Critical systems are built together. The DoubleZero network is backed by a global ecosystem of partners and was built through hundreds of hours of collaboration by world-class engineers, dedicated network contributors, ecosystem developers and early believers redefining network acceleration technology from first principles.
From underutilized fiber contributions to core engineering contributions from Malbec Labs, Jump Crypto, and Solana ecosystem teams like Anza, Jito, Galaxy and Firedancer, developing their codebases to allow integration of and support for DoubleZero, every contribution strengthens the network.
It is because of these combined efforts that DoubleZero has rapidly developed a functional high-performance global network optimized for distributed systems in under one year. This article outlines the wide ecosystem supporting DoubleZero, highlighting those connecting physical infrastructure, engineering the protocol, and coordinating its broader development.
Network Contributors
Network contributors are the enterprises that connect their underutilized fiber-optic links to the DoubleZero network. These underlay links, provided by network contributors, are the core transit layer of the protocol. These are physical fiber cables, running under the oceans, over mountains, and under our cities. Network contributors add them to the network and commit to a service-level agreement for each link. A typical network contributor is a technology firm, data center operator, telecommunications company or other organization that already possesses underutilized fiber capacity or other networking hardware assets and wants to monetize this excess capacity by contributing it to the DoubleZero network, or in other instances enterprises that want to enter the business of monetizing fiber-optic cables. Network contributors who improve the DoubleZero network’s aggregate performance are rewarded with 2Z tokens. The DoubleZero protocol achieves decentralization through this consortium of independent contributors. Network contributors today include: @Rockaway_X, @DistributedG, @latitudesh, @teraswitch, @galaxyhq, @CherryServers, @StakingFac, @jump_, @S3rdVentures, @jito_sol, @velia_net, @CumberlandSays.
DoubleZero Foundation
DoubleZero Foundation was formed to support the development, decentralization, security and adoption of the DoubleZero network.The Foundation’s activities include:
- Community education through whiteboard sessions, technical primers and multilingual documentation that demystify the DoubleZero network;
- Technical thought-leadership on network engineering, particularly in bridging physical network infrastructure with blockchain software systems;
- Ecosystem coordination, whereby the Foundation hosts monthly roundtables and maintains a shared repository of best practices to connect current and potential users, network contributors and other stakeholders;
- Information sharing with regulators and other public sector parties conducting due diligence on the network;
- Upon request, sharing “lessons learned” amongst network contributors, coordinating network contributors’ communications, introducing them to third-party manufacturers and helping them get preferential pricing and delivery times on new hardware (for example, in obtaining network switches);
- Non-profit initiatives, such as funding independent security audits, commissioning public-goods research into censorship resistance and stewarding development under a royalty-free license to safeguard decentralization;
- Conference and event organization;
- Grants to support external teams that are independent from the Foundation (including certain of the technology contributors) in advancing the decentralization, security and usability of tools available in the Network.
Malbec Labs
Malbec Labs is a key contributor to the DoubleZero protocol, composed of world-class engineers sitting at the intersection of high-performance networking and software development. The Malbec Labs team have prototyped the hardware and developed the software required to integrate independent network contributions into a unified, verifiable, high-performance system. Co-founders Mateo Ward and Andrew McConnell, along with the Malbec Labs team, bring decades of extensive experience in physical network engineering, systems design, and distributed software architecture. Their combined experience outside of crypto allows them to approach infrastructure end to end, bridging networking and software in ways rarely achieved in the blockchain industry. Malbec Labs brings the rigor of traditional systems engineering to DoubleZero with precision, reliability, and performance discipline that define the protocol's engineering core.
Jump Crypto + Firedancer Teams
Jump Crypto has served as both an engineering and network contributor to DoubleZero since its inception. As a core engineering contributor to the DoubleZero protocol and building on the engineering efforts and results that were presented in prior years at Solana Breakpoint, Jump has advanced the way blockchains utilize hardware acceleration technologies, such as the FPGAs that will soon be used by DoubleZero contributors. As a network contributor, Jump also helped bootstrap the DoubleZero network by being the first to contribute network capacity to testnet and mainnet-beta, now sitting alongside 10+ other independent network contributors. Jump Crypto has also incorporated DoubleZero support into Firedancer, the validator client that Jump Crypto built for the Solana blockchain.
Users: Validators + RPCs
Validators and RPC operators on Solana are today’s users of the DoubleZero network, relying on performance to do their jobs effectively. By routing traffic through DoubleZero, validators and RPCs can gain measurable advantages in latency, and reliability, helping their networks perform at the edge of what’s physically possible. Today, validators may also receive delegations of up to 5% of organic stakeweight from the DoubleZero Delegation Program (DZDP) to help offset fees for testing mainnet-beta. Learn more.
For validators, DoubleZero is critical infrastructure designed to help operators reach consensus faster, fill blocks more efficiently and ultimately earn higher revenue. For RPCs, it’s the difference between service uptime and network lag.As one may expect, the DoubleZero network is subject to a network effect. As more validators and RPCs connect to DoubleZero, the network becomes faster and stronger for all, a virtuous cycle of performance that compounds across the ecosystem and the blockchain atop DoubleZero.
The DoubleZero Community
The DoubleZero community is the connective tissue surrounding the network’s core operation. They’re the supporters, and early visionaries who believe that the internet layer can be made faster and more performant for modern distributed systems. They believe in DoubleZero’s ambitious goal and encourage the adoption of the protocol broadly. The network’s community members help shape DoubleZero’s trajectory by participating in discussions, contributing ideas, and spreading awareness about the importance of performance-first infrastructure for distributed systems like blockchain.Our community champions the mission of unlocking the full potential of decentralized technologies with performant base-layer infrastructure underpinning it all. The DoubleZero community represents a collective movement. Our community members are united by a shared belief that performance is freedom, and that the future of blockchain depends on the builders who dare to reimagine the internet itself. They help articulate our mission through IBRL: Increase Bandwidth, Reduce Latency. To join the community, jump in Discord by following the official link here on our website’s homepage. We’d love to welcome you on the mission.
A Community-Owned Internet
DoubleZero represents a collective effort that unites contributors, validators, and protocol engineers in building a transparent, high-performance global network intended to bring blockchain to the masses. Contributors supply real infrastructure, validators want to bring tangible performance improvements to their blockchains, and engineers use their expertise to build performance-first infrastructure that actually scales to the masses.
With a clear understanding of each participant’s role and the design principles guiding development, DoubleZero continues to progress every day toward delivering a global high-performance network for blockchain users. You can view real-time adoption metrics and explore the network on the DoubleZero dashboard here.We welcome you to join us in the mission to unlock the full potential of distributed systems by creating decentralized, high-performance network infrastructure that is purpose-built to scale blockchains at the most physical layer. We’re eliminating physical bottlenecks that quietly shape what’s possible online, so builders can create without compromise, and blockchains can scale without tradeoffs.
The DoubleZero Vision:A world where distributed systems aren’t limited by legacy infrastructure, where high-performance blockchains operate at their theoretical limits, and where the foundations of the internet are as decentralized and permissionless as the protocols built on top of them.
Join us: https://doublezero.xyz/
Contribute Bandwidth: https://doublezero.xyz/contribute
Connect to DoubleZero: https://docs.malbeclabs.com/setup/