What is block time?

Every chain targets its own interval. Bitcoin aims for about ten minutes. Ethereum runs fixed 12-second slots. Base and OP Mainnet seal a block every two seconds, Solana's slots last about 400 milliseconds, and Arbitrum turns out blocks roughly every quarter of a second.

Block time tells you when a transaction gets included, not when it is final. The two can sit far apart: an L2 includes you within seconds, while settlement back on Ethereum comes much later. For a trade, inclusion is usually what decides whether you get your price.

Real intervals drift. Missed slots and congestion stretch them. Some chains also hand out preconfirmations, an early promise from the sequencer that you are in. Base has streamed 200 millisecond Flashblocks since July 2025, so a Base swap can feel ten times quicker than its two-second block suggests. Ethereum developers have discussed halving slots to 6 seconds (EIP-7782), but the idea was left out of the Glamsterdam upgrade.

Picture two traders acting on the same headline. One trades on a chain with 12-second blocks and waits six seconds on average for the next one. The other is on sub-second slots and gets in almost at once, so far less price movement fits between the click and the fill.

Also called: slot time, block interval.

Chain pulse measures block time on Base and Robinhood Chain, as the average gap over the last 30 Base blocks or the last 600 on Robinhood Chain, where blocks come so fast the widget shows milliseconds. The Chain status widget shows block age per network and tags each row Live, Lagging or Stalled by how old the newest block is, with separate limits for Solana, Ethereum and the other EVM chains. Solana pulse shows slots per second, throughput and progress through the current epoch.

• Chain pulse
• Chain status
• Solana pulse

• Block height
• Finality
• Layer 2
• Gas fees
• TPS