Co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin advocated for improving transaction speeds on the blockchain by presenting several potential strategies to enhance network scalability and user experience.
Despite recent advancements, Ethereum currently processes transactions within a confirmation window ranging from 5 to 20 seconds, akin to credit card processing times. Buterin envisions achieving even faster confirmations through innovations such as Single-Slot Finality (SSF) and Rollup Preconfirmations.
This emphasis on speed is crucial as Ethereum faces increasing competition from other blockchain platforms while striving to maintain its position as a leading decentralized application (dApp) platform.
Presently, Ethereum utilizes the Gasper consensus mechanism, where validators vote on the blockchain’s state every 12 seconds within time intervals and epochs. Despite its efficiency, this system has been critiqued for its complexity and a 12.8-minute finalization time, which many users find inadequate.
To address these issues, Ethereum is exploring alternatives such as Single-Slot Finality, influenced by the Tendermint consensus but tailored for Ethereum. SSF aims to expedite block finalization by finalizing each new block before proposing the next one, significantly reducing transaction confirmation times.
Another promising approach is Rollup Preconfirmations, which delegates transaction confirmation to second-layer protocols like rollups. These protocols leverage Ethereum’s security while processing transactions at a larger scale and higher speed.
This division of labor between the first layer and second layer enables Ethereum’s base layer to focus on core functions such as censorship resistance and stability, while second-layer solutions manage faster transaction processing.
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