Ethereum Institutional Backs Proposal to Cut Block Times

Ethereum Institutional, a nonprofit focused on institutional adoption, has publicly backed a proposal to reduce Ethereum's block times, citing growing onchain activity from financial institutions. The organization supported EIP8198, also known as Quick Slots, which aims to initially cut the time between blocks from 12 seconds to 10 seconds. The proposal is being advanced by Ethlabs, which reported that 20 decentralized finance founders have expressed strong support for the initiative. Ethlabs stated it is merging the proposal's specifications into Ethereum's main codebase and investigating potential downstream dependencies to assess its feasibility for inclusion in the upcoming Hegotá upgrade. EIP8198 was authored in March and was formally proposed for the Hegotá upgrade during an Ethereum core developer meeting on August 6. The upgrade is planned for implementation in late 2026, following the completion of the Glamsterdam network upgrade. Glamsterdam is scheduled to activate on the Sepolia testnet on October 6, but a mainnet date has not been confirmed. The push for faster block times comes amid competitive pressure from other blockchain networks.