Vitalik Buterin Proposes Strategies to Boost Transaction Velocity
Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, has unveiled innovative proposals aimed at reducing transaction confirmation times on the Ethereum network. He emphasized the need for faster transaction speeds, stating that certain applications require latencies of “hundreds of milliseconds or even less.”
In a recent blog post, Buterin highlighted the progress Ethereum has made over the past five years but emphasized the importance of further enhancing the user experience. He presented several methods to achieve faster transaction speeds, including the implementation of single-slot finality (SSF) as a replacement for the current complex slot and epoch architecture.
Another proposal involves “based preconfirmations,” which would allow users to offer additional fees in exchange for immediate transaction guarantees. The key idea behind this approach is to establish a standardized protocol where users can pay extra fees to ensure their transaction is included in the next block. This mechanism can be applied to various layer-2 solutions such as Optimism, Arbitrum, or Base.
While Bitcoin’s expected block time is approximately 10 minutes, making it unsuitable for everyday payments, Ethereum is faster, taking around 12 seconds to generate a block. However, this is still relatively slow compared to competitors like Solana, which can generate blocks in just 0.4 seconds. Buterin acknowledges that a 12-second block time may be sufficient for certain applications, such as Ethereum-based domains and some payments. Nevertheless, for those seeking even faster solutions, the current viable option is the slot-and-epoch architecture.
Overall, Buterin’s proposals aim to address the need for faster transaction confirmation times on the Ethereum network, providing users with improved efficiency and a better overall user experience.
