Author: Wu Tianyi, DeThings

On January 8, according to CoinDesk, Solana is stepping up its efforts to Testing of Firedancer, a highly anticipated software upgrade that promises to significantly increase blockchain processing speeds.

By the end of this week, Solana's core developers hope to have a "vast majority" on the chain's low-risk test network, according to news in the Solana Technology Discord server The processing power can be run through Frankendancer, an earlier version of Firedancer. and a call to action for Solana validators, the people who run the computers that power the network. The upgrade has been in the works since 2022, when the chain was experiencing frequent outages, and is seen as an improvement to Solana's stability and speed.

The fastest blockchain in history is about to be born?

Backers of Firedancer believe the software, developed by the cryptocurrency arm of trading giant Jump, will give Solana a leg up in the race for cryptocurrencies to lure global financial markets to blockchain. An unrivaled advantage. They note that its theoretical speed is: 1 million transactions per second, which is orders of magnitude faster than any blockchain-based system today.

As Solana’s new validator client led by the Jump Crypto team, it is fundamentally committed to improving the throughput and security of the Solana network. Development plans for Firedancer began as early as 2022, and it stands in stark contrast to Solana's existing Rust language client (Agave). Firedancer was redesigned using C and C++ languages, a decision that greatly reduces the chance of system crashes due to issues such as memory leaks, making it more stable than existing clients.

In the early stages, the development of Firedancer faced many challenges. For example, due to the complexity of new software, verifiers discover many defects during testing, causing many verifiers to be wary of it.

Firedancer itself does not yet have a release date. Currently, Jump Crypto only launches Frankendancer, which is a hybrid that combines elements of Firedancer and Solana's main client architectures. Before this week, only a small group of validators had adopted Frankendancer; many told CoinDesk they found it buggy and prone to crashes.

Kollen House, a long-time member of Solana's validator community, said: "It was very difficult to keep this project running, but we did it." He believes that the push for broader adoption The new move to adopt Frankendancer is a sign of the software's "maturity."

Firedancer technology innovation

Compared with the existing Solana client, Firedancer brings a number of important technological innovations, especially in high-performance computing and parallelization processing aspect. Firedancer’s architecture consists of three core components: high-performance computing stack, network stack, runtime, and consensus mechanism. These innovations have greatly improved the throughput of the Solana network, which can theoretically reach more than 1 million transactions per second, far exceeding the throughput limit of existing systems.

Parallelism and efficient computing

The design of Firedancer relies on a highly concurrent computing model. Each verification node performs different tasks, such as transactions, through multiple independent threads. Verification, block packaging and data processing, etc. This parallelization allows the system to allocate computing resources more efficiently, maximizing throughput and increasing processing speed. Each thread focuses on a certain task and has a dedicated CPU core. This design avoids waste of resources.

Tiles Architecture

Firedancer introduces an innovative tile architecture (tiles). Each tile corresponds to a specific task and is associated with a specific Threads are bound to CPU cores. This flexible architecture enables different types of tasks to flexibly allocate resources according to actual needs. For example, the network stack (net) and QUIC protocol tiles are extremely fast and can handle more than 1 million transactions per second, while the transaction verification (verify) and bank operations (bank) tiles focus on the secure verification and security of transactions. Execution, although its throughput is low, is capable of handling highly concurrent transaction requests.

Efficient consensus and network transmission mechanism

Firedancer’s consensus mechanism reduces the cost ofIt reduces the delay in transaction verification and improves the response speed of the entire system. This allows the Solana network to maintain efficient operation during times of high concurrency and load surges, and avoid system crashes caused by single points of failure.

The Impact of Firedancer on Solana Breakthrough Throughput

One ​​of the biggest highlights of Firedancer is its improved performance. According to demonstrations by the development team, Firedancer is capable of processing more than 1 million transactions per second, far exceeding Solana’s current theoretical limit of 50,000 TPS. This performance greatly improves the competitiveness of the Solana blockchain in the global financial market and provides a more powerful infrastructure for future DeFi and Web3 applications. Taking traditional financial payment systems such as Visa as a reference, their transaction throughput is typically only tens of thousands per second. Firedancer’s performance will undoubtedly make Solana stand out among these competitors and become the leader in blockchain payments in the future.

Enhance network stability and security

In addition to performance improvements, Firedancer also greatly enhances the security of the Solana network. By introducing new clients that are compatible with existing systems, Firedancer not only enhances the decentralization of the Solana network, but also further reduces the risk of network collapse due to a single client failure. Unlike the original Rust client, Firedancer is written in C and C++, which not only effectively avoids downtime caused by problems such as memory leaks, but also minimizes the impact when a failure occurs.

Reduce the complexity of network upgrade

The introduction of Firedancer also provides a new solution for the upgrade of Solana network. In previous versions, Solana had to rely on fewer clients for network updates and maintenance, and this single point of dependence often led to technical difficulties during the upgrade process. With the addition of Firedancer, Solana now has more client options, making network upgrades more flexible and efficient. In addition, Firedancer is compatible with existing protocols, ensuring a smooth transition of the ecosystem without the need for major adjustments by DApp developers and users.