Researchers Propose to Reduce Ethereum Transaction Finalization Time

Ethereum researchers have introduced a plan to reduce transaction finalization time from approximately 16 minutes to 4 minutes. This initiative could lower the costs of fund transfer services, allowing for quicker recovery and reuse of funds. Ben Edgington, who coordinates research on fast Ethereum finalization, submitted the project on Wednesday along with colleagues Francesco D'Amato, Roberto Saltini, Yann Vonlanthen, and Mikhail Kalinin. The goal is a fourfold improvement, although the plan is not yet complete and does not have an activation date.

In the current mechanism, a transaction can enter an Ethereum block long before the network recognizes it as final—that is, before validators commit to never rewriting the block. Everyone transferring funds with Ethereum must decide when it is safe to release the money on the other side. 16 minutes is a long time for funds to be in limbo. For example, if someone sends $10,000 from Ethereum to another network, the service can immediately pay it out from its own funds and then wait for a return until the original transaction is completed. Reducing the wait from 16 to 4 minutes would allow the service to reuse funds more quickly. A service with a constant volume of $1 million per hour holds about $267,000 waiting for a return with a 16-minute delay, but with 4 minutes, this amount is reduced to approximately $67,000.

Currently, each validator casts one vote, which performs two tasks simultaneously: helping to select the next block and helping to finalize old blocks. Validators vote in turn, and a block becomes final only after two full rounds of voting by all participants. Since both tasks share one vote, finalization cannot proceed faster than this rotation. The proposal gives each task a separate vote so that block finalization can proceed on a faster schedule, which developers can gradually shorten. According to researchers, separating votes will also simplify the eventual replacement of signatures with quantum-resistant ones.