Ethereum institutions support plans to reduce block time to 10 seconds

The Ethereum Institution supports shortening block time. Developers are considering reducing the block exit interval from 12 seconds to 10 seconds through the Hegotá upgrade.

Ethereum Institution publicly supports the EIP-8198 proposal, which aims to shorten Ethereum's block generation time from the current 12 seconds to 10 seconds. At the same time, Ethlabs said that in a feedback survey of 20 founders of decentralized finance (DeFi), the industry showed broad support for Quick Slots and their possible inclusion in the Hegotá upgrade plan.

Accelerate blockchain to cope with the influx of institutional funds

Ethereum Institutional issued a statement on Friday stating that as more financial activities migrate to public blockchains, Ethereum must increase transaction speeds, so it fully supports Ethlabs 'work on EIP-8198 (Quick Slots). The non-profit organization issued an article on the X platform emphasizing: "Make Ethereum faster" and believes that as "more institutional activities move on-chain", the importance of shortening block time becomes increasingly prominent.

The core of EIP-8198 is to make Ethereum's slot duration configurable. This mechanism allows developers to gradually shorten the interval between blocks rather than implementing major network adjustments at one time. Ethlabs 'initial push was to adjust the slot time from 12 seconds to 10 seconds and make room for further reductions after developers evaluate network performance.

Proposal progress and Hegotá upgrade roadmap

EIP-8198 由 Ethlabs 于今年 3 月起草，并于 8 月 6 日的以太坊核心开发者会议上正式提出纳入 Hegotá 升级方案。此后，Ethlabs 已开始将该提案的技术规范合并至以太坊主代码库中，同时审查可能影响实施的依赖项。该组织表示，此项工作旨在帮助 Quick Slots “实质性地进入 Hegotá 的规划范围”。

Hegotá 是继 Glamsterdam 之后以太坊计划的下一个重大升级。目前，开发者正在梳理涵盖区块生产、账户抽象、隐私保护、验证者经济学以及 Layer 1 扩容等多个领域的提案。此前报道显示，Ethlabs 将 Quick Slots 列为 Hegotá 的重点优先级之一，与其他诸如抗审查、原生账户抽象及持续 Layer 1 扩容等议题并列。

值得注意的是，EIP-8198 尚未最终确定纳入 Hegotá。以太坊开发者在 8 月份仍在精简升级范围，当时 FOCIL 是唯一正式列入日程的提案，而 EIP-8198 仍处于审议阶段。尽管早期草案曾使用 8 秒作为占位符时长，但 Ethlabs 表示通过 Hegotá 初始实现 10 秒插槽是可行的。确切的时间表仍取决于测试进展及各客户端团队的一致同意。

机构背书与网络性能优化

Ethereum Institutional 的加入使得机构采用群体正式介入以太坊执行速度的讨论。该组织于今年 7 月成立，是一个独立的非营利机构，致力于协助银行、资产管理公司、托管方、金融科技公司、市场基础设施提供商及主权机构使用以太坊及其 Layer 2 生态系统。BitMine Immersion Technologies、SharpLink 以及以太坊联合创始人 Joe Lubin 均为该组织的创始支持者。其工作涵盖机构教育、市场情报、标准制定、技术要求及行业活动等。

该机构此前数据显示，以太坊主网托管着约 1800 亿美元的稳定币，约占全球稳定币总供应量的 60%，同时也承载了约三分之二的代币化现实世界资产（RWA）。随着机构使用的深化，以太坊的技术路线图也在同步推进。本周，以太坊研究人员报告称，在模拟 1 MiB 执行负载下，通过 EIP-8411 实现了亚秒级的传播速度，相比之下，若将同一负载作为单条消息传输，则需约 5 秒。

需要指出的是，EIP-8411 采取了与 Quick Slots 不同的技术路径。这是一项网络层面的草案提案，旨在将执行负载分割为更小的数据块，节点可以在接收完整负载之前进行验证和转发。相关测试涉及 500 个模拟节点和原型客户端代码，因此结果并非来自以太坊主网的实际测量数据。

Glamsterdam 先行，Hegotá 随后

目前，以太坊开发者的重心集中在 Glamsterdam 升级上，该升级定于 Hegotá 之前实施。Glamsterdam 旨在提升 Layer 1 容量并改变部分区块构建流程。开发者本周确认，该升级将于 10 月 6 日在 Sepolia 测试网上激活，此前已在私有开发网络上完成测试。

Devnet 11 已完成 Glamsterdam 过渡测试，并将Gas上限从 6000 万提高至 2 亿。该网络使用了跨多个客户端的 84,000 个验证者，但开发者排除了故意攻击行为，并将对抗性实验保留在运行时间较长的 Platåberget 环境中。客户端团队被要求在 9 月 29 日前发布兼容 Sepolia 的软件。关于 Glamsterdam 在主网上的激活日期尚未确认，此前的讨论曾提及可能的 12 月上线窗口。

Hegotá 的开发将在 Glamsterdam 之后展开，这意味着 EIP-8198 仍需经过进一步的测试和以太坊核心开发团队的决策，才能最终在主网上实现更短的插槽配置。

竞争对手网络也在缩短区块时间

在以太坊探讨缩短区块时间的同时，其他 Layer 1 网络也在追求更短的区块或插槽间隔。

Solana shortened its target slot time from 300 milliseconds to 250 milliseconds on September 18, increasing the target slot generation rate from approximately 3.3 per second to 4 per second. This latest Solana speed upgrade constitutes the third phase of SIMD-0525, which starts with a 400-millisecond goal and ultimately aims to reach 200 milliseconds. Although slot time has been reduced by nearly 17%, Solana's overall transaction capacity has not increased accordingly, as computing and data constraints decrease proportionately as slots become shorter.

Solana has been rolling out in stages since August, shortening the slot to 350 milliseconds first, and then entering the 300 milliseconds and 250 milliseconds phases. Each reduction is achieved through a separate feature activation so that developers and validators can evaluate network behavior before moving on to the next stage. With a 250-millisecond configuration, the verifier's four-slot leadership window has been shortened to 1 second from the previous 1.2 seconds. As of now, Solana has not announced a mainline launch date for the final reduction of slots to 200 milliseconds.

Zcash is also considering similar but different scale changes. This week, a majority of ZEC holders voted to shorten the network's target block time from 75 seconds to 25 seconds, as part of discussions surrounding its NU7 upgrade.

Overall, Ethereum's EIP-8198 is still a draft proposal, and its initial 10-second target will need to be further implemented, tested and approved before it becomes part of the Hegotá upgrade.