Ethereum Researchers Pursue Radical Consensus Redesign

Ethereum researchers are working on a new consensus redesign that could significantly reduce finality time from 13 to 19 minutes to just seconds. This change aims to accelerate cross-chain swaps and Layer 2 deposits while lowering capital costs for bridges and solvers.

The proposed architecture separates Ethereum's available chain, which continues producing and selecting blocks, from a finality mechanism that confirms checkpoints. Smaller committees of about 256 to 512 validators would handle block production and fork choice, while separate votes would finalize the chain.

According to Ben Edgington, Ethereum Foundation Consensus, this redesign is 'the big unlock.' It decouples finality from the rest of the consensus process, making finalized blocks more difficult to reverse. An attacker would need to burn at least 33% of staked Ether (ETH) to do so.

The faster-finality program is designed to support cross-chain swaps and Layer 2 deposits, reduce application risk-management requirements, and lower capital costs for bridges and solvers. It also aims to shorten the period during which transactions remain exposed to attacks before finalization.