Accelerate with Mert Austin Federa & Mateo Ward: Internet Cartels, High-Frequency Trading, and the New Internet | ACC 1.4
Aug 28, 2025
In this conversation with Austin Federa, a crypto infrastructure strategist and former Solana Labs executive, and Mateo Ward, a telecommunications entrepreneur, the duo dives into the challenges of building a decentralized and high-performance internet. They discuss the inefficiencies of current internet routing and the need to break up ISP cartels. Austin explains how their venture, Double Zero, aims to revolutionize networking with token incentives and why decentralization protects against political risks. Their insights into high-frequency trading infrastructure and blockchain validator benefits make for a fascinating listen.
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Network Limits Sink Fast Chains
- High‑performance chains like Solana expose public Internet limits: fast nodes don't matter if the network is the bottleneck.
- Solving networking enables validators and clients to realize protocol performance gains instead of being stuck at lower throughput.
Internet Runs Like A Tier‑1 Cartel
- The public Internet is effectively controlled by ~19 Tier‑1 ISPs that form a peering cartel.
- This cartel creates layered transit fees and central points of failure that extract ~$1T/year and threaten global connectivity.
Single AS Controller Beats BGP Limits
- 00 overlays a single AS and software controller on many independent networks to gain end‑to‑end visibility.
- That lets it route traffic by lowest latency and restore on the fastest alternates, unlike BGP's opaque, political routing.