Ethereum's Race Against the Clock: Ethlabs Wants Block Times Shorter Than Your Coffee Break ☕

Ethereum Institutional signaled support for Ethlabs' motion to reduce Ethereum block times, backing a push for a faster mainnet as institutional activity accelerates onchain. In a Friday X post, the non-profit organization urged the community to "Make Ethereum faster," arguing that shorter block intervals are needed as "more institutional activity moves onchain."

Ethlabs published an article on Thursday quoting 20 decentralized finance (DeFi) founders showing broad support 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. EIP-8198 was authored in March and was proposed for inclusion in the Hegotá upgrade at the Ethereum core developers meeting on Aug. 6.

Other blockchain networks are pursuing similar compression efforts. On Monday, the majority of Zcash token holders backed cutting the network's target block time to 25 seconds, down from 75 seconds. Solana reduced its slot time from 400 milliseconds to 350ms in August, and the Solana Foundation shared plans in June to reduce slot times from 400ms to 200ms, citing the need to improve latency and accelerate confirmations.

Ethlabs said it is merging the proposal's specifications with the main codebase and investigating potential downstream dependencies to help EIP-8198 "meaningfully enter Hegotá's scope." Ethereum developers could begin implementing Hegotá in late 2026, following Glamsterdam, an upgrade designed to improve scalability and harden the mainnet.