Ethereum Upgrade Could Make Blocks 33% Faster
However, for individual validators who may have to change their equipment, this update may cause difficulties. This raises old concerns regarding possible centralizing the Proof of Stake (PoS) Consensus.
This week, a new proposed Ethereum Improvement Program (EIP) with the title EIP-7781 has hit the Ethereum network. The new upgrade was introduced on October 5th. It aims to reduce Ethereum’s block time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
By improving the wait time between each block, the network will be able to facilitate the execution of transactions. It can also increase data capacity and increase network throughput by 50%, according to Ben Adams, co-founder of Illyriad Games and creator of EIP-7781.
Big Step for Ethereum
Over the weekend of October 6th, a pseudonymous developer by the name of Cygaar praised EIP-7781 as the “first big” step towards improving Ethereum’s layer 1 performance. They went on to suggest that implementing it could reduce bottlenecking and improve the capacity of the network.
EIP-7781 is designed to expand the capacity of “blobs,” a temporary data structure that reduces rates in Layer 2 (L2) networks. As a result of this expansion, there is also an increase in the capacity of the core network. The intent of the proposed changes is to improve performance and have a more even distribution of bandwidth usage.
Some expect that Layer 2 networks will benefit from this by reducing peak demand without increasing the number of blocks. Many have come out to support the proposed upgrade.
Writing in the GitHub thread, researcher Justin Drake of the Etheruem Foundation noted that the plan aligns with broader scaling goals set by Vitalik Buterin, as well as several other scaling organizations. Drake claimed that the efficiency of decentralized exchanges (DEXs) such as Uniswap v3 could be improved by 22% by reducing lock-in times.
The result could be savings of approximately $100 million per year in DEX arbitrage with centralized exchanges. Furthermore, experts say the upgrade could improve the user experience for Ethereum smart contracts by reducing confirmation times by 33 percent. The changes would also spread peak loads more evenly across more slots, reducing stress during periods of high demand.
Risk for Individual Validators?
Not all developers were happy, however. Some are concerned about how the plan will affect individual players who choose not to use groups. They argue that shorter block times will require faster execution and more powerful transaction validation hardware, increasing bandwidth and processing requirements.
Traditional equipment such as laptops and video cards are used by most validators. However, they may have to devote more resources to purchasing new hardware to meet the new requirements.
Commenting on Cygaar’s release, Cinnehaim Ventures Partner Adam Cochran called the EIP “reasonable.” However, he emphasized that the gas cap must remain the same for each block to make it viable for most users. Furthermore, the data science professor cautioned that increasing requirements may hurt Ethereum’s long-term decentralization goals by making it difficult for ordinary users to act as verifiers.
“I’d like to see some tests on the I/O hardware and the ping times of the staker returns to make sure it doesn’t take some of the home stakers out of the game, but it seems like it should be within reach for most,” added Cochran.
The EIP comes just three days after Buterin discussed the idea of reducing the minimum amount required to become a verifier on the Ethereum network from the current 36 ETH to 16 or 24 ETH to improve the network’s security and decentralized nature.
By Audy Castaneda