Ethereum Researchers Propose Decoupled Consensus to Cut Finality Times to Seconds

Ethereum protocol researchers are pursuing a consensus redesign to reduce transaction finality times from 13 to 19 minutes down to mere seconds. Under the proposed decoupled architecture, block production and fork choice are separated from the finality mechanism. Smaller committees of 256 to 512 validators will manage fast block generation instead of roughly 30,000 validators per slot, while a parallel gadget operated by the full validator set finalizes checkpoints. The design, formally verified using Lean 4, requires attackers to burn at least 33% of staked Ether to reverse blocks, with full deployment targeted by 2029.