According to reports from CoinDesk, Layer 1 blockchain Solana is accelerating the testing of 'Firedancer,' a highly anticipated software upgrade expected to significantly enhance the processing speed of the blockchain, helping Solana support traditional financial markets.
According to messages in the Solana technical Discord channel, Solana's core development team hopes that by the end of this week, 'more than half' of the computing resources in the blockchain's low-risk testnet can be executed through the early version of Firedancer, Frankendancer.
BREAKING BIG: The Solana Foundation is ramping up @jump_firedancer testing, urging Testnet validators in the Solana Tech Discord announcement to adopt Frankendancer v0.3 'by the end of the week.' This critical test aims to prepare for Firedancer’s mainnet debut. pic.twitter.com/tio0bAcdWL
— SolanaFloor (@SolanaFloor) January 8, 2025
This call to Solana validators marks the largest scale test of Firedancer to date. This upgrade, which has been in development since 2022, is seen as an important step to enhance Solana's stability and speed, at a time when the blockchain frequently faced outages.
Supporters of Firedancer believe that this validator client developed by the crypto division of trading giant Jump Trading, Jump Crypto, will provide Solana with a significant advantage, helping to attract global financial markets to adopt blockchain technology. They point out that its theoretical speed is 1 million TPS, far exceeding any current blockchain system.
Firedancer itself does not have a release date yet. Currently, Jump Crypto has only launched Frankendancer, which is a mixed version combining the main client architecture elements of Firedancer and Solana. Prior to this week, only a small number of validators adopted Frankendancer, with many reporting to CoinDesk that Frankendancer has several bugs and is prone to crashes.
Kollen House, a long-time member of the Solana validator community, stated: 'Keeping it running is notoriously difficult, but we did it.' He believes that the new initiative to promote broader adoption of Frankendancer is a sign that the software is 'mature' and added, 'If you can confidently say, 'Hey, we want 60% of the testnet to be running this client,' then we are indeed making progress.'
A validator node operator named Jon stated that he has been running Frankendancer for several months, saying, 'It seems they are making progress toward their goals.' He added that about 30% of validators on the testnet are currently running Frankendancer, but it has not yet reached the 'more than half' target.
Source
