Why the Public Internet Is Holding Blockchain Back: Inside DoubleZero’s $28M Bet on Fiber Infrastructure
DoubleZero CEO Says Blockchain Needs Physical Infrastructure, Not Just Code
TORONTO — The future of blockchain may not lie solely in smart contracts or scalable code, but in the very wires that connect the world. That’s the view of Austin Federa, co-founder and CEO of DoubleZero, who argues that the public internet is now the biggest roadblock to blockchain performance.
Speaking at Consensus 2025, Federa made the case for building dedicated fiber-optic communication networks tailored specifically for high-throughput blockchains — a mission that has already attracted $28 million in funding and serious interest from institutional validators.
“It Was Never Built for This”
“The downside of the public internet is it was never built for high-performance systems,” Federa told Cointelegraph. “It was always built for this sort of relationship of one big server talking to one little server.”
In blockchain ecosystems, the dynamic is completely different. Validators — the nodes that verify and propagate transactions — constantly rotate roles, flipping between being massive data consumers and then rapid broadcasters of enormous volumes of data.
“They need huge amounts of resources both on ingress and egress,” said Federa. “The problem isn’t compute or software anymore — it’s the network layer itself.”
From Solana to Speed: The Birth of DoubleZero
Federa, a former executive at the Solana Foundation, launched DoubleZero in December 2024 with a bold vision: build the fiber-optic backbone of the blockchain world. The protocol is designed to minimize latency — the time it takes for data to travel — and maximize bandwidth to support the surging demand of modern decentralized systems.
By April 2025, DoubleZero held a validator token sale, offering token purchase agreements to accredited investors and active validators across Solana, Celestia, Sui, Aptos, and Avalanche.
Why Fiber Matters for DeFi and Beyond
DoubleZero’s high-speed infrastructure promises more than just faster block times. It could fundamentally reshape the economics of decentralized finance (DeFi) by reducing slippage, tightening spreads, and lowering transaction fees.
In Federa’s view, unlocking the next phase of blockchain adoption will require rethinking internet infrastructure itself. “We’ve outgrown the public internet. If we want to support high-throughput blockchains and institutional use cases, we need physical systems built for this.”
Launch Timeline and What’s Next
DoubleZero plans to launch its public mainnet in the second half of 2025, following its initial fundraising success. The goal is not just speed, but to unlock new categories of blockchain applications currently limited by internet infrastructure.
As more institutional players and sophisticated decentralized systems enter the space, networks like DoubleZero could become as essential as Layer 1 protocols themselves.
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