Ethereum Team Testing Fast Confirmation Rules, Proposing to Reduce Cross-Chain Bridge Waiting Time to About 13 Seconds

ChainCatcher reports that, according to Cointelegraph, the Ethereum client team is testing a mechanism called Fast Confirmation Rules (FCR), which aims to reduce deposit confirmation times from L1 to L2 networks and exchanges to about 13 seconds, a reduction of up to 98% compared to existing solutions. The mechanism was proposed by Ethereum researcher Julian Ma.

FCR determines whether a block is considered confirmed by evaluating the validator’s attestation, rather than relying on traditional block depth counting. It operates based on two premises: the network message propagation is sufficiently fast, and a single entity’s staked ETH does not exceed 25%. Currently, most users rely on canonical bridges to transfer assets, which typically take about 13 minutes; some exchanges and L2s use “k-depth” confirmation rules to shorten wait times, but these lack formal security guarantees.

FCR can be deployed without hard forks, allowing nodes to enable it independently without full network coordination. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin expressed support, stating that under certain network conditions, this mechanism can provide “strong guarantees” for transactions within a single slot (about 12 seconds). However, there are still doubts within the community, with some users concerned about whether its trust assumptions can hold under network stress. Currently, client and API integration work is ongoing.