Ethereum Institutional, a non-profit organization, has expressed support for Ethlabs' motion to reduce Ethereum block times, arguing that faster confirmation times are necessary to address competition from other blockchain networks.
In a Friday post on X, Ethereum Institutional called to "Make Ethereum faster," emphasizing that reducing block times is needed as "more institutional activity moves onchain."
Ethlabs published an article on Thursday citing support from 20 decentralized finance founders for EIP-8198, also known as "Quick Slots." The proposal seeks to initially reduce Ethereum block times to 10 seconds from the current 12 seconds.
Block Time Reduction as Industry Trend
The push to speed up Ethereum mirrors efforts across other blockchain networks. Zcash token holders voted on Monday to reduce the network's target block time to 25 seconds, down from 75 seconds. Solana has also pursued similar improvements, reducing its slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350 milliseconds in August, with the Solana Foundation announcing plans to reduce slot times further to 200 milliseconds.
Implementation Timeline
EIP-8198 was authored in March and proposed for inclusion in the Hegotá upgrade during an Ethereum core developers meeting on August 6. Ethlabs stated it is merging the proposal's specifications with the main codebase and investigating potential downstream dependencies to help the proposal enter Hegotá's scope.
Ethereum developers are expected to begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026, following the Glamsterdam upgrade, which is designed to improve scalability and strengthen the mainnet.
