Original Author: Haotian
Related Reading:
“Vitalik Appoints Route Epoch and Slot: Providing Faster Transaction Confirmation Time for Ethereum”
How to understand @VitalikButerin’s thoughts on Ethereum transaction confirmation methods? Because the main network’s transaction confirmation time of 5-20 seconds is already approaching the speed of credit card consumption, it seems sufficient from a user’s perspective. However, compared to the millisecond-level confirmation time of layer 2, there may be a certain security risk in the difference in transaction confirmation between the main network and layer 2. Therefore, optimizing the main network’s transaction confirmation time is more to cater to the strategic consideration of layer 2 development.
1) Ethereum’s current Gasper consensus mechanism adopts the core concepts of Slot and Epoch, with each Slot lasting 12 seconds, selecting a portion of Validators to vote on the current transaction status of the chain. Every 32 slots, or 6.4 minutes, constitute an Epoch, and most validators will complete their voting within one Epoch. Finality of a transaction usually requires two Epochs, or 12.8 minutes, which means that a transaction initiated will only become irreversible after 12.8 minutes.
2) Vitalik believes that this time is too long and is dissatisfied with the current Gasper consensus mechanism, proposing the Single-slot finality improvement method, which can ensure that each block completes finality confirmation before the next block is generated, thereby speeding up the finality confirmation time. However, final confirmation and transaction confirmation are two different matters, and this is not directly related to the 5-20 second transaction confirmation perceived by users, but it becomes a big issue when it comes to layer 2 networks.
3) Because the time for users to submit and confirm transactions on layer 2 will be shorter, not only surpassing the 5-20 second user perception time, but possibly reaching the millisecond level. This is due to the pre-transaction confirmation mechanism adopted by layer 2 as a whole. However, if the main network’s transaction final confirmation time on layer 1 is too long, there may theoretically be some time difference risks on layer 2: for example, users may quickly confirm and take subsequent actions on L1, but may suffer financial losses due to the delayed status confirmation on L1. Moreover, since layer 2 itself carries a certain centralization risk, the longer the time difference, the greater the potential risk of unknown centralization chaos.
4) Therefore, in my opinion, Vitalik’s new article on optimizing the transaction confirmation time of the Ethereum main network is to a certain extent to cater to the overall strategic advancement of the layer 2 system and the layer 1 system. Although some people in the market are critical of layer 2, it has undoubtedly become a stable direction that must be reinforced in the development process of Ethereum.
It is obvious that the future of Ethereum will undoubtedly advance with a “layered” strategy, focusing on security and decentralization with layer 1, and providing a stable and reliable interactive settlement environment with layer 2, which is the general trend. Vitalik’s proposal to accelerate transaction confirmation is essentially to reduce the friction between layer 1 and layer 2, providing users with a more optimal front-end interactive environment and a safer back-end settlement foundation for layer 2.
