Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
In L1 and L2 systems, despite the growing computational power of validators, the limitations of bandwidth and the instability of communication delays between validation nodes remain shackles restricting further leaps in performance.
The DoubleZero protocol is designed to break this predicament by optimizing data flow, increasing bandwidth, and reducing latency, creating a high-performance, permissionless decentralized network framework to pave the way 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. DoubleZero's goal is to provide an infrastructure layer that accelerates communication in high-performance distributed systems, increasing bandwidth and reducing latency.
The DoubleZero protocol builds a synchronized network by integrating the fiber links contributed by individuals and organizations to efficiently filter spam, increase bandwidth, reduce latency, and eliminate instability in communication.
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 lead at the Solana Foundation, who resigned this month to found DoubleZero and serves as the Chief Operating Officer of the DoubleZero Foundation.
Andrew McConnell is the co-founder and CTO of Malbec Labs. Malbec Labs is dedicated to software development, hardware acceleration, and network engineering for open-source protocols. Additionally, Nihar Shah, the former data science lead at Mysten Labs, has also joined DoubleZero as Chief Economist; he previously worked at Jump Crypto and Meta (Libra/Diem).
Another 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 without containing 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 a speed of 1 million TPS at this year's Solana Breakpoint conference was operated on top of DoubleZero.
Firedancer's ability to elevate the performance of the Solana network to 1 million TPS (the current protocol-level limitation restricts performance to around 81,000 TPS) is key to its innovative architectural design and data flow optimization.
It is worth mentioning that DoubleZero's goals are highly aligned with Solana's overall philosophy. Solana's officials and its co-founder Toly (Anatoly Yakovenko) have emphasized on Twitter multiple times the importance of 'increasing bandwidth and reducing latency,' which coincides with DoubleZero's pursuits.
How does DoubleZero operate?
According to the white paper, the DoubleZero network brings two significant improvements to blockchain systems: first, it pre-filters incoming transactions through dedicated hardware, removing spam and duplicate transactions, effectively alleviating the burden on validators. This allows the blockchain to benefit from filtered resources across a shared system scope without requiring enough resources from each individual validator; second, it achieves clear routing, tracking, and prioritization of outgoing messages to enhance communication efficiency.
In terms of network architecture, DoubleZero is cleverly divided into an external ingress/egress ring and an internal data flow ring. 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), where hardware (such as FPGA) is used to mitigate distributed denial-of-service attacks, validate signatures, and filter duplicate transactions. The servers on the internal data flow ring build consensus on the filtered traffic through dedicated bandwidth lines with optimal routing.
From the architecture of the DoubleZero network, one can see its key components, including network devices at the critical ingress/egress points and bandwidth configured across the network. These network devices enable the 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 into 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.
DoubleZero points out in its white paper 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 domain.
For example, on the supply side, private enterprises can input idle fiber links they purchase or lease from telecom operators or network service providers into the DoubleZero system, opening up new revenue streams. Meanwhile, at 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, contributing to and utilizing idle fiber links to achieve a win-win situation, while integrating individual and organizational contributions into a unified, robust, and highly scalable global network.
