'Millisecond' Preconfirmations Make It to Ethereum via New RPC

Why It Matters

If widely adopted, the approach could reshape dApp performance and competitive dynamics among node providers and relayers, while raising questions about security trade-offs, validator coordination and transaction ordering incentives.

Summary

Infrastructure provider Primev announced a “FAST RPC” that enables Ethereum mainnet transfers to reach effective block times as low as ~200 milliseconds by issuing millisecond-scale preconfirmations. The RPC preconfirms transactions before final inclusion in blocks, cutting user-facing latency from seconds to fractions of a second and promising near-instant settlement for wallet UX, payments and high-frequency trading on Ethereum. If widely adopted, the approach could reshape dApp performance and competitive dynamics among node providers and relayers, while raising questions about security trade-offs, validator coordination and transaction ordering incentives.