Introduction

The crypto market is always an attention-driven battlefield, and projects in new trends often hide the biggest opportunities.

At the beginning of this year, the most obvious trend was the accelerated entry of institutional investors and the rise of “Made in the USA”:

As of early 2025, institutions hold about 15% of the Bitcoin supply, nearly half of hedge funds have started allocating to digital assets, and the wave of U.S. legislative actions, the launch of the U.S. Bitcoin ETF, and the rise of RWA (real-world assets) on-chain have all fueled the trend.

As “institutional-grade on-chain finance” gradually becomes a necessity, both the narrative and the product need to support traditional financial performance alongside decentralized infrastructure.

Against this backdrop, the right infrastructure project has become the new engine for finding Alpha.

Recently, a project called Fogo has caught our attention; from the public information available, it seems to meet all the above conditions.

A TL;DR version is:

• Fogo is a Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for institutional-grade finance, aiming to seamlessly bridge traditional finance with the decentralized world.
• Technical highlights: It uses Firedancer, developed by Jump Trading, as the only client, achieving faster TPS and block times. With the backing of the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), it is compatible with Solana application migration.
• Team strength: Led by former traditional finance quantitative analysts and early Solana developers, with support from Douro Labs and Jump Crypto, rooted in the U.S., aligning with the “Made in the USA” narrative of the year.
• Funding background: Seed round raised $5.5 million, and recently raised $8 million with a $100 million token valuation on Cobie’s Echo platform.
• Participation opportunity: The Flames Program has been launched, allowing users to earn points through different interactions and seize the chance for future airdrops, providing a stable entry point in the current volatile market.

In short, for readers who are not well-versed in technology, you only need to know that Fogo is a new L1 with better performance and strong resources and backing.

What’s more important, however, is the aforementioned Flames Program, as this is the key focus.

Therefore, this article will first provide a complete guide and introduction on how to participate in Fogo’s Flames Program, followed by a deeper dive into the Fogo chain itself.

Flames Program Activity Guide and Introduction

Previously, Fogo’s official Twitter had been counting down, indicating that the project team had made sufficient marketing preparations for this activity.

What is the Flames Program?

The Flames Program is an ecosystem incentive plan launched by Fogo, aimed at promoting the early development of the Fogo ecosystem by rewarding users for their active participation.

As the name suggests, “Flames” is a continuation of the Firedancer client’s naming, symbolizing the vitality and drive within the ecosystem. According to official information, Flames is a form of points that may later be exchanged for Fogo tokens or other ecosystem rewards.

Every week, Fogo will distribute 1,000,000 Flames to participants, rewarding users who contribute to the ecosystem. These contributions include interactions with ecosystem partner projects and activity on official social channels.

Why Participate in the Flames Program?

• Early User Bonuses: As an early activity launched by Fogo, the Flames Program offers users a low-barrier opportunity to participate and accumulate ecosystem points. History shows that early participants in similar activities often receive above-average rewards, such as airdrops, priority rights, and more.
• Future Potential: Although Fogo’s token has not been announced yet, it is foreseeable that Flames, as ecosystem points, may increase in value as the ecosystem develops. Participating in the activity not only provides an early advantage for future token airdrops but also allows users to deeply engage in the development of Fogo’s ecosystem.
• Diverse Participation Methods: Whether you are a DeFi user, an active social media participant, or a blockchain newcomer, there is a participation pathway that suits you.

How to Participate in the Flames Program?

According to official information, the main ways to participate in the Flames Program are divided into two categories: ecosystem partner project interactions and official social media activity.

• Ecosystem Partner Project Interactions
• Pyth Network: Staking PYTH Tokens

Users can participate in staking PYTH tokens through the Oracle Integrity Staking (OIS) on the Pyth website’s staking page (link).

It is important to note that Pyth currently offers two staking methods.

For first-time participants, when entering the staking page, make sure to choose the OIS (Oracle Integrity Staking) mode instead of the Pyth Governance mode to avoid staking tokens that do not qualify for the program.

