What is DoubleZero, founded by the former strategic head of the Solana Foundation?

Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News

In L1 and L2 systems, despite the increasing computational power of validators, the limitations of bandwidth and the instability of communication delays between validation nodes remain shackles that restrict further leaps in performance.

The DoubleZero protocol aims to break this predicament by optimizing data flow, increasing bandwidth, and reducing latency, thereby constructing a high-performance, permissionless decentralized network framework that opens new avenues for the future development of distributed systems.

What is DoubleZero?

According to official descriptions, DoubleZero is not L1 or L2, but is defined as N1 (Network 1), a decentralized framework for creating and managing high-performance permissionless networks. The goal of DoubleZero is to provide an infrastructure layer that accelerates communication in high-performance distributed systems to increase bandwidth and reduce latency.

The DoubleZero protocol efficiently filters spam, increases bandwidth, reduces latency, and eliminates instability in communication by integrating fiber links contributed by individuals and organizations to build a synchronized network.

DoubleZero was created by Austin Federa, Andrew McConnell, and Mateo Ward, and is supported by two core contributor teams, Firedancer and Malbec Labs. Austin Federa was originally the strategic head of the Solana Foundation and resigned this month to establish DoubleZero, where he serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the DoubleZero Foundation.

Andrew McConnell is the co-founder and CTO of Malbec Labs, which focuses on software development, hardware acceleration, and network engineering for open-source protocols. Additionally, Nihar Shah, the former head of data science at Mysten Labs, has also left to join DoubleZero as Chief Economist; he previously worked at Jump Crypto and Meta (Libra/Diem).

The other core contributor team, Firedancer, is an independent validator client for Solana built by Jump Crypto. Firedancer was designed to eliminate single points of failure and enhance the overall robustness and resilience of the network. Unlike the original Rust-based validators, Firedancer is written in C language and does not contain Rust code, significantly reducing the potential impact of vulnerabilities on the entire network and providing strong security for Solana.

According to the Lightspeed podcast, the Firedancer demonstration running at 1 million TPS during this year's Solana Breakpoint conference was operating on top of DoubleZero.

The key to Firedancer's ability to elevate Solana's network performance to 1 million TPS (where current protocol-level limitations cap performance at around 81,000 TPS) lies in its innovative architectural design and data flow optimization.

Recommended reading: “What exactly is Firedancer, which garnered attention at Breakpoint?”

It is worth mentioning that DoubleZero's goals align closely with Solana's overall philosophy. Solana's officials and co-founder Toly (Anatoly Yakovenko) have repeatedly emphasized "increasing bandwidth and reducing latency" on Twitter, which coincides with DoubleZero's pursuits.

How does DoubleZero operate?

According to the white paper, the DoubleZero network brings two significant enhancements to blockchain systems: first, it pre-filters incoming transactions through dedicated hardware, removing spam and duplicate transactions, effectively lightening the burden on validators. This allows the blockchain to benefit from shared filtering resources without requiring each individual validator to provide sufficient resources; second, it achieves clear routing, tracking, and prioritization of outgoing messages to improve communication efficiency.

In terms of network architecture, DoubleZero cleverly divides into external ingress/egress rings and internal data flow rings, where the former handles external interfaces and security, while the latter optimizes internal communication. Specifically, the outer ring connects to the public internet (the outer circle in the diagram below), using hardware (such as FPGAs) to mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks, validate signatures, and filter duplicate transactions. Servers on the internal data flow ring build consensus on this filtered traffic through optimally routed dedicated bandwidth lines.

From the DoubleZero network architecture, we can see its key components, including network devices at critical ingress/egress points and bandwidth configured across networks. These network devices allow data links contributed by individuals and organizations to operate as a prioritized network, implementing filtering, validation, and spam protection.

The fiber links on the DoubleZero network provide low-latency, high-bandwidth connections between different locations. Network contributors can add idle fiber links they own or lease to the network and sign service level agreements for each link (including endpoint locations, bandwidth, latency, and compliant MTU sizes).

Thus, DoubleZero sees itself as an N1—a neutral and high-performance foundational layer of physical infrastructure. On this N1, distributed systems and applications (such as N2 or others) can be built.

The DoubleZero white paper states that the DoubleZero network can be used to optimize any distributed system. L1, L2, RPC nodes, and MEV systems can all join to alleviate the burden on validators, mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks, and enhance performance, benefiting from increased bandwidth and reduced latency. Furthermore, DoubleZero's network architecture can also be applied to online gaming, large language model training requiring high-bandwidth connections, and other distributed systems needing low latency and high bandwidth. According to DoubleZero's vision, the DoubleZero protocol represents a new economic model in the bandwidth and communication field.

For instance, on the supply side, private enterprises can contribute idle fiber links purchased or leased from telecom operators or network service providers into the DoubleZero system, opening up new revenue streams. On the user and operator level, DoubleZero allows distributed systems to enjoy the advantages of private networks without relying on centralized systems or long-term contracts.

Overall, the DoubleZero protocol can match the needs between suppliers and users, helping to achieve a win-win situation by contributing and utilizing idle fiber links, while also integrating individual and organizational contributions into a unified, robust, and highly scalable global network.

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