Original author: Haotian
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Vitaliks Pick: Epoch and Slot: Providing Faster Transaction Confirmation Time for Ethereum
How to understand @VitalikButerins thoughts on Ethereum transaction confirmation method? Because the transaction confirmation time of 5-20 seconds on the main network is close to the speed of credit card consumption, it seems to be enough from the users perception. But compared with the millisecond confirmation time of layer 2, the difference in transaction confirmation between the main network and layer 2 will have certain security risks. Therefore, optimizing the transaction confirmation time of the main network is more of a consideration to cater to the overall development strategy of layer 2?
1) Ethereums current Gasper consensus mechanism adopts the core concepts of Slot (time slot) and Epoch (period). Each Slot lasts for 12 seconds, and a part of Validators will be selected to verify the current transaction status of the chain for voting. Every 32 Slots, or 6.4 minutes, will constitute a period, and basically all validators will complete the voting within a period. The finality of the transaction usually takes two periods, or 12.8 minutes, which means that a transaction will not be irreversible until 12.8 minutes after it is initiated.
2) Vitalik believes that the time is too long and is dissatisfied with the current Gasper consensus mechanism. He proposed a Single-slot finality improvement method, which can ensure that each block completes finality confirmation before the next block is generated, thus speeding up the finality confirmation time. However, finality confirmation and transaction confirmation are two different things, which is not closely related to the 5-20 s transaction confirmation perceived by users, but if it corresponds to the layer 2 network, the problem will be serious.
3) Because the time for layer 2 users to submit and confirm transactions will be shorter, not only better than the user-perceived time of 5-20 seconds, but may reach the millisecond level. This is due to the pre-transaction confirmation mechanism adopted by layer 2 as a whole. However, if the final confirmation time of the layer 1 mainnet transaction is too long, there will theoretically be some time difference risks on layer 2: for example, users quickly confirm and take subsequent actions on L1, but may lose funds due to the delay in L1 status confirmation; moreover, since layer 2 itself has certain centralization risks, the longer the time difference, the greater the unknown risk of potential centralization chaos.
4) Therefore, in my opinion, Vitaliks new article on the optimization of Ethereum mainnet transaction confirmation time is, to some extent, to cater to the grand strategy of jointly promoting the layer 2 system and the layer 1 system. Although some people in the market are pessimistic about layer 2, layer 2 has become a direction that must be stabilized in the development of Ethereum.
Obviously, Ethereum will definitely advance with a layered strategy in the future. It will be a general trend to rely on layer 1 to focus on security and decentralization, and rely on layer 2 to provide a stable and reliable interactive settlement environment. Vitalik proposed to accelerate transaction confirmation, which is essentially to reduce the layered friction between layer 1 and layer 2, and provide users with a better front-end interactive environment for layer 2 experience and a more secure back-end settlement foundation.
