Ethereum researchers want to reduce the transaction finality time from 16 to 4 minutes. Behind this technical improvement, a concrete economic issue: allowing transfer services to mobilize less capital while awaiting final confirmation of operations. For the moment, the project remains under study and does not foresee any deployment date.
In brief
- Ben Edgington and four co-authors propose unbundling votes from validators to accelerate Ethereum’s finality.
- For a service that advances a million dollars per hour, the capital tied up would fall from approximately $267,000 to $67,000.
- The project does not yet have a timetable or final parameters, while Solana is aiming for a finality of around 150 milliseconds with Alpenglow.
Quicker outcome: less capital blocked
While Ethereum updates advance despite the decline in its price, the speed of settlement remains an important issue. A transaction can appear in a block without being definitively validated. Validators must still confirm their commitment not to reverse this decision.
This is precisely the problem that the “Decoupled Consensus” EIP project. When a service transfers funds to another network, it often has to wait for this finalization before getting its money back.
Let’s take an example: a customer wants to send $10,000. To avoid waiting, the service provider can immediately pay the amount from its own reserves. On the other hand, he must wait before recovering the corresponding funds on Ethereum.
On a large scale, these delays are costly. An operator who advances a million dollars per hour thus locks in nearly 267,000 dollars for 16 minutes, compared to around 67,000 dollars if the delay falls to four minutes.
Circle’s model also illustrates the benefit of speed. For its stablecoin USDC, the company charges 0.01% on its fast route from Ethereum, or one dollar for every $10,000 transferred, excluding network fees. Its standard route does not incur any Circle transfer fees.
Two separate votes to accelerate Ethereum
Today, validators use the same vote to fulfill two functions: participate in choosing the next block and definitively confirm previous blocks. As the finality depends on two rounds of voting, this mechanism limits the speed of the settlement.
With “Decoupled Consensus”, the researchers propose to separate these functions. Validators could thus confirm blocks at a distinct, faster and adjustable pace over time.
This architecture could also facilitate the adoption of signatures resistant to quantum computers, if current cryptographic methods become vulnerable.
A project still far from deployment
For the moment, no date has been announced. Researchers have yet to clarify voting rates, penalties and several aspects of security. Ben Edgington emphasizes that many elements remain to be defined. The filing aims first to formally register the proposal in the Ethereum development process.
The project is in addition to other projects in the network. Glamsterdam took an important first step in Sepolia on October 6, ahead of the next phases of deployment.
The competition, however, reminds us of the scale of the challenge. Solana has enabled Alpenglow on its mainnet, with a target finality of approximately 150 milliseconds. The two networks are based on different architectures, but the speed gap remains considerable.
It therefore remains to be verified whether the Ethereum network can reduce its delays without compromising its security. For operators, the challenge is clear: recover tied-up capital more quickly and streamline transfers between networks.
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