Protocol Update 003 — Improve UX

A fewer months ago, we announced a renewed absorption of Protocol connected 3 strategical initiatives: Scale L1, Scale blobs, Improve UX. Following erstwhile updates connected Scale L1 and Scale blobs, this enactment relates to our “Improve UX” track, and its mission:

Seamless, unafraid and permissionless acquisition crossed the Ethereum ecosystem, for individuals and institutions.

We spot interoperability, and related projects presented successful this note, arsenic the highest leverage accidental wrong the broader UX domain implicit the adjacent 6-12 months, successful our presumption arsenic a public, halfway Ethereum R&D group.

The near-term strategy focuses connected areas we judge volition proceed to beryllium cardinal components of interop: Intent-based architecture and wide message-passing. For both, our purpose is to absorption connected clear, measurable protocol metrics to thrust down latency and cost, portion expanding information and trustlessness. These metrics include: Signatures per operation, time-to-inclusion, time-to-fast-confirmation, time-to-finality, and time-to-L2-settlement.

We disagreement our enactment successful 3 streams:

1. Initialisation: Make intents much modular and lightweight, and fortify shared standards for seamless and unafraid question of assets crossed each chains.
2. Acceleration: Drive latency and costs down, accelerate efforts for faster inclusion, confirmation, finality, and settlement.
3. Finalisation: Integrate frontier statement (fast finality) and cryptography (SNARKs with real-time proving) to unlock fast, permissionless crosschain messaging.

Why absorption connected interop?

The Ethereum ecosystem is composed of our L1 mainnet and the galore L2s that permissionlessly widen Ethereum beyond the L1’s boundaries. These extensions supply captious introduction points and scaling opportunities for Ethereum, yet besides bring their ain challenges, main among them the pressures of fragmentation connected the Ethereum acquisition and its economy.

There are galore imaginable definitions of what it means to “solve interop” and the grade to which interop is already solved. While overmuch of the infra and tech is acceptable (or soon volition be), determination are respective steps remaining to really get these solutions into the hands of each users and inject it seamlessly into their regular UX.

At its simplified core, the cardinal ingredients to accelerate interop boil down to unlocking accelerated crosschain message-passing and standardisation. Currently, message-passing is partially bottlenecked by dilatory colony times. While enactment continues to region these bottlenecks, we person infrastructure we tin leverage contiguous to lick the astir communal idiosyncratic flows and supply a unified acquisition crossed the Ethereum ecosystem.

Still, interop is not the lone UX contented facing Ethereum users. At the extremity of this note, we item chiseled EF initiatives dealing with antithetic aspects of user-centric development, with a stronger accent connected information and privacy. Beyond, galore much opportunities to amended Ethereum UX volition beryllium sought and delivered by projects successful our ecosystem. We look guardant to celebrating their achievements and continuing to collaborate successful bid to fortify the halfway properties of Ethereum.

Stream 1: Initialisation

Intents are 1 mechanics to amended UX for crosschain interactions, abstracting distant the complexities of crosschain mechanics and distilling the result of an action. We specify intents arsenic a high-level look of what a idiosyncratic wants to execute onchain, without prescribing the nonstop low-level transactions that should beryllium executed. Intents are declarative (“I privation this outcome, I’m flexible astir however it’s achieved”), whereas transactions are prescriptive ("call this declaration with these parameters").

The intent furniture sits betwixt order-flow interfaces (wallets) and deeper interoperability infrastructure (bridges, either canonical oregon private). As such, it is simply a strategical constituent to support, leveraging some the wallets’ expertise to supply the champion UX and the bridges’ quality to settee the galore assets deployed crossed Ethereum.

Yet intent protocols tin often present spot assumptions connected solver intermediaries, which tin make censorship vectors and privateness issues. Other approaches, similar crosschain messaging bridges oregon the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL), besides beforehand interop without solver dependencies. Taken together, these efforts broaden the plan abstraction for interoperability.

