Crypto needs a new internet.
While the promise of decentralized systems has always been bold, offering permissionless access, censorship resistance, and global scalability, one foundational constraint has remained unchanged since Bitcoin: the physical infrastructure layer. Blockchains, Layer 2s, and distributed applications still rely on the same public internet, plagued by bandwidth bottlenecks, latency spikes, and unpredictable jitter.
DoubleZero exists to rework that foundation which was built in the 1970s
DoubleZero is building both the infrastructure and the protocol for a new internet—one optimized for distributed systems. It enables contributors to connect underutilized private fiber links into a high-performance, permissionless network that actively filters spam, verifies signatures, and routes traffic over the most efficient paths. Specialized hardware, like FPGA-powered devices, sits at the network edge to reduce validator overhead and cleanly separate filtration from consensus. At the core of the system is a decentralized coordination layer, governed on-chain and designed to adapt dynamically to network demand.
From its hardware layer to its cryptoeconomic design, DoubleZero is engineered to unshackle distributed systems from today’s networking limits. It’s not just a protocol, it’s the transport layer for a faster, more resilient on-chain world.
In this article, we'll explore why we've backed DoubleZero's $28 million funding round, what it means for the Solana ecosystem and beyond, and how our collaborative partnership is helping bring this ambitious vision to life.
Why We’re Backing DoubleZero
At its core, DoubleZero is solving two of the most overlooked yet critical problems in Web3 infrastructure: network throughput and latency. For all the innovation happening at the consensus and execution layers, the vast majority of decentralized systems still rely on outdated networking infrastructure that was never designed for the performance demands of modern blockchains.
That’s a structural issue—one that demands a structural solution.
What drew us to DoubleZero is their holistic, bottom-up approach. They’re not just abstracting over the existing internet, they’re rebuilding the network stack to serve the unique demands of distributed systems. That means real fiber, real hardware, and real engineering at the edge. Their dual-ring architecture separates the high-performance inner network from the noise and volatility of the public internet, filtering spam at the edge and routing clean traffic over fast, low-jitter links. It’s a model that reimagines how blockchain data moves in the first place, and it’s built for scale.
The founding team brings a rare combination of telecom, trading infrastructure, and crypto-native experience. Austin Federa (COO), formerly Head of Strategy at Solana, has deep insight into the coordination challenges of high-performance chains. Andrew McConnell (CTO) led global platforms at Jump Trading, where latency isn’t just a detail—it’s the whole game. Mateo Ward co-founded Neutrona Networks, a telecom company with a successful exit in 2020, and brings deep operational expertise from the fiber and carrier world. Together, they’ve architected a system that bridges decentralized incentives with the rigor of physical networking.
From an investment perspective, we see DoubleZero as a foundational unlock for the next generation of Solana’s long-term scalability. Solana already handles thousands of transactions per second, and the Firedancer client is targeting throughput in the millions, but bandwidth and latency of validator communication are quickly becoming the new bottlenecks.
DoubleZero addresses this head-on through two major innovations. First, it significantly reduces latency and jitter by routing validator-to-validator communication over a high-performance private fiber network rather than the not-so-predictable public internet. This directly improves consensus efficiency, especially during leader-to-leader transition and consensus vote propagation. Second, it introduces a shared filtration layer that removes duplicate transactions before they reach the validator—offloading the compute burden and dramatically reducing unnecessary packet volume.
In today's setup, validators must individually process enormous volumes of redundant messages. With DoubleZero, that processing happens directly on the network layer, freeing validators to focus on execution.
Together, these upgrades unlock the next phase of validator performance, positioning DoubleZero as an indispensable layer for long-term ecosystem resilience and scaleability.
We project that Solana will account for a majority of the projected FDV serviced by DoubleZero, and the protocol could take 2.3%–6% of block rewards as a network fee for its services, making the economic alignment immediate and tangible.
While Solana is the natural starting point, DoubleZero is fundamentally chain-agnostic. Its architecture supports any high-throughput distributed system. Ecosystems like Sui and Monad, which similarly aim to push performance boundaries, stand to gain from the same bandwidth and latency advantages.
