The DoubleZero Foundation, a non-profit organization working to build a “global fiber network” for high-performance distributed systems and blockchains, raised $28 million in a token funding round. The round was co-led by leading crypto venture firms Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital.
A New Infrastructure Backbone for Blockchain:
“We’ve reached a point where the bottleneck for blockchain is actually on the network and data transport layer, not the compute,” said DoubleZero co-founder Austin Federa. “So, we’ve essentially designed DoubleZero to become the new physical infrastructure backbone for high-performance blockchains. It’s the last frontier to scale performance.”
Blockchain technology is intended to safely store transactions on decentralized peer-to-peer networks. Nevertheless, DoubleZero reports that existing blockchains are hampered by performance constraints because they are based on the public internet, where they compete for bandwidth with a variety of other applications. This competition results in reduced transaction speeds and inefficiencies, limiting blockchain scalability.
Whereas centralized corporations have overcome these issues by developing private networks, decentralized and distributed systems do not have an equivalent infrastructure solution. DoubleZero’s solution seeks to reverse this by enabling private fiber-optic providers to donate their unused bandwidth to a specialized network dedicated to decentralized technologies such as blockchains.
“Today’s ambition for crypto remains too modest,” said Federa. “We envision a near-term future that is entirely supported by distributed systems, and our aspiration is to enable a new fiber infrastructure network to securely power that at scale.”
Testnet Launch and International Expansion:
In addition to raising funds, DoubleZero has also released its testnet, a decisive milestone toward maximizing transaction throughput and validator connectivity. To start, the testnet will offer support for Solana blockchain validators as well as remote procedure call (RPC) functionality, offering an essential infrastructure boost for blockchain networks.
The testnet is already live in seven cities across the world, namely Singapore, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Frankfurt. As the company progresses toward the mainnet launch later this year, more cities will be included in the network.
Early contributors to the fiber network are some of the top players in the industry like Jump Crypto, Distributed Global, RockawayX, and bare-metal infrastructure providers Teraswitch and Latitude.sh.
Next Steps: Scaling Towards a Public Mainnet in 2025
With the additional $28 million raised, DoubleZero aims to grow its team with the addition of crucial people in marketing, developer relations, and business development. The funding will also be utilized to continue building out its infrastructure, culminating in the release of its public mainnet in the second half of 2025.
Through the development of a blockchain-specific fiber network, DoubleZero seeks to disrupt the way decentralized network’s function, improving speed, reliability, and scalability at a global level.
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