Ethereum Co-Founder Endorses Fast Confirmation Rule for Reduced Deposit Times

Ethereum researcher Julian Ma has proposed the Fast Confirmation Rule (FCR), aiming to reduce deposit times from Ethereum mainnet to Layer 2 networks and centralized exchanges from approximately 13 minutes to around 12 seconds.

Co-founder Vitalik Buterin endorsed the proposal on X, stating it provides 'a hard guarantee that Ethereum will not revert after one slot (12 seconds)'. The rule targets a persistent friction point in the Ethereum ecosystem: the delay incurred when moving assets from the base layer to L2s or exchanges.

Currently, most platforms rely on 'k-deep' confirmation rules - waiting for a transaction to be buried beneath a fixed number of subsequent blocks. FCR replaces this heuristic with an attestation-based model that counts validator votes rather than blocks.

Under FCR, a block is treated as confirmed once sufficient validator attestations have accumulated - a process that takes roughly 13 seconds under normal network conditions.