Ever since the internet irrevocably changed finance, the world has never looked back. In fact, speed is an essential component underpinning every facet of how finance operates. It’s the difference between closing an arbitrage opportunity or missing out on it altogether, or seeing life-changing funds hit your account right before you miss an important payment.
At the same time, traditional finance is still incredibly opaque, saddled with hidden fees, and designed to keep an elite few at the top while everyone else is locked out entirely. In order for blockchain to truly revolutionize the systems in place today—and to offer users alternatives that are transparent, open, and equitable—the Web3 ecosystem will have to get a whole lot faster.
Additionally, while blockchain’s principles of decentralization and trust are important, outside crypto-native circles most people do not care as much about decentralization as they do about performance. Many users prefer centralized systems, like traditional banks or exchanges, because they are faster, cheaper, and much more efficient.
Despite Ethereum’s decentralized trust, its slow speed and high costs are a serious drawback. Simply put, the most widely used chains are not even close to competing with traditional offerings. This means users will have to look to faster, more centralized offerings to help close the gap.
To strike a balance between performance and decentralization, projects can adopt best practices such as batching transactions to reduce on-chain load, using off-chain order books for faster execution, and optimizing state differences to minimize gas costs and latency.
The real killer app for blockchain technology will be a platform that combines decentralization with performance and that’s as fast, smooth, and cheap as centralized alternatives like Revolut. Once that happens, there won’t be any more conversations about “DeFi vs. TradFi” or “centralization vs. decentralization.”
Instead, we’ll simply have a new standard for the financial industry that operates as fast and as seamlessly as the internet itself.
History is unequivocal: the fastest networks become the default. For blockchain, trust alone isn’t a moat—latency is. The builders who deliver Web2-grade speed without sacrificing openness will own the next decade of finance.
