8 seconds block time in Ethereum is also rather arbitrary, while with TxFlow the time between blocks is close to the minimum time needed for a byzantine majority of validators to acknowledge the block creation.
The reason why conservative timeouts are needed is that you do NOT want a protocol which incentivizes sending messages as fast as possible, as such a protocol would incentivize validator colocation, pooling along with many other “optimizations” that increase message speed at the cost of network fragility.
I think there are ways to reduce dependence on synchronized clocks in ethereum by switching to relative time, but this is something that I still need to think about more to figure out the best way.
- reduced forkfulness
The Casper beacon chain has basically zero forkfulness assuming low network latency and less than ~40% malicious.