A number of months in the past, we introduced a renewed focus of Protocol on three strategic initiatives: Scale L1, Scale blobs, Enhance UX. Following earlier updates on Scale L1 and Scale blobs, this be aware pertains to our “Enhance UX” monitor, and its mission:
Seamless, safe and permissionless expertise throughout the Ethereum ecosystem, for people and establishments.
We see interoperability, and associated initiatives offered on this be aware, as the best leverage alternative inside the broader UX area over the following 6-12 months, in our place as a public, core Ethereum R&D group.
The near-term technique focuses on areas we imagine will proceed to be basic elements of interop: Intent-based structure and basic message-passing. For each, our intention is to concentrate on clear, measurable protocol metrics to drive down latency and price, whereas rising safety and trustlessness. These metrics embody: Signatures per operation, time-to-inclusion, time-to-fast-confirmation, time-to-finality, and time-to-L2-settlement.
We divide our work in three streams:
Initialisation: Make intents extra modular and light-weight, and strengthen shared requirements for seamless and safe motion of belongings throughout all chains.Acceleration: Drive latency and prices down, speed up efforts for sooner inclusion, affirmation, finality, and settlement.Finalisation: Combine frontier consensus (quick finality) and cryptography (SNARKs with real-time proving) to unlock quick, permissionless crosschain messaging.
Why concentrate on interop?
The Ethereum ecosystem consists of our L1 mainnet and the various L2s that permissionlessly lengthen Ethereum past the L1’s boundaries. These extensions present essential entry factors and scaling alternatives for Ethereum, but additionally convey their very own challenges, chief amongst them the pressures of fragmentation on the Ethereum expertise and its economic system.
There are various potential definitions of what it means to “clear up interop” and the extent to which interop is already solved. Whereas a lot of the infra and tech is prepared (or quickly will likely be), there are a number of steps remaining to truly get these options into the arms of all customers and inject it seamlessly into their day by day UX.
At its simplified core, the important thing components to speed up interop boil all the way down to unlocking quick crosschain message-passing and standardisation. At present, message-passing is partially bottlenecked by sluggish settlement instances. Whereas work continues to take away these bottlenecks, we’ve got infrastructure we will leverage right this moment to unravel the commonest person flows and supply a unified expertise throughout the Ethereum ecosystem.
Nonetheless, interop isn’t the one UX difficulty going through Ethereum customers. On the finish of this be aware, we spotlight distinct EF initiatives coping with totally different features of user-centric improvement, with a stronger accent on safety and privateness. Past, many extra alternatives to enhance Ethereum UX will likely be sought and delivered by initiatives in our ecosystem. We stay up for celebrating their achievements and persevering with to collaborate as a way to strengthen the core properties of Ethereum.
Stream 1: Initialisation
Intents are one mechanism to enhance UX for crosschain interactions, abstracting away the complexities of crosschain mechanics and distilling the result of an motion. We outline intents as a high-level expression of what a person needs to attain onchain, with out prescribing the precise low-level transactions that needs to be executed. Intents are declarative (“I would like this end result, I’m versatile about the way it’s achieved”), whereas transactions are prescriptive (“name this contract with these parameters”).
The intent layer sits between order-flow interfaces (wallets) and deeper interoperability infrastructure (bridges, both canonical or personal). As such, it’s a strategic level to assist, leveraging each the wallets’ experience to offer the most effective UX and the bridges’ means to settle the various belongings deployed throughout Ethereum.
But intent protocols can usually introduce belief assumptions on solver intermediaries, which might create censorship vectors and privateness points. Different approaches, like crosschain messaging bridges or the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL), additionally advance interop with out solver dependencies. Taken collectively, these efforts broaden the design house for interoperability.
Mission #1: Open Intents Framework
Takeaway: Laying down the muse of impartial infrastructure supporting intents-based crosschain protocols.
The Open Intents Framework (OIF) gives modular infrastructure for every of the intent layers: Origination, achievement, settlement and rebalancing. It’s an extensible framework laying the groundwork for additional refinements, in direction of safer, cheaper and sooner settlement of person interactions throughout chains. The Open Intents Framework is a collaborative effort together with core contributors from the Ethereum Basis plus Throughout, Arbitrum, Hyperlane, LI.FI, OpenZeppelin, Taiko, Wonderland, and plenty of others – a significant step ahead for a unified but differentiated method to interoperability.
The OIF was constructed from the bottom as much as be as light-weight and customisable as potential, as a way to accommodate totally different necessities and use circumstances throughout Ethereum’s ecosystem of L2s. This modularity and customization permits for simple swapping of every piece of the intents stack, to make it simple to modify out mechanisms which can have weaker belief assumptions or safety ensures. The OIF is dedicated to enhance settlement ensures together with safety, censorship resistance and privateness.
