Excited to share that we’ve launched our own Solana validator on mainnet!(8vk6QpG93JSaQCSgnycBsv5qmfQBk4qC9FjNA35E5JhU) - 0% commission - 0% MEV commission - Proceeds fund OSS contributions by @anoushk77 and @harsh_patel We’ve been quiet for a while. Here’s why and what we were up to...

open sourcing my AF_XDP receiver for doublezero edge! supercharge your trading backend by shaving off microseconds of latency. measurements from my prev run. link below 👇

Greetings fellow solana builders. In July 2025 we launched our validator and decided to run at 0% for both MEV and base commissions. That decision let us attract the stake we needed to stay online and fully focus on the work that actually moves Solana forward. We are deeply grateful to our backers! We've been longtime ecosystem participants and in the Solana ecosystem since 2021 and have been through the worst alongside other Solana builders and we plan to be here for the long haul with you. At 0% commission, we’re profitable purely from block rewards. But rewards are thin and shrink further when activity dips. Without a share of inflation or MEV commission on delegated stake, this isn’t sustainable long-term. In order to keep sustaining our operations, and expand our infrastructure, and most importantly continue funding the research/experiments and contributions that help Solana win, we will be increasing our base validator commission to 5% in approximately within this week. We will keep our MEV commission at 0%. This increase is temporary for the time being. It is there precisely so we stay strongly incentivized to keep pushing experiments like our research & contributions in the solana. We believe the best validators actively contribute via code/content, all open source, that will benefit the ecosystem. If you have any questions or concerns, drop them in our DMs. You can also monitor our commission and performance here: stakewiz.com/validator/2ZP7D…

doublezero edge now works with XDP ingestion in rust using aya! so you now can ingest information via doublezero edge even faster by bypassing kernel through AF-XDP. it shaves off microseconds of latency which is critical in HFT.

made a v2 of the xdp redirect program. the main improvements are: 1. controlled steering: only configured IPv4 UDP traffic is redirected to configured xdp sockets 2. optional dst IP filtering 3. optional GRE unwrapping. 4. packet fragmentation checks everything else stays on the normal kernel path with XDP_PASS. here's a demo with modified shredstream proxy

It’s out!

a sneak & peep on how my jito shredstream xdp monitor looks like atm, vibe coded in bash. this screenshot was captured while the proxy was live and actively forwarding traffic, with actual counters. its displaying shreds received from the jito block engine in new york & forwards to a sink, bypassing the entire kernel networking stack. - single queue rx and tx - skb & drv mode the goal is to: - benchmark latency, cpu utilization of XDP based packet processing pipeline. - demonstrate a full xdp based shred forwarding pipeline that is not only reliable for more traffic but also handles packet bursts gracefully.

xdpdump is a very handy tool for diagnostics. below is my jito-shredstream fork redirecting shreds from the block engine in a fully kernel bypass pipeline. h/t @seminuked

i automated my nic monitoring for XDP with a skill that i plug into codex/claude. not all NICs/drivers are the same but this covers most of the general settings & metrics. it monitors: - bpf program attachment - NIC queue IRQs to CPU core affinity - free CPU cores - kernel tracing - fdir rule application - perf recording and report

Just got casually mentioned by @alessandrod today on his talk on agave performance and networking at Breakpoint. This is why I wake up and Solana. full talk: x.com/solana_devs/status/199…

We all know how painful it is to get locked out of ssh when experimenting with XDP. This one is a helpful primer for the people starting out with XDP based networking👇

Announcing Solana Network State: Road to Breakpoint – @ns on 20th november. – invite only. 80 builders. – real ICM insights reach out for collabs (sponsor/speaker) ––– more details soon. by @meteora_my @ionet @met_engine @SuperteamMY @sendarcadefun @tinydancerio

We're proud to be running the first release of FD-Paladin! Connected to both Jito and Bloxroute for the highest tips!

FD-Paladin is live on Mainnet! You can now connect multiple block engines (Jito bloXroute) to @jump_firedancer @tinydancerio and Paladin-Firedancer are the first validators on Mainnet already producing blocks with txns from both block engines! Link to release below

We stand on the shoulders of giants! Thanks for your support!

Detailed setup guide, challenges faced and implementation details coming soon! Stay tuned.

💥 The AF_XDP receive path in Agave has been ACHIEVED, both zero-copy and copy modes SUCCESSFULLY TESTED end-to-end! 💥 A first step toward ultra-low-latency packet reception on @solana h/t @alessandrod for all the help 🤝 Zero-copy mode in IKVM console, more details 🧵: