Austin Federa leaves the Solana Foundation to create a new protocol N1

Austin Federa, who led the strategy of the Solana Foundation, has left the project after four years to co-found DoubleZero, an innovative network architecture that promises to revolutionize high-performance blockchain infrastructures.

In a statement released on December 4th on X, Federa described this decision as one of the "most professionally difficult," although he claimed that his new role will allow him to remain involved with the Solana network "from the other side."

DoubleZero: An optimized new base layer for blockchain

According to Federa, DoubleZero is neither a layer 1 nor a layer 2 protocol, but rather a completely different innovation called N1 - a new global base layer specifically optimized for blockchain technology with the aim of increasing bandwidth and reducing latency.

"We are building a network architecture capable of supporting tens of millions of transactions per second," explained Federa. "We started with Solana, but DoubleZero is a neutral base layer infrastructure - an N1 - and a foundation for all high-performance blockchains."

The project will operate as a high-performance permissionless network, consisting of dedicated fiber and undersea cables managed by independent collaborators, ensuring a truly decentralized approach to blockchain infrastructure.

Technical innovations that surpass current limitations

The project's whitepaper, published on December 2, highlights two fundamental improvements for existing blockchains:

1. Outbound message optimization: Messages can be routed, tracked, and prioritized to significantly improve network efficiency.

2. Smart Transaction Filtering: Incoming transactions are filtered to eliminate spam and duplicates using specialized hardware before being sent through the DoubleZero network, implementing a shared filtering system instead of loading this task onto individual validators.

The network also incorporates verification services, executed by devices operating with open source code, to perform signature verification on incoming data. According to the whitepaper, this will allow systems such as layer 1 and layer 2 blockchains to eliminate communication bottlenecks and achieve their maximum performance.

Applications Beyond Blockchain

The fundamental goal of DoubleZero is "to solve a problem at the heart of the internet and high-performance blockchains: global base layer connectivity," stated Federa.

"The goal is simple: to increase bandwidth and reduce latency while enhancing decentralization and resistance to censorship to unlock current high-performance blockchains and enable the construction of entirely new types of network architectures," he added.

Beyond the advantages for blockchain projects, the whitepaper mentions potential benefits for any distributed system that requires fast and accurate communication. Specifically, online games where "small delays ruin the user experience" and that rely on peer-to-peer models or central servers could benefit significantly.

The training of large language models is also mentioned as another potential use case, where the DoubleZero network would act as the high-bandwidth connection between data centers.

Founding team and initial contributors

DoubleZero has been founded by Austin Federa along with crypto entrepreneurs Andrew McConnell and Mateo Ward. The project is launched with two main teams of collaborators: Firedancer and Malbec Labs, who will bring technical expertise to the development of this innovative infrastructure.