Ethereum Proposal Could Increase Throughput by 50%

The proposal, designated EIP-7781, would reduce slot times to eight seconds from 12 and has already earned some key supporters.

A new proposal for an upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain could improve network throughput by 50%, making it faster and more efficient.

The proposal, designated EIP-7781, was initially proposed on Oct. 5 by Ben Adams, co-founder of Illyriad Games. It would reduce slot times from 12 seconds to eight seconds, allowing the network to process more transactions over time.

In Ethereum’s proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, slots refer to specific time intervals during which a block can be proposed. A validator is selected for each slot to propose a block, and if successful, the block is added to the blockchain.

The upgrade would also ramp up the blockchain's capacity to handle blobs, which are dedicated data-storage chambers used by affiliated layer-2 networks to stash transaction records. Currently, six blobs are permitted per block. The change would effectively increase this number to nine.

According to Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, reducing block times to eight seconds would make decentralized exchange (DEX) platforms like Uniswap 1.22 times more efficient.

This change could help close pricing gaps between on-chain and off-chain trading venues, potentially saving users up to $100 million per year, as noted by Drake.

The proposal will need to work its way through the Ethereum open-source development system, but it has already earned some key supporters.

The Ethereum blockchain is lauded for having strong security and a high degree of decentralization relative to most other blockchains. However, these benefits have historically come at the cost of relatively high fees and slow speeds – at least in comparison to newer blockchains like Solana.

To boost the overall network throughput, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed in January to increase the blockchain's "gas limit" – the total size of transactions that can be squeezed into each block.

“This proposal is tantamount to an 'effective increase to a 45M gas limit and 9 blob limit',” said Drake. “This roughly aligns with the proposed 40M gas limit by pumpthegas.org and the 8 blob limit by Vitalik and others.”

Over the past few years, upgrades to the Ethereum blockchain have mainly focused on paving the way for the development of third-party layer-2 "rollup" networks like Arbitrum and Optimism.

These independent blockchain networks have rapidly become the primary venue through which users interact with the Ethereum ecosystem, offering higher speeds and lower fees. Their transactions are ultimately settled on Ethereum's ledger.

Data blobs were added to Ethereum in March to allow the blockchain to hold arbitrary bits of data in a separate, dedicated space that's cheaper than regular block space on the network.

Compared to regular transactions, blobs are better optimized for layer-2 networks, which bundle together big groups of transactions and post them to Ethereum all at once.

Increasing the number of blobs would help make it faster (and cheaper) for layer-2 networks to post data to the chain. However, the proposal also marks the first time in a while that an upgrade is directly aimed at improving speeds on the base Ethereum blockchain.

Reducing slot times to eight seconds from 12 would directly translate to faster transactions for end-users, but it risks adding strain for validators, who might need additional hardware resources.

The news was reported earlier in CoinTelegraph.

Sam is CoinDesk's deputy managing editor for tech and protocols. He reports on decentralized technology, infrastructure and governance. He owns ETH and BTC.

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