Ethereum Payload Propagation Gets Boost with Sub-One Second Median Times

Ethereum researchers have made significant progress in improving the efficiency of payload propagation on the network. According to a recent report, they have achieved sub-one-second median propagation for a simulated 1 MiB execution payload using EIP-8411's segmented broadcasting design.

This is a notable improvement over the current system, which can require up to five seconds to propagate a large message. The researchers used a controlled simulation with 500 nodes to test the new protocol, and found that it reduced the median propagation time by nearly two-fold.

The EIP-8411 design replaces the single execution_payload gossip topic introduced through EIP-7732 with an execution_payload_chunks topic, and commits the pieces through a Merkle root included in the builder's execution bid. This allows nodes to verify and forward each segment before receiving the full payload.

Researchers also tested a second proposed tier that tackles duplicate data by pushing only missing segments to eligible mesh peers, and found that it reduced received traffic to around 1.5 payload copies per node.