After two years of dedicated service as a primary engineer for Firedancer, an advanced Solana client, Liam Heeger left his position at Jump to embark on a personal venture, one that would challenge existing protocols and aspire to redefine the blockchain landscape. Heeger announced his departure in January, revealing plans to create a pioneering layer-1 blockchain, consequently named Unto.
The next day, a wave of controversy ensued. Jump filed a lawsuit against Heeger, accusing him of violating his non-compete agreement by working on a novel high-performance blockchain. The case was eventually settled in late February, allowing us to delve deeper into the intriguing premise of Unto.
In essence, Unto is set to design a new virtual machine, a feat aimed at surpassing Solana’s performance by a tenfold margin. Unto’s co-founder, Will Yoo, shared his perspective on the ambitious blueprint. “Incremental performance improvements don’t matter,” Yoo said, echoing the sentiments of Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin Capital. “So we’re gonna need a 10x to be relevant.”
Heeger, although in agreement with this sentiment, was cautious not to overcommit. He played a pivotal role in propelling Solana’s virtual machine to its pinnacle through Firedancer. Nevertheless, he is not building on the SVM, mainly due to Solana’s rapid design pivots. To evade similar abrupt modifications, Unto intends to devote significant time to the blockchain’s design before commencing the coding process.
This strategy could necessitate additional capital. The San Francisco-based startup previously secured $2.5 million during a seed funding round from Framework Ventures, evaluated at a $50 million valuation, as per Jump’s lawsuit.
Heeger remained somewhat reticent about the specifics of Unto’s new virtual machine. However, he revealed it would not employ conventional proof-of-work or proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. Instead, the blockchain will utilize a globally distributed validator set, mirroring proof-of-stake – a method favored by Ethereum and Solana. But, Heeger aspires to establish something distinct.
“The key issue with proof-of-stake is that it incentivizes operators purely on increasing and maintaining their stake rather than the performance of the network and being an effective operator,” Heeger explained.
While details remain sparse, the picture painted by Heeger is one of a revolutionary new blockchain, designed with the lessons of the past in mind and aiming for a quantum leap in performance. With the legal issues now behind him, the blockchain world waits with bated breath for what Heeger and his team can deliver with Unto.