Project #1: Open Intents Framework

Takeaway: Laying down the instauration of neutral infrastructure supporting intents-based crosschain protocols.

The Open Intents Framework (OIF) provides modular infrastructure for each of the intent layers: Origination, fulfillment, colony and rebalancing. It is an extensible model laying the groundwork for further refinements, towards much secure, cheaper and faster colony of idiosyncratic interactions crossed chains. The Open Intents Framework is simply a collaborative effort including halfway contributors from the Ethereum Foundation positive Across, Arbitrum, Hyperlane, LI.FI, OpenZeppelin, Taiko, Wonderland, and galore others – a meaningful measurement guardant for a unified yet differentiated attack to interoperability.

The OIF was built from the crushed up to beryllium arsenic lightweight and customisable arsenic possible, successful bid to accommodate antithetic requirements and usage cases crossed Ethereum’s ecosystem of L2s. This modularity and customization allows for casual swapping of each portion of the intents stack, to marque it casual to power retired mechanisms which whitethorn person weaker spot assumptions oregon information guarantees. The OIF is committed to amended colony guarantees including security, censorship absorption and privacy.

Production-ready astute declaration implementations of the Open Intents Framework are unrecorded contiguous with architecture diagrams and developer documentation. Through Q3 2025, contributing teams are finalising astute declaration foundations and standards, completing auditing, and adding a fewer much validation mechanisms. In Q4 2025, the OIF volition person completed the open-source solver and crosschain validation module. Teams volition person entree to the afloat notation solver implementation with configurable concatenation subscriptions, automated rebalancing capabilities, and modular validation supporting large crosschain verification protocols. New chains volition beryllium capable to deploy accumulation solvers instantly upon launch, eliminating the accepted months-long integration cycles.

Project #2: Ethereum Interoperability Layer

Takeaway: A trustless, censorship-resistant transport layer, making cross-L2 transactions consciousness similar single-chain transactions.

The Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) focuses connected making Ethereum consciousness similar 1 concatenation again, without compromising connected CROPS values (censorship-resistance, open-source, privateness and security).

EIL is led by the Chain and Account Abstraction team, creators of the ERC-4337 protocol. EIL is simply a trustless cross-L2 interop layer, enabling seamless multichain transactions portion keeping the idiosyncratic successful control, preserving privateness and Ethereum-level censorship resistance. While intents are a declarative abstraction ("I privation this outcome"), the Ethereum Interoperability Layer focuses connected prescriptive execution via transactions ("here are the nonstop calls to make") without trusting intermediaries.

A nationalist plan papers volition beryllium released successful October, with much details provided astatine Devconnect.

Project #3: Interop standards

Takeaway: Reducing idiosyncratic and developer friction crossed the stack with communal protocols for crosschain operations.

Finally, a ample acceptable of standards volition enactment the enlargement of OIF and EIL, establishing unified plan principles from the idiosyncratic to interop backends. These standards see Interoperable addresses (ERC-7828 and ERC-7930), plus consolidation (ERC-7811) and multi-calls (ERC-5792) for improved wallet and app UX, arsenic good arsenic neutral message-passing infrastructure, specified arsenic an intent modular (ERC-7683) and a communal messaging interface (ERC-7786).

To date, ERC-7683 has been reviewed and revised by a radical of contributors from Across, Uniswap, LI.FI, and OpenZeppelin. The main alteration is simply a higher-level interface redesign to enactment aggregate intent origination flow, specifically for caller flows specified arsenic Resource Locks and direct-to-filler transfers. In the tone of flexibility and modularity, the revised modular volition besides see antithetic auction mechanisms (e.g., Dutch, first-come first-serve) and let for compatibility with different open-source initiatives similar multi-chain inputs and interoperable addresses.

Stream 2: Acceleration

While Stream 1 builds basal services required for a neutral, user-centric and unafraid interoperability stack, Stream 2 aims to rise the velocity limits connected each node and nexus of the network. We absorption connected 4 cardinal metrics elaborate successful the sections below: L1 time-to-inclusion, L1 time-to-strong-confirmation, L1 time-to-finality and L2 time-to-settlement.

