World Chain announces it will implement full block access lists on August 17th, becoming the "first" Layer 2 (L2) network in production to transmit EIP-7928 access list data within each flashblock. This implementation marks a significant step in efforts to scale blockchain throughput without increasing the hardware requirements for independent validators.
According to a press statement, the update allows validators to verify transactions in parallel during the block formation stage, enabling throughput of up to 1 gigagas per second without increasing hardware demands.
World Chain's implementation changes how validators confirm block validity. Instead of sequentially re-executing each transaction, full block access lists provide a record of the state read from and written to by each transaction. This allows independent transactions to be verified simultaneously across multiple CPU cores.
The network extends the EIP-7928 specification by streaming access list data every 200 milliseconds via the flashblock architecture. Validators begin verifying transactions immediately as blocks are assembled, reducing latency and distributing verification work across the entire block assembly process.
EIP-7928 is a proposed Ethereum upgrade that introduces Block Access Lists (BAL) - a new, consensus-verified record of every account and storage slot affected during block execution. This structure explicitly describes all state read and write operations in Ethereum blocks, allowing clients to verify and schedule execution in parallel rather than detecting dependencies on the fly.
Unlike the planned implementation of EIP-7928 in Ethereum as part of the upcoming Glamsterdam upgrade, World Chain is implementing this feature via a runtime flag. Client operators can upgrade ahead of the mainnet launch without requiring a coordinated network-wide hard fork.
Internal testing on World Chain networks showed that verification latency remained stable even with a sharp increase in throughput reaching one gigagas per second on standard cloud infrastructure. The results suggest blockchain networks can significantly scale throughput without proportionally increasing the computational power required for chain validation.
This launch represents the first production implementation of streaming EIP-7928 block access lists and contributes to Ethereum's broader scaling roadmap. World Chain states this approach enhances performance while preserving accessibility for independent validators - a key requirement for maintaining decentralized networks.
