A game-changing upgrade proposal for the Ethereum (ETH) network is promising to slash transaction times and narrow the performance gap with faster competitors like Solana (SOL).
A game-changing upgrade proposal for the Ethereum (ETH) network is promising to slash transaction times and narrow the performance gap with faster competitors like Solana (SOL).
The proposal, formally dubbed EIP-7781 and submitted by Illyriad Games co-founder Ben Adams on October 5, would reduce Ethereum slot times from 12 seconds to eight seconds. This would have the effect of significantly increasing the network's ability to process transactions, growing general throughput by as much as 50%.
The upgrade also aims to increase the network's data storage capacity, beyond just speeding up transactions. The proposal will increase the number of "blobs", specialized data storage units utilized by layer-2 networks, from six to nine per block. This would give networks like Arbitrum (ARB) and Optimism (OP) further room to store transaction data on the main Ethereum blockchain.
The proposal has already won the support of some influential figures within the Ethereum community.
In a Github post, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake highlighted that the smaller block times would make decentralized exchanges like Uniswap 22% more efficient. According to his estimates, this might save users up to $100 million per year by reducing price discrepancies between on-chain and off-chain trading platforms.
The proposal is in line with previous suggestions from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who supported increasing the blockchain's "gas limit"—the maximum transaction size per block—to raise the network capacity.
While it does come with very significant benefits, the upgrade does not come without some concerns. The reduced slot time could put a strain on the network validators, forcing a hardware upgrade to handle the increased load in processing.
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