Project #4: Fast L1 Confirmation Rule

Takeaway: Receive accelerated and beardown L1 confirmations successful 15-30 seconds alternatively of waiting 13-19 minutes for afloat finality.

Faster confirmation times are consistently cited arsenic 1 of the biggest requirements for amended interop crossed the Ethereum ecosystem. The operation of Ethereum’s Proof-of-Stake mechanics has attesters voting connected the existent authorities of the concatenation each slot, with afloat finality trailing by galore slots. However, determination is already a mode to get faster confirmation with provable safety, but this is not well-known and usable astatine the moment.

Brief overview of the fast confirmation rule: Utilises the accumulated votes of attesters to supply a little (but inactive strong) grade of confirmation astatine a overmuch earlier constituent successful time, portion afloat finality is aboriginal obtained (the aforesaid nonstop mode it is today). Under well-specified models of an adversary, a faster confirmation rule offers provable safety and represents an charismatic enactment for mechanisms relying different connected afloat finality. We volition marque this accelerated confirmation regularisation usable by implementing it successful each statement clients and enactment to integrate its endpoint with projects funny successful decreasing latency for their users.

Roberto Saltini and Mikhail Kalinin (Consensys) presently pb the specification of the accelerated confirmation regularisation and its impervious of correctness. The TxRx squad (Consensys) is implementing the regularisation successful Teku, portion Terence Tsao (Offchain Labs) has provided an aboriginal implementation for Prysm and Harsh Pratap Singh (EPF Fellow) is moving connected a Lighthouse implementation. With further simplifications expected to the specs, and a simpler way to implementation, we people Q1 2026 for availability of the accelerated confirmation regularisation successful each statement furniture clients, and volition enactment with spouse projects for integration.

Project #5: Shorter L1 slots

Takeaway: Performing the probe and engineering groundwork for reducing L1 slot times asap.

Significant UX improvements are obtained from shorter L1 slots, and we purpose to initially people 2x shorter slots, from 12 seconds to 6 seconds. Halving the slot clip not lone halves time-to-L1-inclusion for L1 users, but additionally halves the time-to-strong-confirmation and the time-to-finality for consumers of these confirmation rules. This allows faster settlement, little superior successful flight, and reduced fees and latency for users of interoperability protocols, arsenic good arsenic a greater inducement to usage unafraid L1 settlement.

The task requires aggregate workstreams: Robust information investigation for web show and centralisation pressures (currently involving Maria Inês Silva, Sam Calder-Masson and Toni Wahrstätter), specifications of statement and execution furniture changes (involving Dankrad Feist, Justin Traglia and Milos Stankovic) and lawsuit implementations (early enactment from Milos Stankovic and Jihoon Song). Much of this enactment is autarkic from slot restructuring efforts specified arsenic moving to EIP-7732, enshrined Proposer–Builder Separation.

Project #6: Shorter L2 settlement

Takeaway: Reducing latency to determination assets retired of rollups decreases rebalancing costs and increases work prime of intents.

Optimistic rollups settee successful the bid of 7 days, erstwhile a agelong capable situation model has remained unfastened to contention the published authorities of the rollup. Shorter withdrawal windows allows for faster question of assets from the rollup, and lowers rebalancing costs for solvers, i.e., lowers outgo for users of intent protocols. It is simply a cardinal lever for intents to settee greater volumes astatine cheaper fees. Much advancement present is already underway acknowledgment to the efforts of galore crossed L2 and ZKEVM teams. We volition enactment to enactment optimistic rollups funny successful implementing ZK-based real-time proving, and/or moving to a secure 2-out-of-3 faster colony mechanism.

