Dwell-based text entry seems to peak at 20 words per minute (WPM). Yet, little is known about the factors contributing to this limit, except that it requires extensive training. Thus, we conducted a longitudinal study, broke the overall dwell-based selection time into six different components, and identified several design challenges and opportunities. Subsequently, we designed two novel dwell keyboards that use multiple yet much shorter dwell thresholds: Dual-Threshold Dwell (DTD) and Multi-Threshold Dwell (MTD). The performance analysis showed that MTD (18.3 WPM) outperformed both DTD (15.3 WPM) and the conventional Constant-Threshold Dwell (12.9 WPM). Notably, absolute novices achieved these speeds within just 30 phrases. Moreover, MTD’s performance is also the fastest-ever reported average text entry speed for gaze-based keyboards. Finally, we discuss how our chosen parameters can be further optimized to pave the way toward more efficient dwell-based text entry.