Vitalik discusses ways to provide faster transaction confirmation times for Ethereum users

Vitalik Buterin published an article titled "A Deeper Look at the Slot-and-epoch Architecture to Provide Ethereum Users with Faster Transaction Confirmation Times". The article points out that although the transaction confirmation time on Ethereum L1 has been shortened to 5-20 seconds compared to five years ago, thanks to EIP-1559 and the merged stable block time, which is comparable to the credit card payment experience, further reducing latency is still of great value, especially for applications that require hundreds of milliseconds or even less latency. In the article, Vitalik introduced the practical options explored by Ethereum to speed up transaction confirmation, focusing on single-slot finality in existing technologies. Currently, Ethereum's Gasper consensus mechanism adopts a slot-and-epoch architecture, but this mechanism is complex and the finality confirmation time is too long (12.8 minutes). SSF uses a mechanism similar to Tendermint to terminate the block before the next block is generated, while retaining the "inactive leakage" mechanism to ensure the stable operation and recovery ability of the chain. The main challenge of SSF is that it will bring a lot of load to the chain, but new proposals (such as Orbit SSF) are working to alleviate this problem. In addition, the article explores Rollup pre-confirmation and pre-confirmation-based mechanisms. Vitalik emphasized that the slot-and-epoch architecture is obviously correct, but not all slot-and-epoch architectures are equal. He advocates a more comprehensive exploration of the design space, especially those options with stronger separation of concerns between the two mechanisms, to reduce transaction confirmation time and improve user experience. Vitalik said that L2 can currently adopt three strategies: one is to be based on Ethereum in both technical and spiritual aspects, and optimize itself to convey Ethereum's technical characteristics and values; the second is to act as a "server with blockchain Scaffold", by adding mechanisms such as validity proof and user rights protection, fully utilizing server efficiency while obtaining on-chain benefits; the third is to adopt a compromise strategy and build a fast chain consisting of one hundred nodes, with interoperability and security provided by Ethereum. Under the slot-and-epoch architecture, "epochs" represent Ethereum's SSF, while the meaning of "slots" varies in different situations. The key question is to what extent we can optimize the native slot-and-epoch architecture based on Ethereum, and whether this will affect the application space of other types of pre-confirmation mechanisms. Currently, there is still uncertainty about the complexity of block proposers and the design space of slot-and-epoch architectures. Having more options will help better serve L1 and L2 users and simplify the work of L2 developers.