After so much waiting, the long-awaited Solana validator, Firedancer client, has gone live on testnet. Noteworthy, this is an early version of the validator. Jump Trading chief scientist Kevin Bowers announced the new development during the Solana Breakpoint conference. To his audience, Bowers pointed out that a string of numbers indicating a software version on Solana’s mainnet looked suspiciously unlike Solana’s current clients.
This presentation earned him applause from his listeners. The Firedancer validator is contributing to the performance of the Solana blockchain.
Introducing Frankendancer and Firedancer Validators
Firedancer is an independent validator client or software validators can run to build the blockchain. It is being developed by Jump. On the other hand, the client is being written independently of the original Solana Labs validator client, now called Agave. This is the Agave written in the programming language C as opposed to Agave, written in Rust.
Currently, there are two clients: Frankendancer and the Firedancer. The first one is a slightly more performant version of the Agave client, while the other is the whole hog. Frankendancer is a product of replacing the Agave client piece by piece, just like in the case of Frankenstein’s monster, and it is coming out first.
Frankendancer is Now Live on Solana Mainnet
Hence, when Firedancer has gone live on the testnet, Frankendancer is already live on the mainnet. According to Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, once Firedancer goes to mainnet, removing the “beta” qualifier from Solana’s “mainnet-beta” status will be favored.
Bowers pointed to an “open secret” in Solana’s validator community: Some of the computing power underpinning Solana is running “Frankendancer” software, which combines predominant validator tech with new contributions from Jump. A blockchain must have multiple validators, especially if decentralization is the focus.
Multiple Validators For Decentralization
Therefore, it is not surprising that Solana is looking for fully independent validators. One would be from a Solana spinoff team, Anza, while the other would be from Jump. In the long run, this would give Solana a redundancy boost and a performance edge.
Regarding the effort to build a second validator, Bower said, “We view this project as the consumer science equivalent of civil engineering.”
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