Ethereum Researchers Propose Four-Minute Settlement Plan to Cut Costs

four-minute settlement plan — Ethereum researchers have drafted a proposal to slash the network’s transaction finality time from roughly 16 minutes to about four minutes, a change that could reduce costs for cross-chain transfers and other services.

The unfinished plan, filed by researcher Ben Edgington and colleagues, has no activation date but outlines a technical path to achieve faster finality. This is the point at which a transaction is considered irreversible and settled.

Faster settlement could lower operational costs for services like cross-chain bridges, which currently must lock up capital while waiting for transactions to finalize. A fourfold reduction in finality time would allow these services to recover and reuse funds more quickly.

The proposal would also separate the processes for validators to select blocks and vote on finality. This architectural shift could enable further speed improvements in the future and potentially pave the way for the network to adopt quantum-resistant digital signatures.