Manufacturing-ready sensible contract implementations of the Open Intents Framework are dwell right this moment with structure diagrams and developer documentation. By way of Q3 2025, contributing groups are finalising sensible contract foundations and requirements, finishing auditing, and including just a few extra validation mechanisms. In This fall 2025, the OIF may have accomplished the open-source solver and crosschain validation module. Groups may have entry to the complete reference solver implementation with configurable chain subscriptions, automated rebalancing capabilities, and modular validation supporting main crosschain verification protocols. New chains will have the ability to deploy manufacturing solvers instantly upon launch, eliminating the normal months-long integration cycles.
Mission #2: Ethereum Interoperability Layer
Takeaway: A trustless, censorship-resistant transport layer, making cross-L2 transactions really feel like single-chain transactions.
The Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) focuses on making Ethereum really feel like one chain once more, with out compromising on CROPS values (censorship-resistance, open-source, privateness and safety).
EIL is led by the Chain and Account Abstraction workforce, creators of the ERC-4337 protocol. EIL is a trustless cross-L2 interop layer, enabling seamless multichain transactions whereas maintaining the person in management, preserving privateness and Ethereum-level censorship resistance. Whereas intents are a declarative abstraction (“I would like this end result”), the Ethereum Interoperability Layer focuses on prescriptive execution through transactions (“listed here are the precise calls to make”) with out trusting intermediaries.
A public design doc will likely be launched in October, with extra particulars supplied at Devconnect.
Mission #3: Interop requirements
Takeaway: Decreasing person and developer friction throughout the stack with frequent protocols for crosschain operations.
Lastly, a big set of requirements will assist the enlargement of OIF and EIL, establishing unified design rules from the person to interop backends. These requirements embody Interoperable addresses (ERC-7828 and ERC-7930), asset consolidation (ERC-7811) and multi-calls (ERC-5792) for improved pockets and app UX, in addition to impartial message-passing infrastructure, corresponding to an intent normal (ERC-7683) and a typical messaging interface (ERC-7786).
So far, ERC-7683 has been reviewed and revised by a gaggle of contributors from Throughout, Uniswap, LI.FI, and OpenZeppelin. The primary change is a higher-level interface redesign to assist a number of intent origination move, particularly for brand new flows corresponding to Useful resource Locks and direct-to-filler transfers. Within the spirit of flexibility and modularity, the revised normal can even embody totally different public sale mechanisms (e.g., Dutch, first-come first-serve) and permit for compatibility with different open-source initiatives like multi-chain inputs and interoperable addresses.
Stream 2: Acceleration
Whereas Stream 1 builds fundamental companies required for a impartial, user-centric and safe interoperability stack, Stream 2 goals to lift the velocity limits on each node and hyperlink of the community. We concentrate on 4 key metrics detailed within the sections under: L1 time-to-inclusion, L1 time-to-strong-confirmation, L1 time-to-finality and L2 time-to-settlement.
Mission #4: Quick L1 Affirmation Rule
Takeaway: Obtain quick and robust L1 confirmations in 15-30 seconds as a substitute of ready 13-19 minutes for full finality.
Sooner affirmation instances are persistently cited as one of many greatest necessities for higher interop throughout the Ethereum ecosystem. The construction of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake mechanism has attesters voting on the present state of the chain each slot, with full finality trailing by many slots. Nevertheless, there’s already a strategy to get sooner affirmation with provable security, however this isn’t well-known and usable for the time being.
Transient overview of the quick affirmation rule: Utilises the collected votes of attesters to offer a decrease (however nonetheless robust) diploma of affirmation at a a lot earlier time limit, whereas full finality is later obtained (the identical precise method it’s right this moment). Beneath well-specified fashions of an adversary, a sooner affirmation rule gives provable security and represents a lovely choice for mechanisms relying in any other case on full finality. We’ll make this quick affirmation rule usable by implementing it in all consensus purchasers and work to combine its endpoint with initiatives serious about reducing latency for his or her customers.
Roberto Saltini and Mikhail Kalinin (Consensys) at the moment lead the specification of the quick affirmation rule and its proof of correctness. The TxRx workforce (Consensys) is implementing the rule in Teku, whereas Terence Tsao (Offchain Labs) has supplied an early implementation for Prysm and Harsh Pratap Singh (EPF Fellow) is engaged on a Lighthouse implementation. With additional simplifications anticipated to the specs, and a less complicated path to implementation, we goal Q1 2026 for availability of the quick affirmation rule in all consensus layer purchasers, and can work with associate initiatives for integration.
Mission #5: Shorter L1 slots
Takeaway: Performing the analysis and engineering groundwork for decreasing L1 slot instances asap.
Important UX enhancements are obtained from shorter L1 slots, and we intention to initially goal 2x shorter slots, from 12 seconds to six seconds. Halving the slot time not solely halves time-to-L1-inclusion for L1 customers, however moreover halves the time-to-strong-confirmation and the time-to-finality for shoppers of those affirmation guidelines. This permits sooner settlement, much less capital in flight, and diminished charges and latency for customers of interoperability protocols, in addition to a better incentive to make use of safe L1 settlement.
