Ethereum's Next Upgrade Could be The Most Bullish One Ever
Speakers
Summary
Milk Road Crypto host John Gillen interviews three ETH Labs contributors about making Ethereum faster. They discuss Quick Slots/EIP-8198, faster finality and the fast confirmation rule, account abstraction divergence with Base, tokenization trends, L1 asset issuance, privacy, and ETH value accrual. The guests argue these upgrades can improve Ethereum's product competitiveness without sacrificing decentralization, which should support ETH and tokenized-asset activity.
- ETH Labs published a collaborative article arguing for a faster Ethereum.
- Quick Slots/EIP-8198 would allow incremental block-time reductions, initially from 12 to 10 seconds.
- Faster finality and the fast confirmation rule aim to speed L1-L2 and L2-L1 bridging.
- Ethereum and Base account abstraction standards diverged, causing fragmentation but improving UX.
- Tokenization is growing on Ethereum, with the SEC innovation exemption seen as a catalyst.
- ETH Labs argues L1 issuance offers better distribution, security, and ETH value accrual.
- Privacy solutions like Railgun, Kohaku, and ZK are framed as long-term Ethereum positives.
- The guests remain bullish on ETH's role as a neutral settlement asset.
Ideas
ETH will dominate as best digital infrastructure.
Tokenization is accelerating on Ethereum and its L2s, with Ethereum trading more tokenized stock volume than the Singapore stock exchange over the past month; the SEC innovation exemption should allow more tokenized assets, and Ethereum's decentralization, neutrality, and security make it the natural home even as multiple models from Robinhood, Superstate, and Securitize compete.
Quick Slots make Ethereum faster, bullish ETH.
Ethereum's 12-second block time is hardcoded and limits builders; EIP-8198 Quick Slots would let the protocol incrementally reduce slot times, starting with 10 seconds, and ETH Labs views it as an S-tier priority for the Higota upgrade because it improves performance and censorship resistance without sacrificing decentralization or security.
Account abstraction improves UX, supports ETH.
Ethereum and Base spent months trying to merge account abstraction standards but diverged because L1 frame transactions optimize for privacy and quantum resistance while Base's standard optimizes for L2 performance and compliance; even with ecosystem fragmentation, both improve UX through passkeys, sponsored gas, and stablecoin gas, which should onboard users and keep ETH central as the underlying gas asset.
Robinhood expands tokenized assets into Europe.
Robinhood and Base are doing well distributing tokenized assets and equities to global users, and Robinhood's chain helped the app expand into Europe; wider availability of European and global stocks alongside U.S. stocks could further strengthen tokenized-equity adoption.
