By Frank, PANews

On October 2nd, a project called DoubleZero set off a blitzkrieg in the crypto world. On that day, its mainnet beta version officially launched, and its native token, 2Z, was instantly and unprecedentedly listed on numerous global exchanges , including Binance, Bybit, and Upbit. The market response was beyond imagination, with 2Z's 24-hour trading volume exceeding $1.4 billion at one point, and its circulating market capitalization rapidly climbing to over $2 billion, catapulting it into the top 100 crypto assets.

This enthusiasm wasn't unfounded. The Solana ecosystem offered unprecedented support before and after the project's launch. Not only did its co-founder publicly congratulate it, but the network immediately attracted over 300 Solana validator nodes, representing a significant portion of the network's staking. Even more noteworthy was its regulatory compliance breakthrough: just days before the token's launch, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a historic "No-Action Letter" to DoubleZero, confirming that the programmatic distribution of the 2Z token did not require registration as a security. This move was interpreted by the market as a regulatory "green light," significantly alleviating compliance concerns among major exchanges. Even Coinbase, known for its stringent compliance requirements, announced the launch of perpetual contracts for the project's 2Z token on October 3rd.

How did an emerging infrastructure project receive such top-tier resources and market recognition so early on? What's the magic behind DoubleZero? PANews takes a deep dive into the team, technology, narrative, and potential challenges behind it.

DePIN Rising Star from Solana

From the very beginning, DoubleZero had the potential to be a star project.

First, DoubleZero's founding team is comprised of industry elites. DoubleZero's core leadership is a continuation of the "Solana Think Tank." Co-founder and CEO Austin Federa, formerly Head of Strategy and Communications at the Solana Foundation, was a key figure in driving the early rise of the Solana ecosystem. COO David McIntyre was previously Head of Financial Planning and Analysis at the Solana Foundation. Co-founder and CTO Andrew McConnell is also the co-founder of Malbec Labs. Chief Economist Nihar Shah was formerly Head of Data Science at Mysten Labs and has held key positions at Jump Crypto and Meta's Libra/Diem projects.

In addition to its strong team background, DoubleZero also boasts a relatively unique narrative. DoubleZero introduces and defines a new protocol category—"N1" (Network 1). This positioning strategically distinguishes it from common L1 (consensus layer), L2 (scaling layer), or L3 (application layer) protocols. According to its design philosophy, N1 provides the network layer, L1 provides consensus on top of it, and L2 provides scaling.

In simple terms, N1 builds a dedicated high-speed network for existing blockchain networks. This narrative cleverly avoids the current competitive landscape and essentially falls into the Decentralized Pin (Decentralized Pin) space. Its potential extends beyond the crypto space and potentially encompasses all areas requiring distributed networks, such as content delivery networks (CDNs), large language models (LLMs), and real-time gaming.

DoubleZero's impressive team and narrative structure, which boasted immense potential, also attracted investors. In March 2025, the project announced the completion of a $28 million token financing round, valuing the company at $400 million. The round was co-led by Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, with participation from renowned institutions such as Foundation Capital, Reciprocal Ventures, and Borderless Capital. Solana co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal also participated as angel investors.

Building " infrastructure" for blockchain infrastructure

The core technology of DoubleZero is its innovative "dual-ring" architecture, consisting of an outer ring (Ingress/Egress Ring) and an inner ring (Data Flow Ring).

Simply put, DoubleZero's primary goal is to build a separate highway outside the chaotic public internet. This highway independently serves L1 and L2 blockchain networks, achieving low latency and reduced congestion. The outer ring design can be understood as an intelligent security system, or similar to a toll booth on a highway. Through this design, all data entering the core network is "cleaned" and "pre-processed."

