An Ethereum developer has issued a proposal that suggests cutting the network’s block time in half — from 12 seconds to six seconds — with the aim of improving transaction confirmation time and user experience.
Ethereum Improvement Proposal 7782, discussed on June 21 by core developer Barnabé Monnot, suggests cutting the slot time — how often new blocks are created — to six seconds by adjusting the timing of various blockchain operations.
“Shorter slot times make the confirmation service better, and so have the potential to raise the service price beyond where it is today,” Monnot explained.
Ethereum’s “service price” refers to the economic value that the network can capture for providing its core service as a settlement and confirmation layer.
The proposal, originally created in October 2024, is slated for inclusion in the Glamsterdam update scheduled in late 2026. “By then, we will have done a lot of healthy scaling” and likely reached blocks with three times the current gas limit and eight times the blob supply, he added.
Benefits of faster Ethereum slots
The team at Ethereum staking protocol Everstake explained on Monday that new blocks could be proposed twice as often, speeding up the network and providing several benefits.
Shorter slot times mean faster transaction inclusion, which would improve the user experience with a more responsive chain.
Wallets would display fresher data following transaction inclusion, and onchain data would update more frequently. This would result in smoother experiences across wallets, DApps, and layer-2 networks.
It would also make it harder for anyone to censor transactions since there are more block producers per minute.
DeFi and fee improvements
There would also be several advantages for trading and decentralized finance, such as faster price updates on decentralized exchanges and reduced losses due to arbitrage traders who exploit price differences.
Trading fees would come down as markets become more efficient, and there would be more liquidity in automated market makers, Monnot said.