Source: Milk Road Crypto; compiled by Felix, PANews
Ethereum may already be the settlement layer for tokenized finance. But if it is going to support global financial markets at full scale, one problem still needs to be solved: speed.
In a recent Milk Road Crypto episode, ETH Labs members Julian Ma, Derek Chiang and Binji discussed a “faster Ethereum” agenda spanning Quick Slots, faster transaction finality, interoperability between Layer 1 and Layer 2, and account abstraction. PANews summarized the main points from that conversation.
What Quick Slots is meant to change
The host brought up an ETH Labs article titled “Ethereum Needs to Speed Up: How the Ecosystem Views EIP-8198,” which focused on a concept called Quick Slots, and asked the team to explain it for listeners who had not read the piece.
Binji said Ethereum currently runs with a fixed 12-second block time. Quick Slots is a proposal for Hegotá, the upgrade expected after Glamsterdam. In simple terms, it is an EIP that would introduce a mechanism at the protocol level to shorten block time gradually over time.
Right now, he said, Ethereum has no built-in way to tune that parameter. The 12-second interval is hard-coded, which means everyone building on Ethereum is constrained by it. Quick Slots would let the protocol adjust and reduce that interval in the future. The initial proposal is to move from 12 seconds to 10 seconds and then evaluate the results over time.
Binji added that the EIP was originally written by Carl Beak and championed by Barnaby, one of ETH Labs’ co-founders. Barnaby presented the proposal at the Aug. 6 All Core Developers meeting, or ACD, and then spent significant time speaking with hundreds of people across the ecosystem. Binji said a faster Ethereum affects everyone, from users to developers to every participant on L1, so ETH Labs does not want to define “faster Ethereum” on its own. The goal, he said, is to help build a feedback loop across the ecosystem and gather input from all affected groups.
According to him, ETH Labs has spoken with more than 20 ecosystem teams and individuals who support Quick Slots and sees the initiative as an S-tier priority that should be advanced in the Hegotá upgrade.
Why ETH Labs calls a faster Ethereum an S-tier priority
The host noted that when ETH Labs first launched, many people were still trying to figure out what the group was for. Now, its mission appears much clearer. Julian Ma answered that point by giving a more concrete definition of what “faster Ethereum” means.
He said repeated feedback from developers across the ecosystem boils down to speeding up three critical intervals:
- Faster bridging from L1 to L2
- Faster bridging from L2 back to L1
- Faster slots
Julian said the strongest request from developers and applications is faster withdrawals and settlement from L2 to L1. Today, Optimistic Rollups can require users to wait 5 to 7 days to withdraw from L2 back to L1, which he described as painful. Faster slots, in his view, are the atomic unit that underpins both L1-to-L2 interoperability and the user experience on L1 itself.
Binji then tied the discussion to tokenization. He said the SEC had approved an innovation exemption for tokenization that day. He also said that most tokenization activity is happening on Ethereum and its L2s, and that Ethereum’s transaction volume over the past month had exceeded the Singapore Exchange.
That does not mean speed should be pursued at any cost, he said. Ethereum became the preferred venue for tokenized assets because it is decentralized, credibly neutral and highly secure. Those properties give people the confidence to bring hundreds of billions of dollars in assets onchain. If Ethereum were to trade decentralization or security for speed, Binji said, it would undermine the whole premise. The more compelling path is to make the network faster while keeping those core properties intact. He also argued that Quick Slots could improve censorship resistance rather than weaken it.
Derek said Quick Slots is only one piece of the broader roadmap. A faster Ethereum does not just mean a faster base chain. It also means faster settlement with other chains, which is why ETH Labs is also working on faster finality and fast confirmation rules.
At ETH Labs, he said, Ethereum is treated as a “special chain.” There may be many chains in the world, but Ethereum serves a distinct role because it is the best place to issue assets. Once an asset is issued on Ethereum, it can move seamlessly to any L2 and even to other L1s such as Solana. With faster finality and fast confirmation rules, Derek said, Ethereum can strengthen its position as the only chain able to settle to other chains at high speed in a fully decentralized and trustless way.
