Ethereum is not instant, but collateral could make it feel that way

When a payment app tells you a transfer is complete, you start making decisions. You hand over whatever you've sold, spend the money you've received, or close the app and get on with your day. That little confirmation you get is enough for you to stop thinking about whether the transaction worked.Crypto companies want to offer that reassurance almost instantly, even when the blockchain underneath still needs time to finish settling the payment. One way to do it is to have an operator promise the result early and put money behind that promise.Puffer, a company building transaction infrastructure for Ethereum, is working on a system like this. On Sept. 22, it announced that Google Cloud would operate a gateway, receiving transactions and guaranteeing their results before settlement. Puffer's UniFi network would be the first to use it.Both UniFi and Puffer Preconf, the service issuing these guarantees, were still running in a testing environment as of Sept. 23, CEO Amir Forouzani told CryptoSlate. Their performance with customers putting real money through them still has to be established.But the idea gets at something familiar to anyone who uses a financial app. When the screen tells...