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Solana is ramping up testing on Firedancer, a highly anticipated software upgrade that is expected to significantly increase the blockchain’s processing speed.
By the end of this week, Solana core developers want a “vast majority” of the processing power on the chain’s low-risk testnet to run on Frankendancer, an early version of Firedancer, according to messages on Solana’s tech Discord server.
The call to action for Solana validators — those who run the computers that power the network — represents Firedancer’s biggest test yet. The update has been in the works since 2022, when the chain repeatedly crashed, and is seen as a boost to Solana’s stability and speed.
Firedancer’s proponents believe the software — developed by the crypto arm of trading giant Jump — will give Solana an unbeatable edge in the crypto race to attract global financial markets to blockchains. They point to its theoretical speed: 1 million transactions per second, faster than any blockchain-based system today.
There’s no specific launch date for Firedancer yet. Jump Crypto has only launched Frankendancer, a hybrid that combines elements of Firedancer with Solana’s mainstream client architecture. Only a small subset of validators had adopted Frankendancer prior to this week; several told CoinDesk they found it buggy and prone to crashing.
“It was very difficult to keep this thing alive and running, but we did it,” said Colin House, a longtime member of Solana’s data validation community. He sees the new push toward broader adoption of Frankendancer as a sign of the program’s “maturity.”
“If you have the confidence to say, ‘Hey, we want 60% of the testnet to run this client,’ we’ll get there,” House said.
Crypto networks like Solana rely on hundreds of individual validators. Each independently runs a computer loaded with “client” software that connects it to the network. This decentralization helps keep blockchains secure, but it makes it more difficult to coordinate system upgrades.
For years, the Solana Foundation, a nonprofit that oversees the network, has partly addressed this coordination dilemma through subsidies. Its “delegation program” helps smaller validators—those who don’t have as much SOL and therefore earn less revenue for their work validating the chain—stay profitable. It often persuades validators to keep their software up to date by threatening to revoke the delegated stake of those who fall behind on upgrades.
For the first time on Tuesday, the Solana Foundation used this carrot-and-stick subsidy to directly promote Frankendancer adoption. The investigators have only a few days left to migrate their testnet systems to the new client before losing their delegated stake.
“Right now, it looks like they’re getting close to that,” said John, a validator who says he’s been running Frankendancer for several months. “About 30% of validators on the testnet are running Frankendancer now, but they still think they’re less than the vast majority.”
