The customer of the New Generation Validator of Solana, Firedancer, cannot reach full speed on the network for which it has been built because the technical limits push the developers to test it elsewhere.
One of these developers is Douglas Colkitt, an old high frequency merchant who tests a hybrid validator configuration called Frankendancer on Fogo, a solara compatible chain built to eliminate the constraints that currently prevent the Firedancer from reaching its full potential on Solana.
Colkitt, a founding contributor to Fogo, said that the new blockchain was not trying to replace Solana, but throws some of the basic hypotheses of Solana, such as the validators distributed worldwide, to show how much firedancer can go when the speed is priority over decentralization.
The thrust to operate the chief pullers outside Solana highlights a deeper split in the blockchain infrastructure: the tension between decentralization and speed. These two have long been compromises, but more manufacturers now choose to prioritize speed.
Why Firedancer cannot yet go at full speed on Solana
Jump Trading has developed Firedancer, a high -performance validator client aimed at stimulating Solana flow and reducing latency. But according to Colkitt, Solana’s architecture includes technical constraints that limit the speed at which Firedancer can operate in practice.
“If you have two customers operating on the same network, you cannot go as fast as the slowest customer, otherwise the network may stop,” he told Cintelegraph.
“It’s like driving a Ferrari in the city’s traffic – whatever the speed of the car, you are limited by the speed of other vehicles around you.”
Solana currently supports two implementations of the main main customer: Agave and Firedancer. Agave operates on around 90% of validators on Friday. Meanwhile, Firedancer is still in a transition phase as a Frankendendancer, a hybrid combining agave and tressor. It represents around 10% of validators, compared to 7% in April.
The hybrid approach to Frankendancer allows a progressive adoption of firedancer improvements without risking the stability of the network.
The Solana network relies on a set of validators distributed worldwide. This geographic decentralization strengthens security by preventing a single part or region from obtaining excessive control. It also improves resistance to censorship and resilience against breakdowns or localized attacks.
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It also means that decentralization is delivered with performance compromises. Data and consensus messages must travel long distances, which leads to inevitable network latency. Even with optimized software like Frankendancer and the fastest hardware, Solana’s block time remains around 400 milliseconds.
“Commercial companies absolutely need something faster than 400 milliseconds. If you have events like a [Federal Reserve] Non -enlarged announcement or wage bill, you want to be closer to this data to develop it, ”said Colkitt.
Solana also strives to reduce latency. On Thursday, the Solana Foundation unveiled a roadmap aimed at establishing the “Internet capital market” by 2027, targeting control at Milliseconds on the control of transactions in smart contracts.
Firedancer’s real world test outside Solana
Colkitt retraces his entry into the crypto to “Defi Summer”. He worked on a project as an automated market manufacturer in Ethereum and its emerging rollers.
“Ethereum channels were not sufficient for what we wanted to do,” said Colkitt, explaining why he left Ethereum ecosystem in search of alternatives better suited to high frequency trading.
“We spent much more time to make politics – what L2 are we going to?” How to get the support of L2? – This kind of distracted to build the main products. “
This fragmentation retained innovation in relation to the simplicity and unified liquidity of early Ethereum, said Colkitt, which was more apparent to Solana.
However, Solana is still relatively young. He produced his first block in March 2020. Traditional financial institutions are slower to adopt more recent blockchain platforms like Solana, said Colkitt, adding that banks remain mainly in compatible ecosystems Ethereum.
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On the demand side, Colkitt underlined projects as a hyperliquid, which postpones the limits of the current blockchain infrastructure.
“Hyperliquid has more than 90% of the market in decentralized perpetual trading,” he noted. “But this kind of ultra-faible latency, the high-speed trading experience simply does not work reliably on Solana today because of the block time and the stability of the network.”
Fogo, which launched its testnet on Tuesday, uses Solana -based technology to compete with chains like hyperliquid. Built on the Solana virtual machine, it is compatible with projects that currently work on Solana.
Fogo is currently working on Frankendancer, with transition plans entirely to Firedancer when it is ready, unlocking the full potential of the validator’s client. Asked about the calendar, Colkitt gave a “very rough assumption” of the end of this year. Fogo targets its launch of Mainnet in September.
The true potential of Firedancer outside Solana
Low new generation and hyperliquid low latency networks push the limits to respond to modern trading speed requests. Projects like Megaeth also promise almost instatic transactions, targeting emerging sectors such as decentralized physical infrastructure that requires real -time execution.
What unites these channels is a desire to make compromises, recalling decentralization on a scale. Fogo intentionally reduces the geographic distribution of the validators to obtain this speed advantage.
“What we do with Fogo is running the validators’ nodes in some key world locations – Tokyo, London and New York – to reduce latency between them,” he said.
“By dying the closer validators both, we can push Firedancer to obtain much faster blocking times than the validator’s game distributed on a global solana scale allows.”
This compromise opens the way to an important experience. The real potential of Firedancer will probably never be completely unlocked on Solana itself, a network which remains constrained by its set of global validators and its commitment to decentralization.
Instead, the test bench for what the ultra-fast and high performance blockchain infrastructure can really achieve is done at the cost of decentralization. However, Solana does not stand motion. Its recently unveiled 2027 roadmap aims to bring blockchain closer to traditional financial standards.
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