Astar Network Activates Asynchronous Backing to Enhance Performance and Scalability

Astar Network has implemented a significant technical upgrade by activating Asynchronous Backing on its Mainnet this June. This upgrade is designed to enhance the network’s performance, responsiveness, and scalability, marking a crucial step forward for Astar’s infrastructure.

Originally introduced in Polkadot’s Relay Chain, Asynchronous Backing allows parachains to separate block production and validation processes, enabling them to occur simultaneously. This results in a more streamlined and scalable pipeline, reducing block times and increasing throughput, ultimately improving the experience for both developers and users.

Key Improvements in Block Production

The activation of Asynchronous Backing has halved Astar’s block time from 12 seconds to approximately 6 seconds. This reduction enhances network responsiveness and decreases time-to-finality. Despite the increased number of blocks produced annually, ASTR emissions per block have been reduced by 50% to maintain the current inflation levels, ensuring no change in total yearly issuance.

Importantly, the upgrade does not affect dApp staking or governance lockups, as all durations on Astar continue to be calculated based on block units rather than seconds. Governance locking periods and dApp staking cycles remain unchanged.

Enhanced Scalability and User Experience

Asynchronous Backing introduces a pipelined approach to block inclusion, allowing collators to prepare multiple blocks in advance using the “unincluded segment” of recently proposed blocks. This enables backing and inclusion to occur within the same relay chain block, significantly reducing delays and increasing efficiency.

With parablocks now produced every 6 seconds and up to 2 seconds available for execution, the network can support more complex transactions and larger data payloads. This improvement doubles transaction throughput, reduces latency, and offers greater flexibility for developers, all while maintaining finality and security.

The upgrade has been tested on Shiden and validated internally, with the governance vote to activate Asynchronous Backing on Astar successfully passed. Developers are encouraged to test and build on async-enabled environments like Shibuya.

For more technical details, refer to the official Asynchronous Backing – Polkadot Wiki.

Why This Matters: Impact, Industry Trends & Expert Insights

Astar Network has implemented Asynchronous Backing on its Mainnet, significantly enhancing its performance and scalability by reducing block time and increasing throughput.

Current trends in blockchain scalability as of June 2025 include several innovative approaches to enhance performance and efficiency. Layer 2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism are gaining prominence by bundling transactions off-chain, reducing congestion on main chains like Ethereum. This results in faster speeds and lower fees without compromising security. This aligns with Astar’s recent upgrade which aims to improve scalability and throughput by reducing block time and increasing transaction processing speed. Paxful University

Asynchronous backing in blockchain, particularly in Polkadot, is gaining attention with its potential to improve scalability and performance. For instance, Polkadot’s async backing allows collators to produce blocks ahead of their inclusion in the relay chain, enhancing efficiency. This supports the significance of Astar’s upgrade, which aims to enhance network performance and developer support. Polkadot Wiki

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