How a faster Ethereum could feed back into ETH
The host quoted a line from the article: “These efforts share one goal — making Ethereum more responsive and more valuable, with those benefits accruing to ETH.” He then asked how that value capture actually works.
Binji said that if Ethereum remains the hub and home base for tokenized assets while improving settlement performance across the ecosystem, the whole network becomes more attractive. Better censorship resistance and smoother user experience both strengthen the case for choosing Ethereum.
He said people mint assets on Ethereum because it is credibly neutral and globally accessible. Performance gains, if they bring more value and more trading volume onto Ethereum, would increase demand for network security and network usage. In that setup, value flows back to ETH.
Why Frame and Base’s EIP-8130 did not end up as one account abstraction standard
The conversation then shifted to account abstraction. The host referred to Derek’s earlier comments that Ethereum and Base had spent months trying to create a shared standard, only to abandon the effort in the end.
Derek described account abstraction as a deeply technical topic, then walked through the timeline. In January, Ethereum announced plans to bring native account abstraction to L1. Under the current model, users need to hold ETH to pay gas, which he said is a major pain point for consumer applications. Account abstraction would allow wallets or applications to sponsor gas for users, or let users pay gas directly in stablecoins while the protocol converts that value into ETH under the hood.
It would also support alternatives to the traditional 12-word seed phrase, including Apple PassKey.
Earlier this year, Derek said, the Ethereum Foundation proposed EIP-8141, also known as Frame Transactions, as the L1 account abstraction standard. After 6 to 7 months of work, core developers had largely gotten Frame running by July, and many assumed it would be the version adopted in the Hegotá upgrade.
Then Base introduced its own native account abstraction proposal, EIP-8130, in July and brought it to the ACD process. Derek said that was positive in one sense because ETH Labs wants L2 teams to take part in ACD, but it also created competition and tension between the two approaches.
ETH Labs, along with Derek personally, tried to push for a unified standard that would combine the strengths of both proposals. In practice, though, the two were optimized for different goals. Frame was built around L1 needs, with support for privacy and post-quantum signature aggregation that fit Ethereum’s broader post-quantum roadmap. Base’s EIP-8130, by contrast, was optimized for high-throughput L2 environments, targeting tens of thousands of transactions per second and including strict compliance and attestation constraints.
Derek said he spent three weeks in intensive talks with Vitalik, Geth’s Matt, teams from Base and Arbitrum, and others. The conclusion was that Ethereum wants to be the best version of Ethereum, while Base wants to be the best version of Base. Forcing the two paths together would have left both sides dissatisfied.
In the end, the parties agreed to move forward separately, even though that means some degree of standards fragmentation across the ecosystem in the near term.
ETH Labs does not see Base as “divorcing” Ethereum
The host asked whether that sounded like Ethereum was “divorcing” one of its biggest L2s.
Derek rejected that framing outright. He said claims on X that Base is somehow “not Ethereum enough” are exaggerated. In his view, Base is one of the most Ethereum-aligned L2s in the ecosystem. It participates actively in ACD, holds a large amount of ETH, is one of the biggest consumers of blobs, and is built on decentralized designs spanning Optimistic and ZK approaches.
He added that as the Ethereum ecosystem grows, it is no longer realistic to assume every L2 will follow every technical decision made on L1. Companies such as Robinhood, he said, are launching their own L2s because they want their own blockspace. Different use cases call for different technical choices.
Binji used a pair of analogies. Ethereum, he said, is the internet of value. Facebook building its own website did not mean it had left the internet, and Uber building its own payment rail did not mean it had left the Apple ecosystem. He also compared Ethereum to New York City. If every neighborhood looked exactly like Tribeca, he said, the city would be a lot less interesting. Diversity in culture and architecture matters, and the same is true for L2 design.
He pointed out that Base has accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of ETH on L2 and continues to consume blobs. The broader goal remains shared: building the internet of value.
On account abstraction specifically, Binji said progress at the protocol layer is already a major win. Whether the market ends up with Base’s approach or Frame, users will still ultimately use ETH for gas or hold ETH as the underlying asset. The network effect around the EVM, he said, is as strong as TCP/IP.
