Vitalik Buterin suggests ways to speed up Ethereum transaction confirmations

ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has suggested ways to help the blockchain improve its transaction confirmation times.

Buterin, on June 30 eth.limo/general/2024/06/30/epochslot.html”>blog postexplained that ethereum's Gasper consensus mechanism uses a slot-and-epoch architecture that contains certain complexities, such as error interactions and a 12.8-minute confirmation time, making it “increasingly cumbersome” for blockchain experiences. the users.

He therefore highlighted some of the “practical options” that ethereum has to further improve its user experience.

State security force

Buterin stated that the single slot finality (SSF) mechanism is similar to the Tendermint consensus in that it allows blocks to be finalized as soon as they are produced.

However, unlike Tendermint’s consensus, ethereum will retain the “idle leak” mechanism to allow chains to continue running even if a third of validators go offline. Buterin added that the single-slot finality mechanism also has its flaws. In particular, all ethereum participants must publish two messages every 12 seconds, which puts a strain on the chain.

Meanwhile, Buterin added that while there are ideas to mitigate this issue, users could still have to wait between 5 and 20 seconds. He wrote:

“There are clever ideas to mitigate this problem, including Orbit’s recent SSF proposal. But still, while this improves the user experience significantly by making “finality” arrive faster, it doesn’t change the fact that users have to wait 5-20 seconds.”

Rollup pre-confirmations

Rollup pre-commits aim to improve ethereum Layer 2 (L2) solutions. These solutions process transactions with the same security as the ethereum base layer (L1), but on a larger scale.

Rollups confirm transactions much faster than the current 5 to 20 seconds, targeting latencies of hundreds of milliseconds. This method divides responsibilities: the L1 network remains stable, censorship-resistant, and reliable, while the L2s offer faster transaction times and directly address user needs.

To achieve faster confirmations, L2s create decentralized sequencing networks. These networks have smaller groups of validators who quickly sign blocks, often within milliseconds, and commit them to the blockchain.

However, validators must ensure that their commitments are consistent and trustworthy. If a validator signs conflicting blocks, they risk losing their deposits.

Preconfirmations based

Pre-confirmations leverage ethereum's advanced proposer capabilities, driven by maximum mineable value (MEV) prospects.

The concept involves establishing a standardized protocol where users can pay an additional fee to have immediate assurance that their transaction will be included in the next block. This service, known as pre-confirmations as a service, would ensure users a fast transaction confirmation.

Proposers who fail to honor their commitment or breach the agreement will face penalties (cuts). Buterin noted that this framework will apply to L1 transactions and will be extended to L2 solutions. By treating all L2 blocks as L1 transactions, the pre-confirmation mechanism ensures accelerated confirmations across the ethereum network.

Buterin noted that implementing SSF and rollup-based preconfirmations on ethereum could significantly reduce transaction confirmation times.

However, he noted that this would return to the initial “epoch and slot architecture” that the blockchain was trying to abandon. He stated:

“There is a deep philosophical reason why architectures of time and space seem so difficult to avoid: it inherently takes less time to reach a rough agreement on something than to reach a maximally consolidated 'economic purpose' agreement on it.”

He suggested that network developers explore other options that are not as tightly intertwined as Gasper.

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