# The power of faster blocks

**URL:** https://research.arbitrum.io/t/the-power-of-faster-blocks/9609
**Category:** Uncategorized
**Created:** [May 31, 2024, 12:35pm UTC](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/the-power-of-faster-blocks/9609 "2024-05-31T12:35:25Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 4

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### Author: ![0xEvan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/0/65b543/32.png) [@0xEvan](https://research.arbitrum.io/u/0xEvan)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2024, 2:31pm UTC](https://research.arbitrum.io/t/the-power-of-faster-blocks/9609/4 "2024-05-31T14:31:54Z")

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> [@mevmerlin](#):
>
> The other advantage of fast blocks is that it turns your sequencer into tradfi latency games for searchers. On Arbitrum, I’m forced to co-locate servers to the closest possible proximity, or I’m out of the game. In contrast, while OP’s design lacks elegance, its auction process is way more fair. I can whip up a trading strategy in a few hours, deploy it on OP, and actually compete. To try that on Arbitrum means sinking $10k+ just to co-locate and even have a shot. This dead weight loss is not very good for competition. Im afraid we don’t understand the repercussions of this small block time accelerationism.

I think we could look at Solana as an evolving glimpse of the future, which has ~400ms block times in practice today. The open question I wonder about is - does Arbitrum trend towards Solana like macro behavior on trading flow?

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