The inner ring can be thought of as the highway's path. Clean traffic, cleansed by the outer ring, is then channeled into the inner ring, the high-performance core. The inner ring is a physical network backbone comprised of dedicated fiber optic links provided by independent contributors worldwide. Simply put, DoubleZero 's technical principles, through the integration of software and hardware and the separation of inner and outer rings, create a dedicated "information highway" with intelligent security for distributed systems, addressing the current network bottlenecks that limit blockchain performance at the physical level.

There is potential in compliance, narrative, and implementation

Overall, DoubleZero's project potential is reflected in the following points.

1. Narrative Potential: Beyond its original "N1" concept, this narrative's greatest strength lies not only in its ability to escape the competitive landscape of public blockchains but also in its clever transformation of all public blockchains into potential customers. Furthermore, as the foundation of distributed systems, its narrative potential may also extend to even more exciting and promising fields, such as AI.

2. Technology Implementation: Unlike many projects that remain at the white paper stage, DoubleZero has already achieved real physical infrastructure operation. As of October 3rd, its official public Internet number has exceeded 1,300, and there are more than 330 participating Solana network validators.

3. Resource Capacity: The grand launch of DoubleZero's token, 2Z, demonstrates the project's ability to integrate industry resources. On October 3rd, the token was listed almost simultaneously on all major global exchanges, including Binance, Kraken, and Upbit. Furthermore, Solana's strong official endorsement and the active participation of its validator system provided strong support for DoubleZero's significant market response, despite the absence of an airdrop .

4. Compliance: DoubleZero's mature compliance capabilities are a rare advantage among emerging crypto projects. Prior to its launch, it received a "no-action letter" from the US SEC, stating that "if the 2Z token is programmatically distributed as described, the SEC will not recommend enforcement action, and the 2Z token does not need to be registered as a security." Furthermore, PANews noted that DoubleZero's 2Z token, when sold on Coinlist earlier this year, achieved the record of being the first token sale open to US accredited investors since CoinList's 2019 launch. Its compliance capabilities may also be the "pass" that allowed exchanges with more stringent compliance requirements, such as Coinbase and Upbit, to quickly launch their offering.

It is too far away from the C -end. Can the market heat be maintained?

Despite these potential advantages, DoubleZero's token price hasn't seen a sustained rise since its initial launch. Besides the lackluster price growth caused by its high opening valuation, the lack of a community airdrop, which drew criticism from the community, also reflects DoubleZero's perceived closeness to institutions and distance from the community.

First, considering the project's inherent characteristics, while it's a DePin project, its entry threshold is high, requiring participants to possess professional-grade network infrastructure such as dedicated fiber optic cables and data center rooms. This directly excludes ordinary players. Furthermore, the narrative is too vertical. Compared to public chains like L1 and L2, which can see a large number of application-layer projects driving the ecosystem, DoubleZero's primary benefit may be its access to more public chain infrastructure. Overall, DoubleZero's inherent characteristics are destined to be close to the business end and distant from the consumer end.

Furthermore, DoubleZero's operational strategy lacks sufficient emphasis on the consumer end of the market. For one thing, the project hasn't offered testnet users a plan to participate in airdrops. Even the token presale on Coinlist is targeted at institutional users at the validator level. While DoubleZero partnered with Binance to launch a "HODLer Airdrop," this model hasn't generated much buzz in the market and isn't a token of appreciation for its community.

As a result, DoubleZero's community discussion was not very enthusiastic. After hitting a high of $1.28, its token price quickly fell back to around $0.51, with a maximum retracement of nearly 60%.

Overall, DoubleZero's launch was undoubtedly a stunning debut. From a project development perspective, it presents a new development strategy and narrative structure. This offers insights into the future of the crypto market. If the project lives up to expectations, it could become a new giant in the DeFi space. However, from a crypto market perspective, this project's operational philosophy and product features are inherently out of reach for consumer users. The most direct way for users to participate is through speculation on the token's value. Clearly, this is also its primary flaw, and its future value will likely depend on the continued expansion of its business-to-business (B2B) operations.