Preconfirmations on Ethereum L1
What are we waiting for?
Last updated
What are we waiting for?
Last updated
The Ethereum L1 is slow 🐌
Even if slot times were reduced to 2 seconds and existed, it would still not be the best user experience possible. What users want is an instant ✅ when they perform an action.
Today, Ethereum has a 12 second block time. The example below shows a user submitting a transaction (e.g. to swap a token) which doesn't make it into the first block, so they have to wait another 12 seconds before they are included in block 2. Only then can they submit a second transaction. An eternity for users watching a spinner on a website ⏳
Non-based rollups (usually with centralized sequencers referenced here as "legacy" L2s) can have much shorter block times than the Ethereum L1. What does that look like for a user? If at time t=0 a user starts with 1 ETH in their wallet on a legacy L2:
t=2s the user buys an NFT on the L2
t=4s the NFT is used in a game and the player wins 0.1 ETH
t=6s the user sells the NFT for a profit of 0.2 ETH
t=8s the user takes a break, it's been a busy 8 seconds!
t=10s the user trades their ETH profits for RAI
At t=12s the L1 proposes the next block and the L2 bids to include the changes made by the user during the previous 12 seconds. This was a great experience for the user, every interaction they had with the L2 felt almost instantaneous and they were never even aware of the slower L1 block times.
But what if we could do better? What if a user could get ✨ instant ✨ confirmations when submitting a transaction with the low fees of an L2? Based Rollups with preconfirmations provide that ideal UX without sacrificing decentralization or security, as well as other benefits such as synchronous atomic composability.
Spire is building the Based Stack and Preconf RPC to make this a reality.
Jump into the docs now to find out more:
