The Ethereum community is evaluating Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7781, which aims to increase network throughput by reducing slot times.
On October 5, Illyriad Games co-founder Ben Adams announced a proposal to lower Ethereum’s slot time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds, increasing transaction throughput by about 33%.
This change distributes bandwidth usage more evenly, reducing maximum bandwidth requirements without increasing the number of data blobs.
Adams said this adjustment would have a similar effect to increasing the number of blobs from six to eight or increasing the gas limit from 30 million to 40 million. However, it prevents peak bandwidth demand from increasing.
The Ethereum research bot further explained that reducing slot times will improve rollup latency and throughput without straining network bandwidth. This makes the Ethereum network accessible to participants with different bandwidth capabilities.
Meanwhile, the proposal requires a combination of EIP-7623 and EIP-7778 to ensure network stability and high block rate efficiency.
Early community support
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake supported the proposal on GitHub, noting that it aligns with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s broader expansion goals.
Drake also noted that these changes will make decentralized exchanges like Uniswap v3 “1.22 times more efficient.” He estimated that this would save users about $100 million a year in arbitrage from centralization to decentralization.
Pseudonymous developer Cygaar said EIP 7781 is an important step toward improving Ethereum’s base layer.
According to Cygaar, this is particularly noteworthy as developers’ focus has shifted to the Ethereum Layer 2 network as a scaling solution.
However, the developer acknowledged that the EIP is still needed.
“We need to make sure the hardware requirements for solo validators don’t increase dramatically and find a good solution for increased state growth.”
Likewise, Matthew Sigel, head of digital research at VanEck, said the proposal would shift some authority back to Ethereum Layer 1. Sigel also pointed out that the proposed changes could signal that layer 1 and 2 networks could accelerate even further, with them looking at 50%. % throughput increase.