Ex-Solana Exec's Wall St. Play Speeds Global Crypto Trades

DoubleZero, the crypto infrastructure startup co-founded by former Solana Foundation executive Austin Federa, is deploying a Wall Street-inspired strategy to accelerate global crypto trades and decentralize the network's validator footprint. Beginning March 9, the company will launch Phase II of its DoubleZero Delegation Program, channeling 2.4 million SOL from a 13 million token reserve toward node operators in geographically underserved markets. The move targets regions like Sao Paulo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, with each area eligible for up to 600,000 SOL in delegated stake rewards.

DoubleZero Targets Solana's European Concentration

DoubleZero operates a private, high-speed fiber network engineered to help Solana validators communicate with lower latency and greater reliability. The startup secured $28 million in funding at a $400 million valuation during 2025, and now manages a delegation pool of 13 million SOL used to incentivize network participation. Its latest initiative confronts a structural challenge: the majority of Solana's staked tokens that secure the blockchain remain clustered in Central Europe.

The concentration arose for practical reasons. "There were a lot of really good, really cheap bare-metal data centers in Europe," Federa told reporters. "Solana was optimized for that kind of hosting early on, and the infrastructure just built up there." While that clustering helped the network grow, it also introduced latency disadvantages for users located far from European hubs.

Federa drew a parallel to Wall Street's early high-frequency trading era, when firms raced to position servers as close to the New York Stock Exchange as possible to shave milliseconds off execution times. The same gravitational pull, he explained, now affects blockchain validators. "One of the unintended consequences of blockchains getting faster is there's more incentive to co-locate next to one another," he said in an interview.

If I'm sitting in South America trying to execute a trade on Solana, I can hit send first. But someone who's got a computer in Germany might actually win that trade.

— Austin Federa, Co-Founder, DoubleZero

What Is Multicast and How Does It Improve Solana?

Multicast is a data distribution method commonly used in traditional financial exchanges that DoubleZero is now bringing to Solana's blockchain infrastructure. Rather than transmitting a separate copy of data to every node individually — the way most blockchain networks function today — multicast sends a single copy that network hardware replicates at relay points closer to each destination. The shift dramatically cuts bandwidth consumption and levels the playing field for geographically dispersed validators.

Federa illustrated the concept by contrasting satellite television with internet streaming. "An infinite number of people can be watching that radio wave, and it's no additional tax," he said, referring to satellite broadcast. Streaming, on the other hand, demands a unique data stream per viewer. Current blockchain data propagation works more like streaming — sending redundant copies across the network.

"In a pre-multicast world, if I'm sending data to 1,000 nodes, I'm handing out 1,000 copies," Federa explained. "With multicast, I send one copy, and the network hardware replicates it closer to where it needs to go." The result, according to Federa, is lower bandwidth costs, fairer data delivery timing, and headroom for future network upgrades.

Bridging Blockchain and Traditional Finance Infrastructure

DoubleZero's overarching bet is that combining geographic decentralization with multicast technology will make Solana's infrastructure behave more like a global exchange. The economic barrier — not technical limitations — is what currently prevents validators from operating outside traditional hubs, according to Federa. He compared the latency penalty to shipping logistics: "It's like Amazon Prime — in New York you get it same day. In Montana, it's four or five days."

The company's private fiber backbone is designed to address connectivity gaps, while the 2.4 million SOL in delegation incentives offsets the financial disadvantage of running nodes in distant locations. Together, the two prongs aim to make it economically viable for operators to spin up validators in Sao Paulo, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo rather than defaulting to European data centers.

What Does This Mean for Solana's Future?

The long-term implication is that Solana could function more like a truly real-time, globally distributed market if DoubleZero's incentive model succeeds. By spreading staked SOL across multiple continents and introducing deterministic data delivery, the network would reduce the advantage that geographically concentrated validators currently enjoy. That shift could attract institutional participants — market makers and professional traders — who demand the predictability found in legacy exchange infrastructure.

"Traditional finance isn't just faster than blockchain — it's more dependable," Federa said. "If we can bring more determinism to blockchain networking, it makes it a much more attractive place for market makers and traders." Phase II launches March 9, and the crypto market will be watching to see whether financial incentives alone can reshape Solana's global validator topology.