Movement Labs Claims One Second L2 Transaction Confirmations Are Possible

Movement Labs, a developer of Move-based Ethereum Layer 2 networks, believes it can bring down L2 transaction confirmation speeds to just one second.

In a Sept. 2 announcement, Movement Labs unveiled a new transaction confirmation mechanism called “postconfirmation,” estimating that the technique could reduce confirmation times to roughly one second.

Postconfirmation finalizes a transaction once two-thirds of network validators have attested that the transactions contained within a block are correct. Validators are disincentivized from dishonest attestations through a slashing mechanism that confiscates staked collateral.

Movement Labs said postconfirmation does not replace mainnet finalization but serves as a mechanism to "quickly provide some guarantees about the result of a transaction.”

"Once the contract has received a 2/3 (super-majority) of positive attestations for a new block, the new block is postconfirmed," Movement Labs said. "Postconfirmations are fast (~1 second) because they are delivered right after the execution of a block of transactions when a new block is created.”

For comparison, Layer 2s using zero-knowledge proofs, such as ZKsync, Starknet, and Polygon zkEVM, provide transaction confirmations within 30 minutes. Optimistic rollups using fraud proofs, which include Arbitrum, OP Mainnet, and Base, offer cheaper fees but require seven days to finalize transactions on the Ethereum mainnet.

Movement Labs said the lengthy finalization delays associated with Layer 2 networks can limit the scope of supported DeFi applications.

Postconfirmation also supports validators providing zero-knowledge proof to finalize transactions following postconfirmation.

Move

Movement Labs launched in 2022 to advance the application of the Move programming language in web3. In April, Movement Labs scored $38 million in a Series A financing round led by Polychain Capital.

Movement Labs' launched a public testnet for Movement Network in July. The network is the first Move-based Layer 2 supporting Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contracts. At the time, the project also announced it had received $160 million in committed total value locked (TVL), including $100 million from Solv Protocol.

That same month, Movement Network integrated with Polygon’s AggLayer, Polygon’s unified ecosystem of Layer 2 networks, in a bid to bolster Movement Network’s interoperability and liquidity.

Move was originally developed by Meta for its Libra (later renamed to Diem) blockchain, which was announced in 2019. However, the Diem project shut down in January 2022.

Developers from Diem later went on to found Aptos Labs and Mysten Labs, the teams behind the Move-based Layer 1 blockchains Aptos and Sui.