From 16 Minutes to Seconds: A Roadmap to Fast Finality on Ethereum

Reaching the Fast L1 North Star requires a holistic view, as Decoupled Consensus is only the first step. We show how networking improvements and validator consolidation, together with the newly proposed one-round finality gadget, could reduce Ethereum’s latency from minutes toward seconds.

Within this roadmap, we dive into one-round finality. A new wave of protocols, including Alpenglow, Kudzu, Hydrangea, and Minimmit, is reshaping consensus. Building on our [previous work](https://notes.ethereum.org/@yannvon/S1wIxIDqbe), we present two brand-new proposals: a parametrization exposing the trade-off between safety and liveness suitable for Ethereum; and a new accountability gadget, to be paired with one-round finality, that strengthens economic security beyond the current guarantees.

We conclude with finality.watch, an interactive tool showing how improvements in consensus, networking, and consolidation compose, and which bottleneck dominates at each stage.

Speakers: Yann Vonlanthen

Track: Core Protocol