Additionally, if you have already staked tokens in the Pyth Governance mode before, you can directly participate in OIS without needing to unlock or restake. Similarly, if your tokens were staked in the Governance mode before OIS was launched, you can participate in OIS directly without withdrawing the tokens.

• Environmental Finance: Trading or Providing Liquidity

Ambient (formerly CrocSwap) is a decentralized trading protocol that allows the combination of concentrated and constant product liquidity on any pair of blockchain assets using a bilateral AMM.

Its founder, Doug, is also a co-founder of Fogo, so it makes sense that participating in this project would earn Fogo points.

In practice, you can trade tokens on the Ambient Finance platform or deposit tokens into liquidity pools (LP Vaults). These interactions not only help you earn Flames but also familiarize you with DeFi-related partner projects within the Fogo ecosystem.

• Official Social Media Activity
• Fire Discord: Stay active in the Fogo Discord community and earn Flames points by obtaining roles.
• Twitter Fire: By sharing, commenting, liking Fogo’s tweets, or retweeting content related to Fogo, you can also earn points.

Flames Rules and Details

• Points Accumulation: Flames accumulate over time to form your total points. Rewards are calculated based on user contributions each week and are automatically distributed.
• Points Weight: The points value varies depending on the activity. For example, staking PYTH tokens may earn more points than simple social media interactions.
• Activity Dynamic Adjustments: The official team may adjust activity rules based on the ecosystem’s development, such as adding or optimizing participation methods.
• Leaderboard Tracking: Users can track their points ranking through the official leaderboard, as shown in the image below.

Using Solana’s Firedancer, Taking Ferrari to a New Highway

If, in addition to participating in the activities, you’re also interested in Fogo’s technology and products, here’s a simplified explanation of what we’ve summarized after researching Fogo to help you quickly understand it.

1. How Do I Quickly Understand Fogo?

Fogo’s official definition is as follows: “Fogo is an SVM chain running the Firedancer client, aiming to provide large-scale real-time experiences.”

This sentence may seem simple, but it hides a huge ambition for blockchain performance optimization.

To truly understand Fogo’s significance, we need to first clarify two key technical concepts—Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Firedancer.

We will try to make these technical concepts as accessible as possible. For most readers, understanding the effects that these technologies can achieve is more important.

• Key Concept 1: SVM

The Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) is the core runtime environment of the Solana network, which can be understood as its “operating system.” All smart contracts and applications running on Solana are executed through the SVM.

Key point: Fogo’s choice to base itself on SVM means it inherits Solana’s technical ecosystem, allowing developers to seamlessly migrate their existing applications to Fogo.

• Key Concept 2: Firedancer

Firedancer is a high-performance client developed by Jump Crypto specifically for Solana. Its goal is to make the Solana network run faster and more reliably.

You may have heard of Solana’s Firedancer upgrade. In fact, by reducing the hardware requirements for validators, Firedancer makes it easier to run nodes.

The reduced speed, costs, and increased flexibility make it a key factor in solving Solana’s scalability issues. Firedancer’s mission is to bring the performance of the Solana network close to that of traditional financial systems, such as NASDAQ, which processes 100,000 transactions per second.

However, as of now, the Firedancer upgrade has not been fully implemented on Solana.

2. Well, Why Create a New L1?

Since Solana has the Firedancer upgrade, which is expected to make it faster and better, why do we need to create Fogo as a new L1?

However, the problem still exists: even if Firedancer becomes faster, it can’t change one reality—Solana’s multi-client model means the network speed is limited by the slowest nodes, and not all validators can immediately switch to Firedancer.

As Fogo’s co-founder Doug Colkitt said: “It’s like having a Ferrari, but driving it through traffic in New York City.”

Firedancer is like the Ferrari, but other factors on Solana cause the traffic jam.

So, the solution becomes creating a dedicated highway for the Ferrari.

Rather than letting Firedancer be held back, it’s better to give it a dedicated stage. The birth of Fogo is to maximize the potential of Firedancer because, from the beginning, everyone could just use the same client.

Therefore, Fogo, as an independent new L1, is not bound by the multi-client model, nor does it need to worry about whether existing validator nodes will update their clients (since it is built from scratch). Instead, through a unified client and innovative design, it completely unleashes the performance of Firedancer.

