Polkadot, a Layer 1 ecosystem co-founded by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood, has debuted asynchronous support, an enhancement expected to significantly improve the network’s scalability, cost, speed, and flexibility, and accelerate the growth of decentralized applications. The team said asynchronous support cuts block times in half (from 12 seconds to 6 seconds), enables parallel transaction verification block generation, and provides up to 10 times the throughput for the Polkadot parachain consensus protocol. " (Coindesk)