Important changes are being made to how block.timestamp, block.number, and blockhash behave on the zkSync Era, Matter Labs developer relations engineer Antonio said on Github. Currently block.timestamp, block.number and blockhash return the timestamp, number and hash value of the L1 batch respectively. After this update is completed, the timestamp, number and hash value of the L2 block will be returned respectively.
Antonio said that many applications require higher temporal fidelity, which can be achieved by referencing L1 batches. With these changes, contracts will be able to be timed at the L2 block level (roughly every few seconds), this information is already available on the API, but with the new changes, developers will be able to access it directly within the smart contract. We are currently developing this change and will be testing the update process internally before moving to testnet and eventual mainnet.