A group of Ethereum researchers coordinated by Ben Edgington, with Francesco D'Amato, Roberto Saltini, Yann Vonlanthen and Mikhail Kalinin, has filed a draft fast-finality proposal as GitHub pull request #12566. A formal EIP number has not been assigned yet.

Today each validator casts a single vote that both picks the next block and locks in older ones. The draft splits these into two separate votes, so finality can run on its own faster timeline instead of waiting on the block selection rotation.

The target is a fourfold cut: from about 16 minutes to roughly 4 minutes to finality.

Faster finality lowers the capital that bridges, exchanges and payment services must keep tied up while transfers settle. A service fronting $1M of transfers per hour would lock around $267K at 16 minutes versus about $67K at 4 minutes. The draft is unfinished, with many aspects still TBD and no activation date.