Validators DAO Official Discord Surpasses 4,000 Members — A DAO That Shares Real-World Solana Infrastructure Expertise and Returns It to the World Through Products and Open Source

ELSOUL LABO B.V. (Headquarters: Amsterdam, Netherlands; CEO: Fumitake Kawasaki) and Validators DAO are pleased to announce that the Validators DAO official Discord community has surpassed 4,000 members.

This milestone was reached approximately five months after surpassing 3,000 members in November 2024. It is the result of professionals involved in Solana infrastructure development and operations gathering from around the world, exchanging real-world operational feedback and expertise, and growing together.

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to all members.

Validators DAO Discord: https://discord.gg/C7ZQSrCkYR

Why Validators DAO Exists

Solana is a distributed computing network. Its performance is determined by the sum of the performance of each individual validator distributed across the globe. To make a fast blockchain even faster and more stable, the technical expertise of operators running individual validators and nodes is essential.

However, the knowledge required to operate Solana infrastructure is broad and deep — hardware selection, network routing design, OS kernel optimization, client software version management, incident response — it is not realistic for any single person or organization to fully cover all of these areas.

Validators DAO is the answer to this challenge. It is a technical community where professionals active in the Solana ecosystem — Solana validator operators, Solana RPC operators, high-frequency traders, bot developers, infrastructure engineers, and researchers — come together to share real-world operational expertise and elevate each other's operational quality.

The Improvement Cycle Created by 4,000 Members

The value of Validators DAO is not in the number of members itself. It lies in the cycle where feedback from members directly drives product improvements, and those improvements are returned to all members.

The feedback we receive from members is grounded in real-world operations — connection quality from specific regions, latency characteristics under specific workloads, operational challenges, and requests for new use cases. This feedback is directly reflected in ERPC platform improvements, SLV tool development, and Epics DAO validator tuning.

The diversity of feedback gathered from users in over 100 countries accelerates both the precision and speed of improvement. And those improvements are returned not only to DAO members but to the entire Solana ecosystem through our products and open source.

More members means more power to accelerate this cycle. Reaching 4,000 is proof that this virtuous cycle is beginning to function at a larger scale.

Validators DAO Achievements — Where R&D Has Led Us

The improvements we have built together with Validators DAO members have materialized into concrete results.

Epics DAO Validator — World Rank #3

The Epics DAO validator, which powers ERPC's SWQoS endpoints and serves as the source for Epic Shreds, has reached world rank #3 among all Solana validators with a score of 99.93. Two years of research and development combined with daily tuning have produced this result.

Validator performance improvements are directly reflected in SWQoS endpoint quality, Epic Shreds delivery speed, and Solana RPC quality. World rank #3 is a waypoint — the next goal is the top.

ERPC — A Global Top-Tier Solana Infrastructure Platform

ERPC integrates Solana RPC, Solana Geyser gRPC, Solana Shredstream (Epic Shreds), bare metal servers, high-performance VPS, and ERPC Global Storage within a single platform, all connected through internal network paths in a zero-distance architecture.

Through the integration of the DoubleZero dedicated fiber network, ERPC achieved approximately 200ms P99 latency reduction in Asian regions (Tokyo and Singapore). The platform is now used by customers in over 100 countries worldwide.

ERPC: https://erpc.global/en

SLV — Open Source That Lets You Start Solana Operations with AI Agents

SLV is the AI Agent Kit for Solana developers. It enables validator and Solana RPC operations through natural language conversations with AI agents. Local mode, remote management, zero-downtime migration, speed comparison benchmarks, E2E encrypted backups — it covers the entire Solana development lifecycle.

Our R&D results are published as open source through SLV. The optimization techniques and tuning parameters gained from real-world ERPC operations are made available for anyone to reproduce and apply worldwide.

SLV: https://slv.dev/en SLV GitHub: https://github.com/validatorsDAO/slv

Evolving Products, Evolving Member Applications

Our theme is evolution. ERPC, SLV, the Epics DAO validator — all of our products continue to evolve daily through R&D outcomes. With AI agents now capable of autonomous improvement, the pace of that evolution is accelerating.

