NEAR Protocol Slashes Block Time to 0.6 Seconds, Outpaces Solana and Ethereum

NEAR Protocol, a Layer 1 blockchain, has achieved a significant milestone by reducing its block time to 600 milliseconds. This means that the network now processes blocks in 0.6 seconds, with a finality time of 1.2 seconds. The protocol claims that this performance surpasses other major chains, such as Solana, which confirms a block in 1.6 seconds, and Ethereum, which takes significantly longer.

The announcement highlights that NEAR's Doomslug consensus mechanism provides a substantial finality guarantee, making it difficult for malicious attacks to revert previous blocks. This update is seen as a critical step toward real-time blockchain user experience, enabling applications like AI agents, games, and global financial use cases. The speed update also removes the need for centralized intermediaries, lowering related risks and allowing blockchain to feel as instant as Web2 without sacrificing the benefits of Web3.

NEAR Protocol plans to further reduce its block time to approximately 200 milliseconds by the end of 2025. This achievement will be enabled by upcoming innovations surrounding consensus and block production. The latest update is a result of the recent ‘optimistic block’ implementation in Nightshade 2.0, a major upgrade to the NEAR Protocol’s sharding mechanism. This upgrade allows shards to act optimistically and not wait for block arrival, thus reducing latency by 2x for fast transaction processing.

The speed update enables developers to reduce complexity around transaction confirmations, reorgs, and network delays. It also 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. The announcement claims that the network's security and reliability are strong, giving developers and end-users confidence in the network. Builders no longer need to design around confirmations or delays because there aren’t any.