Optimum says Ethereum block delivery is up to 3.5 times faster

Optimum says about 90% of blocks reached participating validators roughly twice as fast, according to a November 10 statement from co-founder Muriel Médard. The company’s launch announcement reported delivery speeds two to four times faster than the GossipSub baseline. Its analysis of 50,292 Ethereum slots found an average advantage of 335 milliseconds, or a 3.3-fold improvement in that comparison.

The protocol uses Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC), which sends coded combinations of data that receiving nodes can use to reconstruct the original information. Under Ethereum’s existing GossipSub system, nodes forward messages to peers and can receive duplicate copies. Optimum’s gateway connects to a validator’s existing consensus client and relays blocks and attestations through a separate communication system. It supports Prysm, Lighthouse, Teku, Nimbus and Lodestar; validators can still receive messages through standard peer-to-peer connections.

Independent findings have been mixed. StereumLabs tested 36 mainnet nodes and observed earlier block arrivals on Lighthouse, Prysm and Grandine, little change on Teku, and slower results on Nimbus. The researchers did not find statistically significant improvements across the sample. Optimum said its global acceleration system was active during the test and may have benefited nodes outside the treatment group. A Lido evaluation recorded blocks arriving 407 milliseconds sooner over mump2p across 180,327 slots in a September 17–October 15 testnet period; researchers cautioned that testnet results do not directly estimate mainnet performance.

At launch, Optimum reported 16 participating operators managing about 22,000 validator keys and more than 1.4 million staked ETH, which the company valued at approximately $3.4 billion in Total Value Boosted. By November 3, it said participating validators represented 7.8% of all staked ETH, up from more than 3% at launch. The service is free for validator block propagation. Operators include Blockdaemon, Everstake, P2P.org, Stakefish, Luganodes, InfStones and Validation Cloud. Restaking provider ether.fi required its 12 node operators to use the protocol.

Vitalik Buterin has separately cited erasure-coded peer-to-peer networking as part of Ethereum’s longer-term security and consensus roadmap, while noting implementation complexity as a tradeoff. His proposals, including changes to validator participation and finality, are distinct from mump2p’s current deployment and would need further development before altering consensus operation.