Introduction
As blockchain technology advances, the effectiveness and speed of infrastructure that underpins nodes has grown beyond mere technical aspects into strategic necessary elements. Austin Federa, the ex-Head of Strategy at the Solana Foundation, is pioneering in this arena. He is preparing for the commencement of DoubleZero, a protocol that aims to alter the way blockchains communicate and scale.
A Discussion on DoubleZero
The insightful conversation with CoinDesk delved into the stimulus behind DoubleZero, challenges it seeks to address, the issues that may arise and DoubleZero’s vision for a high-performing network layer that could serve as the foundation for future decentralized systems.
What is DoubleZero?
First introduced to the public in December of 2024, DoubleZero is a blockchain layer designed to exhibit speed exceeding the current internet, an attribute considered critical for effective crypto transactions. Since its announcement, about 12.57% of SOL staked are operating on the DoubleZero testnet. The mainnet, the fully functional version, is believed to launch in September.
Understanding DoubleZero
Aiming to make the concept of DoubleZero understandable for those unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, Austin Federa likened the project to the crypto variation of ‘Flash Boys’. The term ‘Flash Boys’ refers to individuals who understood that success on a centralized trading platform was determined by speed of data transmission between different points of market events rather than the traditional trading logic or computer speed.
For crypto trades, the possibility of utilizing something with greater speed than the public internet albeit via a decentralized protocol had been a sought-after concept. The problem this posed was the necessary operation by a single centralized entity which obstructs the contribution of multiple independent contributors. This setback is eliminated with DoubleZero. It allows multiple contributing entities with their individual fiber networks to contribute portions of that fiber network to the DoubleZero network, creating an enormous, highly-performing fiber mesh network with global connections.
Why is DoubleZero not built on Solana?
Although DoubleZero isn’t built directly on Solana, it serves an important function to its network. The uniqueness of Solana lies in the lack of parity between it and other fast blockchains in terms of node count. Networks exhibiting comparable performance to Solana have significantly fewer nodes leading to a massive communication problem. The challenge increases exponentially with nodes; more nodes in a system means more points for data transmission, causing bandwidth and communication to bottleneck.
The objective behind DoubleZero is to enable the blockchain to outperform the speed of the public internet without losing node count or heightening centralization. While DoubleZero was aimed at Solana and the blockchain, it is believed to possess more applications beyond these two entities.
How does Solana staking tie with DoubleZero?
DoubleZero hosts a stake pool which stakes to nodes on its network. Although the stake percentage is minuscule (about 3 million SOL out of a total of 500 million SOL), it was originally an aid for subsidizing the cost of validators operating on DoubleZero’s testnet. However, the interest in operating on testnet proliferated, making it an effective tool to welcome more individuals to the network.
By the time the mainnet data launches in September, it is expected that there would be over 50 different fiber links, a significant upgrade from the current status of eight. These links are estimated to be ten times faster in their capacity, jumping from 10 gigabit to 200 gigabit connections. There’s an anticipation that with enough stake operating on the DoubleZero network, Solana’s designers could significantly increase their limits due to the larger capacity offered by DoubleZero, and due to its lower latency connections.
Does DoubleZero create performance inequality?
The project could be faulted for the potential performance inequalities it might cause between validators on Solana. To this, Federa argued that if we were to be honest about what we’re dealing with, the internet becomes the real centralizing force. It is key to remember that the objective is not to eradicate internet usage but to provide it as a fallback, a pathway for censorship resistance.
The public internet will remain as an alternative, even if it implies Solana dropping from 500,000 transactions per second to 10,000 transactions per second because of a bad actor or DoubleZero going offline. Thus, the fear of performance inequality is quite overstated.
DoubleZero: Future Prospects
Before its mainnet is launched, DoubleZero’s focus lies in comprehensive testing and full preparation. Also accompanying the September mainnet launch will be a token launch as part of the token-based project.
