Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin advocates for increasing blockchain transaction speed and has proposed several potential strategies to enhance network scalability and user experience. Although Ethereum has recently made progress, with the current transaction confirmation window ranging from 5 to 20 seconds—similar to credit card processing times—Buterin believes the network can achieve faster confirmations through innovations like Single Slot Finality (SSF) and preemptive “Rollup Preconfirmations.”
This focus on speed is crucial as ETH faces increasing competition from other blockchains and strives to remain the leading platform for decentralized applications (dApps). Ethereum currently employs the Gasper consensus mechanism, where validators vote on the state of the blockchain every 12 seconds within slots and epochs. Despite its effectiveness, the system is often criticized for its complexity and the 12.8-minute finality time, which many users find unsuitable.
To address these issues, Ethereum is exploring alternatives such as Single Slot Finality, influenced by the Tendermint consensus but adapted for Ethereum. SSF aims to accelerate block finalization by completing each new block before proposing the next, significantly reducing transaction confirmation times.
Another promising approach is transaction preconfirmation, which delegates approval to second-layer protocols like “Rollups.” These protocols leverage Ethereum’s security while processing transactions on a larger scale and at greater speeds.
This division of labor between the first and second layers allows Ethereum’s base layer to focus on core functions like censorship resistance and stability, while second-layer solutions manage faster transaction processing.
