Ethereum developers are exploring a major reduction in transaction finality times, with a new proposal aiming to cut the current wait from roughly 16 minutes to just four. If adopted, the change could reduce the capital transfer providers must keep locked up while payments settle, potentially lowering the cost of moving funds between blockchains.
Ben Edgington, who leads Ethereum’s fast-finality research coordination, submitted the draft on Wednesday with researchers Francesco D’Amato, Roberto Saltini, Yann Vonlanthen, and Mikhail Kalinin.
The proposal targets a fourfold improvement in finality speed. However, its technical design remains incomplete, and developers have not announced a timeline for implementation.
On Ethereum, transactions can be included in blocks before the network considers them final. Finality occurs when validators, which maintain and secure the blockchain, commit to the transaction history under the protocol’s rules.
This distinction matters when users transfer assets to another blockchain. Payment providers must determine when the original transaction is sufficiently secure before releasing funds on the receiving network.
Four-Minute Finality Could Free Up Capital
Waiting approximately 16 minutes for settlement can create significant costs for businesses that advance funds to customers.
For example, a transfer service handling a $10,000 Ethereum transaction may pay the customer immediately using funds it already holds on another network. The provider then waits for the Ethereum transaction to become final before it can consider the transfer fully settled.
Although the customer receives the money quickly, the provider must temporarily tie up its own capital.
Ethereum Foundation research identifies this delay as an operational expense. Shortening the settlement window would allow transfer services to recover and reuse funds sooner.
A provider advancing $1 million per hour would have approximately $267,000 tied up while waiting for a 16-minute settlement period. Reducing the delay to four minutes would bring that figure down to roughly $67,000.
Some services already charge customers for faster transfers. Circle, the issuer of the USDC stablecoin, charges a 0.01% fee for its fast Ethereum transfer route, equivalent to $1 on a $10,000 transaction, excluding network and application fees. Its standard transfer route does not carry a Circle transfer fee.
Circle also imposes limits on the value of fast transfers awaiting settlement. Once those transactions finalize, the released capacity becomes available for new transfers.
Ethereum Proposal Separates Validator Voting Functions
The existing 16-minute finality period is partly a consequence of how Ethereum organizes validator votes.
Currently, each vote serves two functions: helping select the next block and contributing to the finalization of earlier blocks. Validators participate in successive voting rounds, and blocks become final after two complete rounds.
Because both tasks depend on the same process, finality cannot progress faster than the voting cycle allows.
The new proposal would give each function a separate vote. This could allow the finalization process to operate independently on a faster schedule, with opportunities for further optimization.
The researchers also suggest that separating the voting functions could make it easier to introduce quantum-resistant signatures in the future. Such cryptographic changes may become important if sufficiently powerful quantum computers eventually threaten the security of existing cryptographic systems.
Solana Remains Faster Under Its Current Target
Even if Ethereum achieves four-minute finality, it would remain well behind Solana’s Alpenglow upgrade, which targets finality of approximately 150 milliseconds under normal network conditions.
Ethereum’s proposal is still in its early stages, with key details involving voting schedules, penalties, and security analysis yet to be settled.
Edgington indicated that many elements remain undecided and that the immediate goal was to assign the draft a formal proposal number, bringing it into Ethereum’s upgrade process.
For now, the four-minute target is a development objective rather than a confirmed network feature. If the proposal advances, faster finality could help transfer providers reduce capital costs and make cross-chain transactions more efficient.