The challenge requires a number of workstreams: Strong knowledge evaluation for community efficiency and centralisation pressures (at the moment involving Maria Inês Silva, Sam Calder-Masson and Toni Wahrstätter), specs of consensus and execution layer adjustments (involving Dankrad Feist, Justin Traglia and Milos Stankovic) and shopper implementations (early work from Milos Stankovic and Jihoon Music). A lot of this work is impartial from slot restructuring efforts corresponding to shifting to EIP-7732, enshrined Proposer–Builder Separation.
Mission #6: Shorter L2 settlement
Takeaway: Decreasing latency to maneuver belongings out of rollups decreases rebalancing prices and will increase service high quality of intents.
Optimistic rollups settle within the order of seven days, as soon as an extended sufficient problem window has remained open to contest the printed state of the rollup. Shorter withdrawal home windows permits for sooner motion of belongings from the rollup, and lowers rebalancing prices for solvers, i.e., lowers value for customers of intent protocols. It’s a key lever for intents to settle better volumes at cheaper charges. A lot progress right here is already underway due to the efforts of many throughout L2 and ZKEVM groups. We’ll work to assist optimistic rollups serious about implementing ZK-based real-time proving, and/or shifting to a safe 2-out-of-3 sooner settlement mechanism.
Stream 3: Finalisation
The ultimate frontier of interoperability on Ethereum is attained with two items of know-how: Actual-time proving and quick finality. Our intention will likely be to speed up analysis and prototype initiatives to convey ahead the timelines of every. To spotlight the open-ended nature of this stream, we name initiatives right here “Explorations”.
Exploration #1: Interoperability snarkification
All Protocol actions should reckon with the acceleration of SNARKs in direction of broad availability. As an illustration, the “Scale L1” monitor plans early work in direction of the progressive integration of this know-how within the core of the Ethereum protocol. Likewise, it isn’t potential right this moment to disregard the snarkification of all the pieces, particularly because it pertains to interoperability options.
With a sturdy intents-based method to crosschain UX, the target is to proceed accelerating and solidifying the backends of those programs, to the purpose of lowest friction. Quick settlement permits for quick liquidity rebalancing, reducing prices for intent customers. And past diminished prices and latency, we imagine that snarkification has the potential to redraw the map of asset issuance, bridge primitives and crosschain programmability, enabling amongst different issues synchronous composability with L1. Getting forward of this revolution places us in management to steer our community in direction of the futures that we want.
With some SNARK-based variations of the sooner L2 settlement mechanism described in Mission #6, optimistic rollups have the potential to unlock a “quick root” in opposition to which their state may be assumed to be settled. But it’s also potential to permissionlessly get hold of this quick root, and “zkSettle” in opposition to it. Specifically, this type of settlement could also be launched as a mechanism obtainable by way of the Open Intents Framework (Mission #1), making certain probably the most strong type of intent settlement and maximal person safety.
Exploration #2: Sooner L1 finality
We suggest exploring all paths to convey finality ahead from right this moment’s 13-19 minutes to the order of seconds. First, shorter slots as described in Mission #5 will halve the finality time, bringing us to 7-10 minutes. Second, beacon chain adjustments might speed up it additional, all the way down to 1-2 minutes. Lastly, changing our present consensus protocol, Gasper, with a leaner and sooner protocol, will yield an additional order of magnitude enchancment, with goal finality obtained in below 10 seconds.
The EF Protocol Consensus workforce is engaged on a number of initiatives illuminating the choice tree for a sturdy, performant and decentralised consensus protocol. 3-slot-finality (3SF) is a well-understood protocol acquiring robust security with dynamic availability, a mix distinctive to protocols corresponding to Ethereum’s. Explorations in newer lessons of protocols corresponding to Kudzu, Hydrangea or Alpenglow reveal alternatives for enhancements on 3SF with decrease latency and better throughput, however have to be designed for Ethereum’s distinctive properties.
Enhancing UX has grown to turn into a multi-faceted effort, with a number of distinct streams of labor tackling points from interoperability, safety and privateness. With this be aware, we’re clarifying our personal interoperability work, and invite you to search out extra particulars on Trillion Greenback Safety and the Kohaku privateness pockets under.
Trillion Greenback Safety
Led by Fredrik Svantes and Josh Stark, the Trillion Greenback Safety (1TS) initiative is an ecosystem-wide effort to improve Ethereum’s safety to assist convey the world onchain. Part 2 of 1TS tackles UX, together with higher fashions of clear signing, key administration and pockets safety and privateness requirements.
Kohaku
Led by Nicolas Consigny and Vitalik Buterin, the Kohaku challenge develops the required know-how to energy wallets which are personal throughout their total stack. The challenge is developed in collaboration between the EF and numerous exterior groups. Kohaku’s core targets are (i) an SDK that exposes robust privateness/safety primitives and (ii) an influence‑person pockets that ships on high of that SDK. In a primary section the challenge will concentrate on the browser extension that targets superior customers introducing privateness and security measures. The extension is designed to protect privateness whereas decreasing belief assumptions and eliminating pointless exterior dependencies. The challenge will ship with Helios lightclient, a privateness‑service abstraction, assist for personal addresses, native personal balances & personal sends.
