Ethereum goes through periods of network congestion and high transaction fees, which limits its ability to handle a growing number of users and decentralized applications. Developers are debating whether a new Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) could hold the answer to the layer 1’s scaling issues.
On Oct. 5, Illyriad Games cofounder and Nethermind contributor Ben Adams floated EIP-7781 — a proposal that aims to reduce Ethereum’s slot time from 12 seconds to eight seconds in order to lower peak bandwidth.
Shorter slot times would allow for more frequent block production, potentially increasing the overall transaction throughput of the network. The proposal aims to increase throughput by 33% without increasing individual block or blob counts.
Adams’ proposal received a seal of approval from prominent Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, who estimated that reducing slot times to eight seconds would increase the network’s throughput by 50%. Drake deemed this an effective increase to a 45 million gas limit and 9 blob limit, which he said “roughly aligns” with the proposed gas limits from those in the community.
“It makes the slot duration a nice power of two, aligning with the rest of the beacon chain parameters,” he said.
Drake determined that this implementation would make decentralized exchanges (DEXes) like Uniswap 1.22 times more efficient — something that could potentially save around $100 million annually from arbitrage between DEXes and centralized exchanges.
While the goal may be to lower peak bandwidth, reducing slot times could actually increase bandwidth requirements for nodes. More frequent block production and attestations would mean more data needs to be transmitted across the network in a shorter time frame.
Validators would need to perform their duties more frequently, potentially requiring more powerful hardware to keep up with the increased pace. That would particularly impact solo stakers, who are considerably less-resourced, and ultimately affect Ethereum’s decentralization goals.
Moreover, shorter slots leave less time for nodes to synchronize and reach consensus. This could potentially lead to more frequent temporary forks or missed blocks if nodes can’t keep up.
Pseudonymous researcher 0xSmit also pointed out that bringing down block times would be a challenge for protocols without upgrade mechanisms that have contracts hard coded with the value of a year in blocks based on 12 second block times.
Still, there were several members of the community who were in favor of the proposed parameters.
“If approved, this would be a huge first step in improving Ethereum L1’s performance,” said pseudonymous developer 0xCygaar.
