Puffer, an Ethereum transaction-infrastructure company, is testing a system that lets apps treat a transaction as done before Ethereum finishes settling it. Google Cloud will operate the gateway issuing these early guarantees, backed by collateral that can be seized if the promise fails. The open question is who gets made whole when a guarantee breaks.
Puffer wants Ethereum apps to feel instant even though the network is not. On Sept. 22, the company announced that Google Cloud would operate a gateway that receives transactions and guarantees their results before settlement finishes, with its UniFi network as the first user.
What a preconfirmation actually promises
Ethereum's base layer proposes blocks in 12-second slots, and full finality usually takes minutes. Many apps instead run on rollups, which process transactions separately and pass information to Ethereum for settlement, giving users early confirmations from the operator handling their transaction.
Puffer's gateway goes further: CEO Amir Forouzani described a hypothetical swap of 1 ETH for 2,600 USDC, where the gateway promises the execution result itself, not just that the transaction will be included in the record. Forouzani said Puffer's transaction times were configured at 50 milliseconds, though that figure has not been independently verified with paying customers, and both UniFi and Puffer Preconf were still in testing as of Sept. 23.
The cost of being wrong
Puffer backs its promises with collateral — assets an operator forfeits through slashing if it breaks a preconfirmation. According to Forouzani, a failed preconfirmation would cost the gateway 1 ETH. But Puffer's answers to CryptoSlate did not explain who receives the penalized ETH or how compensation to an affected user would be calculated and paid.
The company's July 2025 technical outline put slashing in a later phase, and Forouzani did not provide a transaction count or observation period to support his claim that there had been no failures under the current design.
Who is responsible at each stage
Forouzani said another gateway would take over if Google Cloud's went offline, and that the first phase would launch without delegation from Ethereum's base-layer validators — the early guarantee comes from the gateways, while Ethereum still handles final settlement.
Developers, not customers, will decide how much assurance is enough before letting a purchase proceed. Ethereum also has separate proposals to shorten its own block times, which could narrow the gap these gateways are built to cover.
Source: CryptoSlate
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