Ethereum to Cut Exchange and L2 Deposit Times to 13 Seconds With Fast Confirmation Rule

Ethereum will introduce the Fast Confirmation Rule to reduce deposit waiting times to about 13 seconds from the current 2 to 13 minutes for centralized exchanges and L2 networks including Arbitrum and Base, cofounder Vitalik Buterin said. The change, representing an estimated 80% to 98% reduction in confirmation delays, is being implemented by consensus layer client teams without a hard fork and replaces block-counting with a system based on validator attestations, assuming no actor stakes more than 25% of ETH and validator messages arrive within seconds. Researcher Julian Ma called FCR "the new industry standard for L2s and exchanges", while Buterin said it can provide a "firm guarantee" against reversion after a single slot of about 12 seconds under certain network conditions. FCR reuses the existing "safe" tag in the JSON-RPC standard so nodes, RPC providers and exchanges can adopt it without major infrastructure changes, and Buterin noted it fits into Ethereum's roadmap to gradually reduce slot times from 12 seconds toward 2 seconds alongside native privacy and post-quantum upgrades.