Why ETH Labs wants tokenized assets issued on Ethereum L1
The host then asked Julian Ma for his latest view on the tokenization wave building on Ethereum.
Julian said ETH Labs has been encouraged by what Robinhood and Base have done in distributing tokenized stocks to users globally. He added that tokenization is unlikely to settle into a single “correct” model. Right now, the market is already seeing different approaches, including Transfer Agent structures used by Securitize and Superstate, which differ from Robinhood’s tokenized stock model.
He said two issues stand out. One is token fragmentation. The market already has multiple versions of tokenized Nvidia or Apple shares. Traditional finance has its own form of fragmentation too, but crypto can improve the back-end cost of trading. The second is geographic expansion of assets. Robinhood is using its chain and tokens to expand into Europe, and Julian said broader tokenization of European local equities or global stocks could push adoption much further.
The host then asked whether the industry should try to bring tokenized issuance back to Ethereum L1, given that much of the current activity is happening on L2s.
Julian’s answer was blunt: “WE CARE.” He said ETH Labs strongly wants assets to be issued on L1, and not for ideological reasons. It is a product decision.
He gave two reasons. The first is distribution and liquidity. Assets issued on L1 can more easily move across chains into L2s and appchains as collateral. If an asset is issued only on one L2, the bridging stack becomes much more complex. If it is issued on L1, fast confirmation rules could let it move into different applications within seconds.
The second reason is legal status and the idea of a ledger of record. Julian said new proposals from U.K. regulators and the SEC suggest blockchains are shifting from being simple distribution rails to becoming official financial ledgers. If a blockchain becomes a legally recognized ledger of record, then L1 liveness, security and resilience matter much more.
Binji added that from an institutional perspective, decentralization is a way to minimize counterparty risk. Putting assets on L1 removes intermediary-layer risk. He also said that if L1 serves as the asset hub, the speed of L1-to-L2 bridging could improve by nearly 30x.
Quick Slots, account abstraction and L1 issuance as one ETH demand loop
Asked to connect Quick Slots, account abstraction and L1 issuance to ETH value capture, Julian said the three pieces reinforce each other.
Quick Slots improve cross-chain experience. Better account abstraction lowers the barrier to entry. L1 issuance of assets brings in institutions. Together, he said, those trends would directly raise transaction and settlement demand on L1, consume more gas and make ETH the quote asset for more markets.
Derek framed it through an analogy with the U.S. dollar. The dollar became the dominant global asset because the United States built the most advanced financial infrastructure in the world, he said. In the same way, ETH maintains its position because Ethereum offers the best digital infrastructure. Even across L2s, he noted, most top trading pairs are still denominated in ETH. Ethereum’s technical properties and ETH’s monetary role are deeply linked and cannot be separated.
Binji closed that part of the discussion with a set of figures. ETH, he said, is the world’s most liquid neutral asset without a central issuer, underpinning more than $170 billion in stablecoins and more than $50 billion in DeFi markets. In his words, Ethereum’s progress is ETH’s progress.
Privacy and post-quantum work remain part of the longer-term roadmap
The final stretch of the interview focused on privacy. The host noted strong market interest in privacy-oriented projects such as Zcash, Aztec and Monero, then asked whether Ethereum also needs to compete natively on privacy at the L1 level.
Binji said Ethereum already has privacy platforms such as Railgun, while the Ethereum Foundation has also launched the Kohaku initiative to build an open-source wallet SDK with privacy and post-quantum features enabled by default. What Ethereum offers, he said, is composable privacy.
He argued that privacy is not only a crypto narrative. It is also a real-world security requirement, whether the concern is kidnapping risks tied to public addresses or broader data leaks. With ZK technology, users can prove who they are without exposing sensitive details such as where they live.
Derek said that if Ethereum had launched with privacy from day one, people would find it absurd to later argue for exposing every transaction publicly. He also praised the Ethereum Foundation’s role. ETH Labs, he said, is focused on current pain points for developers and users over the short to medium term, while the Foundation is making 5- to 10-year investments in areas such as privacy and post-quantum research. Put together, those efforts form what he described as a strong combination.
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