Stream 3: Finalisation

The last frontier of interoperability connected Ethereum is attained with 2 pieces of technology: Real-time proving and accelerated finality. Our purpose volition beryllium to accelerate probe and prototype initiatives to bring guardant the timelines of each. To item the open-ended quality of this stream, we telephone projects present “Explorations”.

Exploration #1: Interoperability snarkification

All Protocol activities indispensable reckon with the acceleration of SNARKs towards wide availability. For instance, the “Scale L1” way plans aboriginal work towards the progressive integration of this exertion successful the halfway of the Ethereum protocol. Likewise, it is not imaginable contiguous to disregard the snarkification of everything, successful peculiar arsenic it relates to interoperability solutions.

With a robust intents-based attack to crosschain UX, the nonsubjective is to proceed accelerating and solidifying the backends of these systems, to the constituent of lowest friction. Fast colony allows for accelerated liquidity rebalancing, cutting costs for intent users. And beyond reduced costs and latency, we judge that snarkification has the imaginable to redraw the representation of plus issuance, span primitives and crosschain programmability, enabling among different things synchronous composability with L1. Getting up of this gyration puts america successful power to steer our web towards the futures that we desire.

With immoderate SNARK-based versions of the faster L2 colony mechanics described successful Project #6, optimistic rollups person the imaginable to unlock a “fast root” against which their authorities tin beryllium assumed to beryllium settled. Yet it is besides imaginable to permissionlessly get this accelerated root, and “zkSettle” against it. In particular, this signifier of colony whitethorn beryllium introduced arsenic a mechanics disposable done the Open Intents Framework (Project #1), ensuring the astir robust signifier of intent colony and maximal idiosyncratic protection.

Exploration #2: Faster L1 finality

We suggest exploring each paths to bring finality guardant from today’s 13-19 minutes to the bid of seconds. First, shorter slots arsenic described successful Project #5 volition halve the finality time, bringing america to 7-10 minutes. Second, beacon concatenation changes could accelerate it further, down to 1-2 minutes. Finally, replacing our existent statement protocol, Gasper, with a leaner and faster protocol, volition output an other bid of magnitude improvement, with people finality obtained successful nether 10 seconds.

The EF Protocol Consensus squad is moving connected respective projects illuminating the determination histrion for a robust, performant and decentralised statement protocol. 3-slot-finality (3SF) is simply a well-understood protocol obtaining beardown information with dynamic availability, a operation unsocial to protocols specified arsenic Ethereum’s. Explorations successful newer classes of protocols specified arsenic Kudzu, Hydrangea oregon Alpenglow uncover opportunities for improvements connected 3SF with little latency and higher throughput, but indispensable beryllium designed for Ethereum’s unsocial properties.

Improving UX has grown to go a multi-faceted effort, with respective chiseled streams of enactment tackling issues from interoperability, information and privacy. With this note, we’re clarifying our ain interoperability work, and invitation you to find much details connected Trillion Dollar Security and the Kohaku privateness wallet below.

Trillion Dollar Security

Led by Fredrik Svantes and Josh Stark, the Trillion Dollar Security (1TS) inaugural is an ecosystem-wide effort to upgrade Ethereum’s information to assistance bring the satellite onchain. Phase 2 of 1TS tackles UX, including amended models of wide signing, cardinal absorption and wallet information and privateness standards.

Kohaku

Led by Nicolas Consigny and Vitalik Buterin, the Kohaku task develops the indispensable exertion to powerfulness wallets that are backstage crossed their full stack. The task is developed successful collaboration betwixt the EF and assorted outer teams. Kohaku’s halfway goals are (i) an SDK that exposes beardown privacy/security primitives and (ii) a power‑user wallet that ships connected apical of that SDK. In a archetypal signifier the task volition absorption connected the browser hold that targets precocious users introducing privateness and information features. The hold is designed to sphere privateness portion reducing spot assumptions and eliminating unnecessary outer dependencies. The task volition vessel with Helios lightclient, a privacy‑service abstraction, enactment for backstage addresses, autochthonal backstage balances & backstage sends.