Why is the Single Client Model Better?

When a blockchain network approaches the physical limits of hardware and network performance, the differences between client implementations can create performance bottlenecks.

Thus, Fogo was designed from the beginning as a “purebred” Firedancer, without needing to undergo “major overhauls.”

3. Okay, So How Does Fogo Do It?

• Single Firedancer Client Model

Fogo’s primary innovation is the choice of Firedancer as the only standard client, completely avoiding the performance bottlenecks that might arise from Solana’s multi-client model.

In one sentence, it’s:

“Use only the fastest client to keep the network at peak performance levels.”

If you’re not familiar with Firedancer, just know the key benefits it brings. First, parallel processing, meaning multiple transactions can be processed simultaneously, significantly improving throughput. Secondly, memory optimization, allowing nodes to more efficiently use resources like storage, reducing latency caused by transactions. It’s worth mentioning that Firedancer works more on hardware, such as optimizing the interaction between nodes and physical devices, further reducing transaction processing time.

The meme below presents how performance optimizations help reduce latency effectively.

• Dynamic Multi-Region Consensus

Another core innovation of Fogo is the introduction of a multi-region consensus mechanism.

This mechanism dynamically optimizes collaboration based on the geographical location of validators, achieving ultra-low latency consensus while maintaining the security features of global consensus.

The official name for this consensus mechanism is “Follow the Sun.” Specifically, this means that validator nodes will dynamically adjust according to the active times of global trading regions.

The metaphor here is that when the sun rises, it typically corresponds to a high-transaction period in a specific region, and during this time, validator activities will concentrate in that region. This mechanism ensures that the distribution of validation resources aligns with the global trading rhythm, thus improving the overall efficiency of the network.

We can simplify this consensus principle as follows:

First, validators are assigned to specific “consensus regions” based on their geographical location, and validators within the region closely cooperate to achieve low-latency consensus.

Second, in the event of special situations, such as a regional consensus failure, the network will automatically switch to a global consensus mode to ensure network stability.

Additionally, considering real-world factors, by rotating regions, the network avoids long-term control by any single jurisdiction, enhancing censorship resistance. It also mitigates the risk of network disruption caused by natural disasters or data center failures.

• Curated Validator Set

Finally, in the selection of validators, Fogo adopts a “curated validator set” strategy to ensure the network’s high performance and stability. Validators are rigorously screened and incentivized through economic mechanisms to drive efficient network operation.

So, what are the selection criteria?

First, there is an economic standard: Validators must meet a minimum staking requirement to ensure they have sufficient economic “stakes.”

Second, there is a hardware standard: Validators must demonstrate that they have high-performance hardware and network capabilities to support the operational requirements of the Fogo network.

In terms of economic incentives, validators will earn higher rewards for using the high-performance client (Firedancer). The network’s dynamic block time and size parameters create economic pressure on validators, encouraging them to choose the fastest client and maintain efficient operation. If a validator fails to meet performance requirements, they may face economic penalties or be excluded from the validator set.

The advantage of this design is that it prevents low-performance nodes from dragging down the network’s overall performance. By encouraging validators to optimize themselves, it drives the entire network towards higher efficiency and stability.

Currently, Fogo is in the development network stage and will soon enter the testnet phase, which means more people will be able to participate in network interactions.

Public data shows that Fogo’s Devnet (development network) currently achieves a performance of 57,000 TPS with a block time of less than 40ms. Data for the testnet and mainnet are still to be observed.

Finally, to facilitate comparison, we can use a table to outline the similarities and differences between Fogo and Solana:

From the Correct Narrative of Institutional Entry to the Right Team Configuration

Clearly, there are many high-performance L1 blockchains on the market, so why does Fogo have a place in this competition?

From the perspective of ordinary players, do we have more reasons to pay attention to this project?

Perhaps we can take a deeper look at three aspects: market trends, the project’s own team, and the resources it can connect to, to analyze whether Fogo is worth our deep involvement.

