Layer 1 blockchain NEAR Protocol has announced a major milestone, hitting the “600-millisecond block time.” This is 0.6 seconds.
The press release explains that the network now delivers 600ms block times with 1.2s finality. They have compared this to other major chains, claiming that on Solana, a block is confirmed in 1.6 seconds (or 4 slots), while on MegaEth, Base, and similar Layer-2s, it takes at least 12 seconds.
Per the announcement, “thanks to NEAR’s Doomslug consensus, having one block built on top gives a substantial finality guarantee and a slashable malicious attack is required to revert the previous block.”
Also, finality (the time for a transaction to become irreversible) is 10 times faster than Solana and 600 times faster than Ethereum, it claims.
Per the team, the update has been “a critical step toward real-time blockchain” user experience. It enables real-time applications, including AI agents, games, and global financial use cases.
Furthermore, the team argues, the speed update removes the need for centralized intermediaries, lowering related risks.
Additionally, it allows blockchain to “feel as instant as Web2 without sacrificing what makes it Web3,” the team states.
Moving Towards 200 Milliseconds
The announcement highlights that NEAR will not stop at 600-millisecond blocks. It plans to lower it to approximately 200 milliseconds by the end of 2025. They say that upcoming innovations surrounding consensus and block production will enable this achievement.
Meanwhile, the latest update came as a result of the recent ‘optimistic block’ implementation in Nightshade 2.0, a major upgrade to the NEAR Protocol’s sharding mechanism. It has allowed shards to “act optimistically” and not wait for block arrival, thus reducing latency by 2x for fast transaction processing.
Moreover, the speed update enables developers to reduce complexity around transaction confirmations, reorgs, and network delays.
Also, it advances NEAR’s work on intents, allowing AI agents and smart contracts to trigger on-chain actions in real time, and receive feedback almost instantly.
“’Blink and it’s final’ isn’t an exaggeration,” the announcement claims. “In the time it takes to blink, your NEAR transaction can finalize on-chain. This is about more than just speed, it also offers developers and end-users strong confidence in the network’s security and reliability. Builders no longer need to design around confirmations or delays—because there aren’t any.”
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, NEAR trades at $3.14. It’s up 1.7% over the past 24 hours, 35% in a week, and 44% in a month. It has decreased by 56% in a year.
The coin hit its all-time high of $20.44 in January 2022. It’s down 85% since.
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