Happy to report that after a month of work, EIP-8198 aka Quick Slots was merged as a feature spec in the Ethereum consensus specs! Many thanks to @jih2nn and @JustinTraglia for their tireless work as spec maintainers 🙌 What does "merging specifications" mean? Specifying a feature means writing up its behaviour, in code and in English, in a repository that has accumulated the detailed description of every feature since the launch of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake chain. This is the ground truth of how Ethereum consensus runs, and the model that all consensus clients follow to come to agreement with each other. Anyone can contribute to this repository, by submitting “pull requests” with more code and more text specifying a new feature. Pull requests remain open while the proposed changes and additions are reviewed, by specs maintainers and by the persons submitting their contributions. Once they have been sufficiently reviewed, with edge cases uncovered, the pull request can then be “merged”, and live inside the codebase of the specs, instead of besides it. This is usually a signal that the feature’s specs are now stable enough to evaluate in the context of other proposed changes. In particular, it also makes it easier for clients who want to start prototyping the feature, to do so on specifications that are no longer expected to change drastically. There can still be misses and unknowns, but at least the current thing has passed this first, close review. Importantly, this does not mean that faster slots have made it into Hegotá. We are still two steps away from it: Quick slots were Proposed for Inclusion on August 6th, and next week, on October 1st, we will likely be discussing raising its level to Considered for Inclusion at ACD. Should a decision then be made to include in the fork, quick slots would then become Scheduled for Inclusion, the last step. PFI -> CFI -> SFI. Easy eh? 😅 So this means the job's not done 🫡 We'll continue to advocate for a strong prototype of quick slots based on the specifications. We're continuing our outreach to ecosystem smart contracts and teams for who a slot change may impact their operations. And we're continuing to research the future of shortening slot times with post-quantum cryptography and zkEVM in view, beyond Hegotá. In the meantime, find the specs here: github.com/ethereum/consensu…

In 2015, one private key did everything in an Ethereum transaction: sign, pay, submit. 11 years later, those jobs have split apart. Type bytes, EIP-1559, blobs, paymasters, EIP-7702, and what comes next: frames and delegation. Read more: quicknode.com/blog/evolution…

All tokenization will eventually originate on the L1. What’s the forcing function? The key change is all L2s eventually switching to ~15min ZK native bridges, away from 7 day ones that no one uses (Base already running this in parallel but just not used as default). Why does this matter? Well every non-native bridge just becomes a more risky, centralized and expensive alternative to the native bridge (which has 0 fee and no multisig). Now, here’s the key - if you issued your token on the L1, all L2s will be able to support your token in the native bridge from day 1. You get instant distribution to hundreds of billions of TVL and every app on every L2. With FCR / quick slots, that’s 15 min + 10s to trustlessly get out and into another L2 with 0% fee. There’s a counter that a chain like Robinhood would actively fight against this - maybe trapping tokenized stocks to only its L2 makes the most business sense? However, if you believe in a world of even >3 healthy L2s, it seems very tough to compete with a TSLA ERC20 that’s accepted everywhere and rhTSLA which you can only use on Robinhood chain.

The Fast Confirmation Rule is a new rule that may soon be relied on for millions of $$$s in bridging volume. Here is how we keep it secure. - FCR is an algorithm clients run locally instead of something they read from the chain (like finality). It's more complicated to implement. That is why we advise all users to leverage client diversity and rely on the output of at least two different consensus clients. For example, only fast confirm a block if both Lighthouse and Teku fast confirm the block. - @fradamt is working on formal verification of FCR. That would mean FCR's safety guarantee is proven against the Ethereum consensus spec's FCR implementation (under the regular FCR assumptions). - Both the consensus spec as well as client implementations are now covered under the Ethereum Foundation's Bug Bounty Program. That means bugs found by security researchers could lead to good payouts!

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Permissionless blockchains enable frictionless barter. Specifically, if you can swap your preferred asset positions into whatever unit of account a merchant accepts (e.g., through a DEX) at the point of purchase, then you don't need to hold cash for payments. Economically, this means that blockchains relax the cash-in-advance constraint in monetary economic models.

A classic observation in finance papers is that people only hold cash if there are frictions. People either hoard cash to spend in the future or face barriers to investing. Crypto companies are removing those frictions. - @ether_fi lets users borrow cash against their investments. You don’t have to sell, which decreases the need to hold cash to spend in the future. - @anvil_xyz lets companies put deposits in yield bearing assets like money market funds. Instead of putting 50k down for an event sponsorship a year ahead of time, you put 50k worth of money market funds down and keep the yield. - @SECGov’s new innovation exemption allows tokenized NMS stocks to trade against money market funds in AMMs. Neither LPs nor swappers need to hold cash to access stocks. People say time in the market beats timing the market. Crypto literally increases time in the market.

Did I mention we want to make Ethereum faster?