Likewise, the applications built by Validators DAO members are evolving rapidly. As AI-agent-driven development expands, the time from concept to release is shortening, and application growth cycles are accelerating.

We continue to update our infrastructure to maximize support for the evolution of our members' applications. Member feedback improves our products, and improved products accelerate the evolution of member applications. We continue to drive this virtuous loop together with our DAO members every day.

The Convergence of Blockchain and Web Applications — x402 Opens the Next Phase

The relationship between blockchain technology and web applications is becoming closer than ever. In particular, the x402 protocol championed by Coinbase has brought blockchain integration into the payment layer into a practical phase.

x402 is an open protocol that leverages the HTTP 402 (Payment Required) status code to enable instant stablecoin payments for API and content access. It requires no account registration or subscription contracts — payments are completed within the HTTP request itself. It supports autonomous payments by AI agents as well as humans, enabling programmatic payments through wallets for API usage fees, AI agent token consumption, and content micropayments as a standard interface.

Solana, with its 400ms finality and extremely low transaction costs, is seeing growing adoption as a settlement layer for x402. We plan to integrate x402 specifications as a standard feature in applications built with SLV. We are progressing on skill-base and code-base organization, with the goal of enabling the development of web applications with built-in blockchain payments through SLV by this summer.

In this phase where blockchain technology is moving toward mass adoption, Validators DAO will continue to be the entity that supports that realization from the infrastructure side.

Five Consecutive Years of WBSO Approval — AS200261 Solana-Dedicated Data Center

ELSOUL LABO has received approval under the Dutch government's WBSO R&D incentive program for five consecutive years since 2022. The company's continuous research and development in Solana RPC infrastructure, validator placement and operations orchestration, and automation tooling has been recognized.

As the culmination of this R&D, we are preparing for the operational launch this month of a Solana-dedicated data center powered by our own ASN (AS200261) assigned by RIPE NCC. The hardware is unified around the latest generation AMD EPYC 5th Gen, AMD Threadripper PRO 5th Gen (9975WX and others), and NVMe 5th Gen, combined with optimized network routing through our own ASN — infrastructure that exceeds existing premium data centers in quality.

This will serve as the foundation for further speed improvements across both our validator and platform operations.

What Validators DAO Aims to Achieve

To further scale the high-speed Solana network. That is why we exist.

Solana is a distributed network. The performance of the entire network is determined by the sum of each individual validator's performance. Through ERPC as a platform and SLV as open source, we aim to raise the technical standard of validator operators and node operators worldwide, improving the processing quality and fault tolerance of the entire Solana network.

Every piece of feedback from our members becomes our strength. And we return that strength to the world through the Solana platform and SLV as open source.

In this phase where blockchain technology is being deployed as global financial infrastructure, infrastructure quality becomes more important than ever. We continue to buidl in order to construct world-leading Solana infrastructure and provide an environment where all buidlers can focus on strategy and code.

The journey we have walked with 4,000 members is a great source of pride for us. And this journey has only just begun.

Thank you for your continued support. We look forward to growing Validators DAO together with you.

Buidlers Collective — A Path to ERPC Full-Stack Connectivity

Buidlers Collective (BDLC) is the pathway within the Epics DAO and Validators DAO ecosystem for buidlers to access ERPC's full-stack connectivity. BDLC GENESIS is a limited collection of 1,000 NFTs that grant holders the Bundle Standard benefit — full-stack connectivity including Solana RPC, Solana Geyser gRPC, and Solana Shredstream (Direct Shreds), with a base value of €698/month — for free as long as the NFT is held. Holders of multiple NFTs receive Bundle Standard plans corresponding to the number of NFTs held.

Buidlers Collective NFT Marketplace (Magic Eden): https://magiceden.io/marketplace/buidlersc

Contact

For inquiries about Validators DAO and ERPC, please create a support ticket on the Validators DAO official Discord.

Validators DAO Discord: https://discord.gg/C7ZQSrCkYR

Disclaimer

This article is not intended as investment advice. Staking, NFTs, and related activities carry inherent risks. Please conduct your own research before making any decisions (NFA / DYOR).