Figment recently migrated its flagship Solana validator to Firedancer*, Jump Crypto’s next-generation validator client. Early data shows the move is improving performance overall: the validator is delivering 18-28 basis points higher** staking reward rates compared to Figment’s Agave-based validator performance, with most of the gains coming from better MEV capture and more efficient transaction processing.
For delegators, that translates to consistently higher rewards. This post breaks down Firedancer, how it impacts rewards, and what’s next.
What Is Firedancer?
Firedancer is Jump Crypto’s ground-up rewrite of Solana’s validator software in C. It’s a completely independent codebase sharing virtually no code with Solana Labs’ Agave client.
A full Firedancer deployment on mainnet is still in development, but Jump created an interim solution grafting Firedancer’s best parts (XDP networking, efficient transaction validation and block production) onto Agave’s battle-tested consensus and execution layers. It’s available now on mainnet and delivers measurable performance improvements.
How Firedancer Gets Its Speed
The performance gains come from Firedancer’s networking and block production components:
Tile-Based Processing: Firedancer organizes work into independent specialized tiles. Each tile handles a specific task—network I/O, transaction verification, block production—and they run in parallel. This is different from Agave’s more sequential approach.
NUMA Optimization: Modern CPUs split memory into zones, with each CPU core having faster access to its local memory. Firedancer binds each tile to its nearest memory zone, avoiding the slowdown that comes from cross-zone memory access. It’s a small detail that compounds across millions of operations.
Networking: Rather than relying on standard QUIC, Firedancer implements a custom version optimized for low-latency blockchain communication. This matters during network congestion when a faster handshake and better spam filtering can keep our validator responsive.
What the Firedancer Migration Means for Delegators
Figment switched our primary validator, figment-1, to Firedancer at epoch 871 on October 30th, 2025. The early performance data is extremely promising, adding up to SRR improvements for all figment-1 delegators.
SRR Improvements
- Gross SRR: +18 basis points vs. pre-Firedancer migration, reaching +28 basis points in some epochs post-epoch 874.
Where the Gains Come From
Firedancer’s architecture lets it pack blocks more efficiently with intelligent transaction scheduling. Our team analyzed roughly 3,500 blocks to compare performance to Figment’s older Agave-based validator:
- Jito Tips: Up 9x
- Priority Fees: Up 2.5x
- Transactions per Block: Up 17%
- Non-Vote Transactions: Up 57%
- Revenue per Compute Unit: Doubled from 0.600 to 1.200
- Total Compute Units per Block: Up 20%
The pattern is clear: Firedancer lets the validator fit more valuable transactions into each block and capture more MEV and Priority Fees.
On Block Times
Block duration did increase by 18% (355.7ms to 398.4ms median). The new duration is slightly above the cluster median but still well below thresholds that would cause protocol delays.
Failed transactions increased from 41 to 145 per block on average. This reflects denser blocks and higher load which is expected behavior when you’re pushing more volume through the system.
DoubleZero: The Networking Layer
Complementing Firedancer’s block production gains, Figment integrated DoubleZero, a low-latency network designed for Solana validators. Think of it as a private, optimized internet layer for the validators.
We are seeing measurably better performance running Firedancer + DoubleZero together than running either alone. Vote latency stays optimal at 1.002 slots, and missed voting credits dropped by 15% compared to pre-DoubleZero internet routes.
Firedancer Scheduler Modes
Firedancer supports different transaction scheduling modes that allow validators to optimize for different priorities. These modes determine how transactions and MEV bundles are ordered within blocks:
Performance Mode: Balances standard transaction processing with MEV optimization. Suitable for validators prioritizing reliability with modest performance gains.
Revenue Mode: Prioritizes MEV capture and bundle processing. Schedules transactions to maximize validator rewards by sorting bundles and transactions by fee-per-compute-unit.
Balanced Mode: A middle ground that combines elements of both approaches.
Figment carefully experiments with the scheduler modes while maintaining the “Safety Over Liveness” principle.
Safety Over Liveness
Figment prioritizes reducing slashing risk over maximizing uptime. This shapes how the validator is operated.
Rather than chasing every marginal performance gain, Figment focused on genuine optimization:
- Integrating DoubleZero properly
- Fine-tuning Firedancer configuration and experimenting with transaction scheduling modes
- Investing in bare-metal hardware and working with our ASN partners on better deployment options
Figment explicitly avoids aggressive timing games or pushing block times near the edge of what the network allows. That reduces the risk of hindering on-chain user experience.
What’s Next
Figment continues to gather performance data across multiple epochs to confirm these improvements hold up over time.
The Firedancer migration isn’t a one-time switch, it’s one step of our ongoing infrastructure optimization. When fully native Firedancer launches on mainnet, Figment will be positioned to effectively and swiftly evaluate the benefits of a full migration.
Stake SOL with Figment
Figment serves over 1,000 institutional clients in Solana staking, including asset managers, exchanges, wallets, and custodians.
Staking with Figment’s gets you:
- Higher rewards: Above standard Agave validators
- Security: SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certified, zero slashing incidents
- Infrastructure: Firedancer + DoubleZero + optimized hardware
- Operational discipline: Safety-first approach to greatly reduce slashing risk
- Easy integration: Click-to-stake interface, comprehensive reporting, API access for institutions
Delegate through the Figment app or contact the team to discuss tailored institutional solutions.
Already staking Solana with Figment? If you are delegating to the figment-1 validator, you are already receiving Firedancer’s additional performance boost.
Ready to switch? Delegate with Figment’s primary Solana validator, figment-1, through the Figment app.
