NEAR Announces Next-Generation Protocol Upgrade SPICE, Expected to Reduce Block Time to 200 Milliseconds

Foresight News reports that according to the NEAR blog, its core development team Near One has unveiled the next major protocol upgrade, SPICE (Separation of Consensus and Execution). This marks a critical step toward the Nightshade 3.0 sharding architecture and represents the most significant change to the NEAR protocol since the introduction of stateless validation in 2024. SPICE decouples consensus from execution, allowing validators to reach consensus on transaction order and block hashes without waiting for state computation to complete before producing blocks. This reduces block time from the current 600 milliseconds to 200 milliseconds, approaching the physical limit. The upgrade also supports more complex, long-cycle transactions spanning multiple blocks and enhances parallel processing capabilities through inter-shard synchronization. Previously, Near One announced two upgrades set to go live later this month: dynamic resharding to improve network scalability and the first quantum signature scheme to provide post-quantum security for accounts. Near One stated that the simpler block structure, combined with the already deployed sharded smart contracts, will enhance network security and lay the groundwork for advancing formal verification and reducing contract auditing costs. SPICE is currently in the development phase, with the team planning to implement it in the coming months.