Ethereum Explores Solutions to Make Transaction Confirmation Faster

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin released a statement in a blog post stating how his company is working hard to improve its user experience and make the network faster by reducing its confirmation times to 5 to 20 seconds. One of the main solutions Ethereum proposes to address the speed issue is the single slot finality (SSF) for transaction confirmation.

This approach tries to change the current slot-and-epoch system by making it more like the Tendermint system, where one block is locked before the next one is created. The main benefit of SSF is that it speeds up how long it takes for a transaction to be considered final, potentially down to just 12 seconds.

The SSF has its own challenges, and the problem is that it might require every individual staking ETH to send messages every 12 seconds, which could put a lot of load on them. To fix this, Buterin proposed using the Orbit SSF. Orbit SSF aims to reduce the number of validators that need to sign off on each block. He said that although this approach could make the ‘finality’ faster, users will still have to wait for 5 to 20 seconds. He stated:

There are clever ideas for how to mitigate this, including the very recent Orbit SSF proposal. But even still, while this improves UX significantly by making “finality” come faster, it doesn’t change the fact that users need to wait 5-20 seconds.

Complementary Solutions: Rollups and Preconfirmations

Aside from the single slot finality, Ethereum is also working on other solutions to speed up its network, which includes the Rollup Confirmation. Ethereum possesses both the layer one and the layer two blockchain. The L2 users can build their own decentralized sequencing network, thereby providing users with faster confirmation times.

Another solution proposed to solve this issue is Based Preconfirmation, which is poised to leverage the block proposer by offering them a special service to give users preconfirmations of their transactions.

The blockchain company is faced with the challenge of balancing decentralization and user experience. Buterin further said that should the blockchain network implement SSF, the Orbit-like techniques will reduce the number of validators. This will also help the network further achieve its goal of reducing its current staking minimum of 32 ETH. He stated:

“Suppose that we implement single slot finality. We use Orbit-like techniques to reduce the number of validators signing per slot, but not too much, so that we can also make progress on the key goal of reducing the 32 ETH staking minimum. As a result, perhaps the slot time creeps upward, to 16 sec. We then use either rollup preconfirmations, or based preconfirmations, to give users faster assurances.”

The co-founder acknowledged the complexity the block proposal could face in the new upgrade. However, he affirmed that the company will continue working on creating more options for its users.