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Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has introduced new proposals aimed at reducing transaction confirmation times and enhancing the overall user experience on the Ethereum network.
In a June 30 blog post, Buterin emphasized the importance of reducing transaction latencies, stating that “there are some applications” requiring confirmation times in the range of “hundreds of milliseconds or even less.” Despite significant improvements over the past five years, Buterin believes further enhancements are necessary to improve user experience.
One proposed method is single-slot finality (SSF), which aims to simplify the current slot and epoch architecture. Buterin acknowledged the challenge of SSF, noting, “The main challenge with SSF is that naively, it seems to imply that every single Ethereum staker would need to publish two messages every 12 seconds, which would be a lot of load for the chain to handle.”
Another innovative proposal involves “based preconfirmations,” allowing users to offer additional fees for immediate transaction guarantees. Buterin envisions a “standardized protocol” where users can pay extra fees for an “immediate guarantee that the transaction will be included in the next block.” This mechanism can be applied to any layer-2 solutions like Optimism, Arbitrum, or Base.
While Bitcoin’s block time is around 10 minutes, making it impractical for everyday payments, Ethereum’s block time is approximately 12 seconds. However, this is still slower than competitors like Solana, which generates blocks in just 0.4 seconds.
Buterin recognizes that a 12-second block time might be sufficient for applications like Ethereum-based domains and certain payments. However, he points out that for those needing faster solutions, the existing “slot-and-epoch architecture” is the only viable option.