Jump Crypto To Overhaul Solana

Jump Crypto will work with the Solana Foundation to develop a new open-source validator client for Solana in an effort to boost the speed and reliability of the network.

Validators are responsible for verifying transactions on a blockchain and thus are crucial to a blockchain’s efficiency and security. This ambitious plan is called Firedancer and is set to take up to 24 months to complete, with a goal of “drastically increasing Solana’s networking throughput, resiliency and efficiency”, according to the statement from Jump Crypto. Solana has suffered multiple outages in the past year.

The crypto arm of proprietary trading firm Jump Trading was launched in September 2021 and has been a key supporter of the Solana project. It stepped in to reimburse over $300M worth of crypto assets stolen when the Wormhole bridge was exploited earlier this year.

Jump Crypto Replaces Over $320M of Wormhole Wrapped ETH in DeFi Bailout

Wormhole, a bridge which facilitates asset transfers across seven different blockchain, got hacked on Feb. 2 to the tune of over $320M as a hacker minted 120,000 worth of a version of wrapped Ethereum on Solana. One day later, the funds are back. 

The Defiant

Jump Crypto will propose significant upgrades to Solana’s core code along with building a second new validator client, separate from the one originally built by Solana Labs.

“Jump has unparalleled experience with over 20 years of scaling networks and building highly performant software systems. Their contributions to the Solana network will improve mission-critical systems, helping the network scale to billions of users,” Dan Albert, Executive Director of the Solana Foundation, said in the statement.

The new validator will be built using the C++ programming language and will be overseen by Kevin Bowers, Jump Trading’s Chief Science Officer. This is in contrast to the original Solana client that’s written in Rust.

“We absolutely support the move,” Andrew Allen, Protocol Specialist at Coinbase Cloud, Solana’s largest validator, told The Defiant. “A second validator client offers redundancy for node operators and the network as a whole. Beyond that, a separate client will further open up protocol development and hopefully inspire others to start contributing.”