Realtime Blocks
Introducing a realtime experience to the world's largest, most decentralized blockchain.
ETHGas Realtime is the new block building sidecar that accelerates Ethereum's user experience up to 240x. This enables all users and dapps to benefit from preconfirmations or synthetic block times as fast as 50ms without compromising security guarantees.
The Realtime Builder streams pre-confirmations, or preliminary state updates continuously before the next block is finalized providing a seamless user experience for all users and dapps, alongside an economic guarantee to support the broadcasted state.
This is built for developers who need a blazingly fast UX from:
Payments: Instant payment confirmations
DeFi: Swap multiple times within a block with positions that update immediately
Marketplaces: Fast and Frictionless
Trading: Prevent frontrunning and delivery real-time price updates.
Background & How it Works
Ethereum blocks are produced every 12 seconds and for years this had been taken as largely immutable. Every new L1 and L2 blockchain's key value proposition has been "we are faster" — and with ETHGas Realtime, that is no longer the case.
ETHGas breaks these blocks into hundreds of intervals so instead of waiting for the full block time to execute all transactions, the execution client continuously creates and broadcasts the current state every 50-100 milliseconds.
Each realtime block includes all transactions processed so far, along with updated balances and contract states. Apps can query this using the ETHGas realtime RPC or othe rfuture RPC providers that integrate us and deliver the speed their end users expect.
How to Integrate Realtime
Integration is straightforward, designed to be fast and low friction with most apps benefiting from minimal code changes.
In production, simply point your app to a Realtime-aware RPC endpoint from your provider of choice. If your provider doesn't support Realtime yet, let us know on Discord and we'll work to get them added,
Alternatively, you can run your own Realtime-aware node using ETHGas's reth image: https://github.com/ethgas-developer/ethgas-reth
This architecture shows the flow of data and responsibilities in the Realtime block system with ETHGas integration:
The ethgas-reth node runs the execution layer and communicates with the Block Builder to produce realtime blocks
When a Validator has delegated their current slot to be sold via ETHGas, the ETHGas Exchange opens the Whole Block Market for the future slot to be sold
Traders, Builders, and Realtime Agents compete to purchase the exact slot and associated sequencing rights through the Whole Block Market (Let's assume that the Realtime Agents acquired the sequencing rights)
The Realtime Agent delegates the block building to the Realtime Block Builder
The Realtime Block Builder sends the block construction status in two directions simultaneously:
Preconfirmed Realtime Blocks: Directly to the WebSocket Proxy for ultra-fast propagation of Realtime block state and preconfirmations
L1 Block: At the end of the slot, the Block Builder submits the block to the Relay, and onto the Validator for block proposal (i.e. the standard PBS path).
The WebSocket Proxy distributes the realtime block states and preconfirmation data to multiple RPC Providers
RPC Providers instantly deliver realtime preconfirmations and realtime state data to End Users, enabling sub-100ms execution guarantees
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