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Howdy!

Happy bitcoin to $100,000 day to any who celebrate. Maybe now my parents will be convinced that I have a real job. 

Today, we’ve got a Solana Foundation exec’s new startup, public companies holding Solana, and Sol Strategies applying to Nasdaq.

Solana Foundation exec departs for ‘the most interesting experiment in crypto’

Solana Foundation’s head of strategy Austin Federa announced he would be departing the nonprofit to found DoubleZero, a network of fiber and subsea cables meant to establish a faster and more performant “new internet.”

Federa had been at Solana Labs and Foundation for nearly four years, becoming one of Solana’s more recognizable public figures. He’s now founding DoubleZero — which will start by supporting Solana — alongside cofounders Mateo Ward and Andrew McConnell. Jito CEO Lucas Bruder called the startup “the most interesting experiment in crypto.”

DoubleZero is an ambitious and potentially category-defining project, but I think it could be thought of for now as decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) for the internet. Individuals in the DoubleZero network contribute fiber optic links, which are basically cables that transmit data with light pulses, to a network that can filter out data before it gets to blockchain validators and RPCs. This all seems like it will be incentivized with a native token and enforced with proof-of-stake slashing, but DoubleZero’s white paper does not explicitly mention what form its “rewards” might take.

Where will DoubleZero find all this unused fiberoptic cable, you might ask? The project’s white paper argues that there is “substantial” spare fiber in the world. This comes from the hundreds of terabits per second modern fiber can handle, “dark fiber” that has been installed but sits unused, and enterprises purchasing more fiber capacity than they need to prepare for doomsday scenarios. 

If all this unused fiber joined DoubleZero’s rewards-based network, it could build a faster new internet just with existing real-world infrastructure. 

Part of the impetus to create DoubleZero is that fast blockchains like Solana aren’t slowed down by how nice of hardware the blockchain’s software is being run on — they’re kneecapped by the fact that blockchain data is sent over the public internet where it is mixed with web traffic that doesn’t need to run as fast as a blockchain.

As things stand, blockchain validators have to use some of their computing resources to filter out spam and deduplicate transactions. DoubleZero and its network of fiberoptic links will look to be a “common shield” for local validators, so all of their resources can go toward building and verifying blocks.

DoubleZero’s white paper says layer-1 blockchains are the best use case for the network, but outside of blockchain, content delivery networks, games, large language models, and enterprises could all benefit. 

In recent weeks, Solana’s community has taken up that mantra of increasing bandwidth and reducing latency. To paraphrase Michael Jordan, Federa and his cofounders took that personally.

— Jack Kubinec

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Renaud Partners is the premier go-to-market consulting firm for early-stage Solana teams.

We’ve been deeply involved in the community since 2021, supporting some of the best known projects in the ecosystem.

We help teams with their go-to-market, brand positioning, social and PR, and fundraising strategy.

We also work across other ecosystems including Monad, Base and TON.

If you're a team looking to expedite your marketing success, let’s talk: [email protected] or @rockin_renaud on telegram.

Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy hasn’t gotten Solana-pilled yet, but here are some other companies with SOL on the balance sheet: 

The New Money tracks the stock price of five publicly traded companies who have purchased Solana to hold.

Most are doing quite well this year, and the last 24 hours have been bullish for Canada-based Sol Strategies especially, which just announced its application to trade on Nasdaq in the US.

— Jack Kubinec

Brought to you by:

Renaud Partners is the premier go-to-market consulting firm for early-stage Solana teams.

We’ve been deeply involved in the community since 2021, supporting some of the best known projects in the ecosystem.

We help teams with their go-to-market, brand positioning, social and PR, and fundraising strategy.

We also work across other ecosystems including Monad, Base and TON.

If you're a team looking to expedite your marketing success, let’s talk: [email protected] or @rockin_renaud on telegram.

Sol Strategies Inc., a Canadian company that’s been waving the Solana flag for months now with its investments in staking rewards and ecosystem projects, has officially submitted its application to list on the Nasdaq. If successful, the listing could open the door for greater institutional capital to flow into the Solana ecosystem. In a press release, CEO Leah Wald dubbed the application a “pivotal step,” channeling all the boardroom optimism you'd expect from someone working to convince institutional investors that Solana isn’t just NFTs and memes.

The company’s official account broke the news with a tweet celebrating this “exciting milestone." Chairman Tony Guoga quickly followed up, adding, “More big news! Sol Strategies has applied for listing on the Nasdaq Exchange! This will enhance our institutional investor access and expand our market presence.” Many on X drew comparisons to Michael Saylor and MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin-focused approach. “Almost seems like Sol Strategies is running the Saylor playbook but on Solana,” noted @pokerchessman. User @arkboyinpa echoed the sentiment, agreeing, “I think they could pull off a MSTR approach.” Indeed, the comparison is right on the mark. Back in November, Guoga himself confirmed, “What MicroStrategy did for Bitcoin, Sol Strategies aims to do for Solana." One important distinction is that Sol Strategies is specifically a Solana-focused holding company, while MicroStrategy is a software company that just happens to have a super orange-pilled founder.

The announcement was met with enthusiasm from most quarters. “This is bullish! Great news,” declared @HiddenEarnings. User @bd_chad added, “Now that’s what I’m talking about.” @BodhiPool was one of the few appearing apprehensive, asking, “Uh, what about the centralization concerns? Supposed to be ‘decentralized.’” Some were busy analyzing their gains. “I bought this stock 1 week ago. I wish I would have bought more,” said @DNaissos, before going on to wonder, “Should I sell though? 100% gains in one week is not negligent.” Others focused on the practicalities. “What is the time frame for approval?” asked @wpeel70.

While there’s been no official response, we know that historically the Nasdaq listing process typically takes four to six weeks. However, the path to Nasdaq approval is rarely a straight line. Between regulatory red tape, strict listing standards, and Wall Street’s still-skeptical view of anything with “crypto” in its bio, Sol Strategies has some hurdles to clear. For now, the company is sticking to familiar territory, trading on the Canadian Securities Exchange (HODL) and the OTC market (CYFRF), while gearing up for the next big step.

— Jeffrey Albus

A message from Austin Federa, co-founder of DoubleZero: