Ethereum EIP-8411 Achieves Sub‑Second Payload Propagation

Ethereum researchers have demonstrated that a segmented gossip design, described in Draft networking EIP‑8411, can reduce the median propagation time of a 1 MiB execution payload to under one second in simulation. The traditional single‑message approach required roughly five seconds for the same payload.

How EIP‑8411 Works

EIP‑8411 replaces the single execution_payload gossip topic (introduced by EIP‑7732) with an execution_payload_chunks topic. A builder splits the payload into fixed‑size chunks (16 KiB in the prototype) and includes a Merkle root in the execution bid. Each chunk carries a Merkle inclusion proof, allowing nodes to verify a piece independently and forward it before the full payload is received.

Simulation Results

The prototype was tested with 500 simulated nodes, realistic geographic latency, 50 Mbps upload and 100 Mbps download capacities, and ten random network seeds. Results showed:

• Median propagation fell from ~5 s (single message) to ~0.75 s (segmented).
• Tail latency dropped from ~6 s to just over 1 s.
• Using batch publishing reduced overall latency further.

Advanced Tier Designs

Beyond the basic tier, researchers explored:

• Tier 2: Limited‑peer pushes with disciplined pulls, cutting duplicate traffic to about 1.5 payload copies per node.
• Tier 3: Reed‑Solomon erasure coding, providing the lowest tail latency and resilience to withheld segments, at the cost of higher source bandwidth.

Open Questions and Next Steps

The work remains experimental. Open issues include increased control‑message traffic, CPU overhead from handling many small messages, and potential benefits of a QUIC‑based networking stack. Prototype code for Prysm and go‑libp2p‑pubsub is available behind an --enable-segmented-payload-gossip flag, but it is not a finalized proposal.

Governance Outlook

EIP‑8411 is slated for a Proposed for Inclusion (PFI) discussion at the Hegotá upgrade call on September 17, 2026. It depends on the earlier EIP‑7732 proposer‑builder separation and has not yet been activated on mainnet.