1. Institutional entry becomes a new trend this year, but it requires lower latency and high-performance infrastructure support

Institutional-grade blockchain is a key trend for 2025, especially in the U.S. market. U.S. narratives (such as the crypto-friendly policies of “King Trump”) and the involvement of old money (such as hedge funds allocating digital assets) have driven this wave.

RWA Tokenization (tokenizing real-world assets) like real estate and bonds has seen a threefold increase in total market value over the past 12 months, showing strong institutional interest in on-chain finance.

However, existing blockchain solutions (such as Solana) are limited by global consensus mechanisms, resulting in high transaction delays, which fail to meet the low-latency environment requirements of institutions.

For example, high-frequency trading requires microsecond-level execution speeds, while traditional blockchains usually have block times of several hundred milliseconds.

Fogo, through the Firedancer client and multi-region consensus mechanism, aims to achieve faster throughput and lower block delays, ultimately approaching the performance level of traditional financial systems (such as NASDAQ processing 100,000 transactions per second).

Given that Fogo is positioned as “enabling on-chain institutional-grade finance,” it fits scenarios involving stablecoins (like USDC) and U.S. Treasury bonds.

2. A team with a better understanding of traditional finance

While the trend exists, having the right people in place is equally important.

Fogo’s two co-founders both have a strong U.S. presence.

Co-founder Douglas is a DeFi technical expert who previously developed trading systems at Goldman Sachs and is frequently active on X, sharing insights.

By reviewing past posts, it is evident that Douglas has in-depth knowledge of products like DEX and perpetual contracts in the crypto space. He even designed a DEX called “ambient.”

The other co-founder, Robert, previously worked at Jump Crypto, bringing with him substantial experience in institutional finance and direct insights into the design of the Firedancer client.

Since Fogo is a new L1 based on the Firedancer client, this alignment makes the project highly specialized. In other words, Jump’s design experience has been directly poured into Fogo.

It is also worth noting that Fogo is supported by Douro Labs, the team behind the Pyth oracle network, which provides real-time financial data that is key for DeFi and institutional applications.

Naturally, Pyth is closely tied to Jump Crypto, which developed the Firedancer client in Fogo’s tech stack. This strong connection to resources and technical backing gives Fogo a competitive edge in both the tech and finance sectors.

3. Ecosystem Integration and Convenience for Solana Users

Fogo is based on the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), making it compatible with the Solana ecosystem. Developers can seamlessly migrate existing applications, reducing development costs and the learning curve. This provides significant convenience for Solana users, as existing SOL assets can quickly flow to Fogo via the Wormhole cross-chain bridge, enhancing liquidity.

The integration of Pyth ensures that Fogo provides high-quality real-time data, which is crucial for DeFi and RWA applications. Wormhole supports cross-chain interoperability, allowing assets to flow between different chains, thus attracting more participants to the ecosystem. For example, users can bridge assets from Solana to Fogo and enjoy its high-performance environment.

4. Funding and Market Confidence

Fogo’s funding situation reflects investors’ recognition of its potential.

According to Rootdata, Fogo completed an $8 million community round funding through the Echo platform in January 2025, with a valuation of $100 million. Prior to this, it raised $5.5 million in a seed round led by Distributed Global.

The Echo platform is operated by well-known overseas KOL Cobie, which is widely recognized in the English-speaking crypto community, making it easier to form investor group dynamics.

Summary

The name “Fogo” literally means “fire,” symbolizing the project’s passion, drive, and spirit of innovation, while also forming an intuitive connection with its flame logo.

Overall, Fogo’s narrative is not just about technical innovation but also about its vision of creating an efficient bridge between traditional finance and crypto, with the necessary resources and team to execute this.

While aligning with the current “Made in the USA” narrative in the crypto market, the “fastest L1” label makes it more likely to spark discussions and attention in the competitive attention economy.

For ordinary users, the Flames Program offers an easy way to get involved; for developers and institutions, Fogo provides a high-performance and compatible development environment.

In the future world of on-chain finance, Fogo may become an indispensable player. If you’re looking for a project with both technical potential and clear opportunities for participation, Fogo is worth taking the time to explore and get involved in.

Disclaimer:

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