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MAKE IT FASTER!! WE CARE

The most bullish AMM news today is not the official statement, but the comment letter from SEC Commissioner @HesterPeirce that went along with it “Truly decentralized systems that are driven by autonomous software… do not need need an exemption” (Aka normal permissionless Uniswap) The exemption applies to permissioned pools on Uniswap v4, creating a pathway for compliant trading in the US for assets and users where this is needed This can be incredibly useful for amm adoption, and we will be submitting a comment letter with proposed improvements sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-st…

After a month of community outreach, @ethlabs_org is shipping a major piece on a faster Ethereum with faster L1 blocks, collecting perspectives from all corners of the ecosystem. Ethereum core developers are in the final stretches of deciding what to include in Hegotá, the network's upcoming fork after Glamsterdam. Our Hegotá proposal is EIP-8198: Quick Slots. It does two things: 1. Prepare the network to decrease the slot time, currently set at 12 seconds. 2. Perform a first decrease from 12 seconds to 10 seconds. We presented this plan to major DeFi applications, Ethereum core infrastructure and many top builders, to get their thoughts on the value of a faster L1. This post is the result. Beyond highly valuable data from broad user research, the post also stands as an effort to continue closing the loop between the network development process and the most direct consumers of the network's affordances. Core developers have in my view already expressed relatively positive sentiment regarding the value of faster slots on the L1, showing clearly their understanding for the benefits and appreciation for the change. But understandably, their bandwidth and the network's capacity to upgrade aren't infinite, and there are critical decisions to make today regarding the long-term survival of the protocol with the quantum threat. The bar to clear in order to justify a change beyond those that are existential is very high, and we hope with this piece to show that opening the door for improved latency on Ethereum clears it. As recounted in the piece, this is one of the highest-value items for the network to deliver, and without the groundwork performed by EIP-8198, the door will remain closed for much longer than necessary. At Ethlabs, we are committed to seeing EIP-8198 through should its inclusion be decided. We are working on specifications with the support of Ethereum Foundation engineers, and we are deeply engaged with the broader research and engineering allowing for the Ethereum consensus to thrive in the post-quantum age. We are also engaged in technical outreach to understand how a slot time change affects deployed smart contracts and broader infrastructure. It's time for a faster Ethereum!

Every day, I knock on doors to help speed up Ethereum. Fast confirmations can accelerate L1-to-L2 deposits. ZK proofs can accelerate L2-to-L1 withdrawals. More work has to be done, but these improvements are happening. But slot time, the smallest unit of time that affects L1-to-L2 bridging time, L2-to-L1 bridging time, L1 UX, and markets across the ecosystem, hasn't changed in years. In Hegotá, we have to take the opportunity to reduce slot time and then iteratively speed up more and more in the forks after that. Don’t just take our word for it. Listen to what founders, engineers, and business leaders from the entire ecosystem want!

Things that could help shorter slots: terencechain.com/writing/thi…

Building on Ethereum L1 right now, or shipped something in the last few months? I want to talk. Two things I'm trying to learn: 1⃣what your agent wrote vs what you wrote 2⃣where the agent broke DMs open or comment below.

> be @barnabemonnot > spend 6.5 years at the ethereum foundation studying how this whole thing should work > become obsessed with what happens when someone actually tries to use it > why are they waiting? > why did that builder leave? > what would make them want to come back? > still believe in the reasons ethereum chose the harder path > also believe people should enjoy using it > decide to spend your days connecting those two things > cofound ethlabs > a nonprofit mission with startup hours > apparently this is your idea of a good time > start posting weekly updates > sometimes just explain what you’re thinking about > people show up saying they’re working on the same problem > now you have collaborators > keep posting > people want faster ethereum > you also want faster ethereum > have spent enough time inside the protocol to know where the complications are > propose doing the engineering to make block times configurable > start with 12 seconds to 10 > keep working toward further reductions as testing supports them > ten seconds is the first target and an ethereum that keeps getting faster without losing its core properties is the goal > listen to client teams about deadlines, workload and slower validators > account for future proving and post-quantum requirements > the exciting future involves a lot of checking things carefully > “why bother?” > because people should feel confident that their transaction actually worked > because markets benefit from fresher prices > because money waiting for confirmation is money someone cannot use yet > seconds matter when enough people spend their day waiting for them > also work on faster confirmations > the tech helps bridges and exchanges credit deposits in tens of seconds instead of 13 minutes > explain the security assumptions > recognize where people still need finality > go talk to the teams who would actually integrate it > find out what’s stopping them > research becomes more useful when you stay around for this part > asked about L2s > want them to succeed > scale mainnet too > different communities will want different applications and experiences > give them good reasons to build within ethereum > $ETH can reach more people through all of them > asked about attracting younger builders > discuss mentorship, funding and helping experiments reach users > want to do it properly > remember the point is for new people to build things you wouldn’t have thought of yourself > asked what success looks like in a year > want ethereum to feel alive > more people building useful, strange, ambitious things > more reasons to open an app and do something > more young builders deciding this is where they want to spend their time > has thought deeply about how ethereum can survive for generations and still wants to make sure you have a reason to use it tomorrow

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Faster bridging coming to Ethereum!