Ethereum researchers submitted a Decoupled Consensus proposal on Oct. 21, 2026, to cut expected transaction finality from about 16 minutes to four minutes. The proposal is unfinished, has no approved activation date and would require a hard fork.
The design would separate block selection from finality voting. Smaller validator committees would select blocks, while the full validator network would keep voting on finality, with approval from at least two-thirds of active staked ether required. Researchers say the redesign could make some forms of manipulation harder, but details on incentives, penalties, voting schedules and security testing remain unresolved. It would not itself introduce quantum-resistant signatures.
