy.
Looking back, the most valuable design work wasn't any single screen. It was the "how it works" panels and estimated rewards that made a complex model readable for people trying DeFi for the first time. The hardest moment was re-scoping mid-project when smart contract constraints changed, and designing in close step with engineering from day one would have saved us redoing finished designs.
The next opportunity is retention. Liquidity follows incentives, and when emissions slow, LPs leave. Clearer long-term views of earnings, alerts when a position goes out of range, and simpler ways to compound rewards would help keep liquidity after the campaign rewards end.
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