As more operators join, the network effect is even stronger. This creates not just a performance edge, but also a powerful coordination dynamic. In many ways, DoubleZero introduces a classic prisoner’s dilemma: once some validators adopt, others are incentivized to follow, lest they risk falling behind in latency-sensitive environments like MEV, block propagation, and validator coordination. This kind of alignment drives strong network effects and sets the stage for a new standard in blockchain communication.
Our investment in DoubleZero was made at a $398 million token valuation as part of the company’s $28 million round. In our base case, we project the network achieving a $5 billion FDV as infrastructure adoption accelerates.
Powering DoubleZero from the Ground Up
Backing a visionary infrastructure protocol like DoubleZero isn’t just about capital. From day one, our partnership has been grounded in deep technical conviction and a shared understanding of what it takes to scale performance infrastructure in the real world. For DoubleZero to succeed, it needs more than demand. It needs active collaboration across every layer of deployment: hardware, connectivity, consensus and integration.
That’s where RockawayX Infrastructure comes in.
We’re working closely with the DoubleZero team as one of the first bandwidth contributors joining the testnet and also as the key European network collaborator. This work starts with us physically installing DoubleZero lines at 10+ data centers in major cities. In addition to being a primary bandwidth provider, we are working closely with the team to optimize the physical network by supporting rollout strategies at key interconnect points. Our presence across multiple verticals in the crypto stack—from capital through physical networking to compute — makes us a uniquely positioned partner as DoubleZero transitions from a technical milestone to an active, performant network.
One of the critical differentiators in this collaboration is our shared belief in permissionless contribution. The protocol's effectiveness compounds as more operators bring bandwidth into the DoubleZero network. That means early ecosystem support isn’t just helpful, it’s essential to unlocking the performance ceiling of not just Solana but any network seeking to operate at TradFi trading scale. DoubleZero democratizes access to the same technology stack as the traditional world has behind closed curtains.
This is infrastructure in the most literal sense: cables, hardware, and routing logic coming together under a unified, decentralized economic model. Our goal is to help ensure that the model is activated—and adopted—by the systems that need it most.
What This Could Unlock for Solana and Beyond
When distributed systems are no longer bound by the latency, congestion, and unreliability of the public internet, a whole new class of applications becomes feasible. High-frequency trading, real-time gaming, decentralized AI training, and even state-synced multichain coordination—these are no longer theoretical aspirations, but engineering challenges within reach.
For Solana, the impact could be immediate and foundational. By enabling validators to operate on filtered, low-latency communication channels, DoubleZero helps unlock the upper limits of throughput and responsiveness. It improves validator efficiency, reduces hardware strain, and strengthens the overall resilience of the network, especially as Firedancer and other next-gen clients push execution speeds to new extremes. Combined with Solana’s global validator set and aggressive scaling roadmap, DoubleZero could become a key force multiplier in the ecosystem’s evolution from fast to real-time.
But this isn't just a Solana story.
DoubleZero is chain-agnostic by design, and its model is built to generalize across ecosystems. High-performance chains like Sui and Monad—with ambitious goals for parallelization and execution speed—stand to benefit just as much. So do MEV protocols, RPC networks, and any system that relies on fast, reliable communication. The beauty of DoubleZero’s architecture is that each new participant (both consumer and bandwidth provider) doesn't just consume value—they contribute it. More links. More routes. More bandwidth. More value.
We’re still in the early innings of programmable bandwidth as a crypto-native primitive. But if the last decade was about scaling blockspace by compute power enhancements, the next one might be about optimizing state propagation. And DoubleZero could very well be the network that makes that leap possible.
Laying the Foundation for the Next Internet
We believe DoubleZero is building something fundamental: the physical and economic foundation for a high-performance internet that finally meets the needs of decentralized systems. It’s not just faster networking, it’s a new coordination layer between bandwidth, infrastructure, and crypto-economic incentives.
This is the kind of project that doesn’t just scale with demand—it drives it.
As more networks, validators, and applications tap into DoubleZero’s high-throughput and low-latency transport layer, the value of the system compounds. And with the right architectural choices and partners, we believe that the compounding effect can reshape the infrastructure layer of crypto from the ground up.
We’re proud to support DoubleZero at this early stage and even more excited to help build the future it’s enabling.
