Solana Foundation Executive Leaves to Launch Fiber Network DoubleZero
This is a segment from the Lightspeed newsletter.
DoubleZero: A New Internet Infrastructure Initiative
Solana Foundation’s head of strategy Austin Federa announced his departure to establish DoubleZero, a network of fiber and subsea cables aimed at creating a faster internet. He co-founds the initiative with Mateo Ward and Andrew McConnell, starting with support for Solana. Jito CEO Lucas Bruder referred to it as “the most interesting experiment in crypto.”
DoubleZero is positioned as decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) for the internet. Participants contribute fiber optic links—cables transmitting data via light pulses—to a network that filters data before reaching blockchain validators and RPCs. The project plans to incentivize participation with a native token and implement proof-of-stake slashing, although specific reward mechanisms are not detailed in the white paper.
Unused Fiber Optic Capacity
The white paper claims there is considerable unused fiber capacity worldwide, including modern fiber's high terabit capabilities, "dark fiber" installed but not utilized, and excess fiber purchased by enterprises for contingency planning. Utilizing this existing infrastructure could enable a faster internet.
Reducing Blockchain Latency
Fast blockchains like Solana face latency issues due to public internet congestion. Validators currently allocate resources to filter spam and deduplicate transactions. DoubleZero aims to provide a “common shield” for local validators, allowing them to focus on building and verifying blocks.
While the white paper suggests layer-1 blockchains are primary use cases, the network could also benefit content delivery networks, gaming, large language models, and enterprise applications.
Recently, Solana's community has embraced the goal of increasing bandwidth and reducing latency, a sentiment echoed by Federa and his cofounders.