Ethereum researchers pursue redesign to reduce finality to seconds

Ethereum researchers are developing a consensus redesign aimed at reducing transaction finality from the current 13 to 19 minutes down to mere seconds. The proposed architecture involves decoupling finality from block production and fork choice.

Under this new model, block production and fork choice would be handled by smaller committees of approximately 256 to 512 validators to reduce coordination overhead. Meanwhile, a separate finality mechanism would confirm checkpoints using the full validator set to maintain security. This separation is intended to accelerate cross-chain swaps, Layer 2 deposits, and reduce capital costs for bridges and solvers.

A significant milestone in this development is the formal verification of the decoupled protocol model using Lean 4, a proof assistant that provides machine-checked mathematical guarantees. This verification confirms key properties like safety and finalization without relying on unproven placeholders.