Base activates Flashblocks, slashing block times to 200ms in Ethereum scaling race

Coinbase’s Layer 2 network, Base, has activated Flashblocks, reducing block times from two seconds to 200 milliseconds, the project announced on Wednesday.

Flashblocks streams “sub‑blocks” to validators every 0.2 seconds, allowing transactions to be confirmed “from click to confirmed in the time it takes to think,” the Base development team wrote on X. The upgrade, built in collaboration with Flashbots, had been tested on Base’s Sepolia network in February, when engineers achieved the same latency and promised a mainnet rollout in the second quarter.

Incubated by the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase, Base is an optimistic rollup that processes blockchain transactions off Ethereum’s base network. Base periodically bundles and broadcasts these transactions on the main Ethereum chain, a typical practice for Layer 2s. The Block’s data dashboard indicates that Base is the most widely used Ethereum Layer 2 network among daily active users.

By slashing block times tenfold, Base aims to outpace further rival Ethereum scaling solutions, such as Arbitrum and Optimism, which finalize blocks roughly every two seconds. The speed boost is expected to unlock high-frequency use cases, ranging from real-time trading and on-chain gaming to instant social-media interactions, inside the new Base App unveiled this week.