Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum aims to reduce finality time to 8-32 seconds within 5 years

At the 2026 Shanghai Blockchain Week, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that cryptographic technologies like FHE and iO are advancing rapidly, enabling blockchains to move toward programmable information privacy. He highlighted the FOCIL (EIP-7805) proposal as a way to mitigate censorship by having 16 validators provide transaction inclusion lists. Buterin also noted that Ethereum aims to significantly reduce finality time from the current 16 minutes to 8-32 seconds over the next five years by shifting more computation to user devices, mempools, and block building stages.