Solana (SOL) Introduces Frankendancer and Firedancer Validators to Boost Blockchain Performance

After so much waiting, the long-awaited Solana validator, Firedancer client, has gone live on testnet.

output: A long-awaited Solana validator client has gone live on testnet. This early version of the validator is being contributed by Jump Trading.

Solana Breakpoint attendees may have noticed something unusual during chief scientist Kevin Bowers’ presentation on the second day of the conference. As Bowers pointed out a string of numbers indicating a software version on Solana mainnet, members of his audience appeared to realize what this meant.

The numbers didn't quite match up with Solana's current clients, earning applause from listeners.

The Firedancer validator is contributing to the performance of the Solana blockchain.

Introducing Frankendancer and Firedancer Validators Firedancer is an independent validator client, or software validators can run to build the blockchain. It is being developed by Jump. Notably, the client is being written independently of the original Solana Labs validator client, now called Agave (as in the Agave written in the programming language C, as opposed to Agave, which is written in Rust).

Currently, there are two clients: Frankendancer and the Firedancer. The former is a slightly more performant version of the Agave client, while the latter is the whole hog. Frankendancer is being rolled out first, like a Frankenstein's monster of Agave client replacements.

Frankendancer Is Now Live on Solana Mainnet While Firedancer has gone live on testnet, Frankendancer is already live on the mainnet. According to Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, the plan is to remove the “beta” qualifier from Solana's “mainnet-beta” status once Firedancer goes to mainnet.

Bowers went on to highlight an “open secret” in Solana's validator community: Some of the computing power underpinning Solana is running “Frankendancer” software, which combines predominant validator tech with new contributions from Jump. A blockchain must have multiple validators, especially if decentralization is the focus.

Multiple Validators For Decentralization It is no surprise, then, that Solana is looking to have multiple validators, one from a Solana spinoff team (Anza) and another from Jump. In the long run, this would give Solana a redundancy boost and a performance edge.

“We view this project as the consumer science equivalent of civil engineering,” said Bowers of the effort to build a second validator.