The Ethereum community is evaluating Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 7781, which aims to increase network throughput by reducing slot time.
On Oct. 5, Ben Adams, co-founder of Illyriad Games, introduced a proposal to lower Ethereum’s slot time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds, which would boost transaction throughput by about 33%.
This change would distribute bandwidth usage more evenly, reducing peak bandwidth needs without increasing the number of data blobs.
Adams clarified that the adjustment would yield a similar effect as increasing the number of blobs from 6 to 8 or raising the gas limit from 30 million to 40 million. However, it avoids increasing peak bandwidth demands.
An Ethereum research bot further explained that reducing slot time would improve rollup latency and throughput without burdening the network’s bandwidth. This keeps the Ethereum network accessible for participants with different bandwidth capabilities.
Meanwhile, the proposal requires a combination of EIP-7623 and EIP-7778 to ensure network stability and higher block rate efficiency.
Early community support
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake has supported the proposal on GitHub, pointing out that it aligns with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin‘s broader scaling goals.
Drake also noted that the change would make decentralized exchanges like Uniswap v3 “1.22x more efficient.” He estimated this could save users around $100 million in centralized-to-decentralized exchange arbitrage yearly.
Pseudonymous developer Cygaar called EIP 7781 a significant step toward improving Ethereum’s base layer.
According to Cygaar, this is especially notable as much of the developer focus has shifted to Ethereum Layer 2 networks as scaling solutions.
However, the developer conceded that the EIP still needs to,
“Make sure hardware requirements don’t increase drastically for solo validators, and have to figure out a good solution for the increase in state growth.”
Similarly, Matthew Sigel, the head of digital research at VanEck, stated that the proposal would shift some power back to Ethereum Layer 1. Sigel also pointed out that the suggested changes could signal even more acceleration, with Layer 1 and 2 networks seeing a 50% throughput increase.