New Ethereum improvement proposals call for reducing network slot times, increasing blobs per block, and scaling layer 1 performance.
Posted on October 7, 2024 at 3:13 AM EST.
Ethereum experiences periods of network congestion and high transaction fees, limiting its ability to handle growing users and decentralized applications. Developers are debating whether the new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) can hold the answer to layer 1 scaling problems.
Ben Adams, co-founder of Illyriad Games and contributor to Nethermind, spoke on October 5th. floated EIP-7781 — A proposal aimed at reducing Ethereum slot time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds in order to lower peak bandwidth.
Shorter slot times allow blocks to be generated more frequently, potentially increasing transaction throughput across the network. This proposal aims to increase throughput by 33% without increasing the number of individual blocks or blobs.
Adams' proposal received a stamp of approval from prominent researcher Justin Drake of the Ethereum Foundation. Justin Drake estimated that reducing the slot time to 8 seconds would increase network throughput by 50%. Mr Drake said he believed this was an effective increase to the 45 million gas limit and the nine blob limit, which was “very much in line” with the gas limits proposed by the community. .
“This makes the slot duration a power of two and matches the rest of the beacon chain parameters,” he said.
Drake says this implementation could improve the efficiency of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) like Uniswap by 1.22x, potentially saving approximately $100 million annually from arbitrage between DEXs and centralized exchanges. I have decided.
Although the goal may be to lower peak bandwidth, reducing slot time may actually increase the bandwidth requirements of the node. Higher frequency of block generation and authentication means more data needs to be sent over the network in a shorter time frame.
Verifiers may need to perform their duties more frequently and may require more powerful hardware to keep up with the increased pace. It will particularly impact solo stakers with significantly fewer resources and ultimately impact Ethereum's decentralization goals.
Additionally, shorter slots give nodes less time to synchronize and reach consensus. This can lead to temporary forks and missing blocks more frequently if nodes are unable to cope.
Pseudonymous researcher 0xSmit also pointed out Reducing block times is difficult for protocols without upgrade mechanisms with contracts that have a hard-coded value of 1 year per block based on a 12 second block time.
Still, there were several community members who supported the proposed parameters.
“If approved, this would be a major step towards improving the performance of Ethereum L1.” said Pseudonymous developer 0xCygaar.
