2026-11-03 –, Lightning Stage
In this talk, we deep-dive into the the Fast L1 North Star of the Strawmap, and present a credible path to bringing Ethereum finality from minutes toward seconds. Decoupled Consensus offers a path to a 4x faster voting round and future flexibility; we show why one-round finality could be the next major step, present two new results that make it safer and more usable for Ethereum, and map how consensus, networking, and consolidation combine in finality.watch, a new tool to track finality updates.
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, 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.
Yann Vonlanthen is a researcher on the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol research team, where he works on fast finality and consensus networking. He completed his PhD at ETH Zurich, where his research focused on Byzantine fault tolerance, blockchain networking, and decentralized governance. His work has appeared at venues including USENIX Security, Middleware, and AFT, and received the Middleware 2024 Best Paper Award.