Solana leads as the fastest among large-scale blockchains: CoinGecko

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Research from CoinGecko says that Solana is the fastest among large-scale blockchains, with its actual daily average transactions per second (TPS) reaching a record high of 1,504 on April 6, 2023 as the meme coin mania took off. Such a statistic makes Solana roughly 46 times faster than Ethereum, and 5 times faster than Polygon.

To determine the fastest blockchains, CoinGecko’s study analyzed the processing speed of the top 30 blockchains based on their total value locked (TVL) ranking on DefiLlama as of May 15, 2024. Processing speed was measured using the actual or realized transactions per second (TPS) metric, calculated as a daily average to ensure a standardized comparison across as many blockchains as possible.

CoinGecko claims the highest real TPS values reported in the study may differ from other calculations because these use daily averages. The TPS data was sourced from publicly available information provided by the respective blockchain explorers and Dune Analytics. However, some blockchains, including Hyperliquid, PulseChain, Kava, Cardano, and Rootstock, were excluded from the study due to a lack of sufficient data.

Findings

Despite ranking as the fastest blockchain, Solana has still only achieved 1.6% of its theoretical maximum speed of 65,000 TPS, CoinGecko claims. The surging number of transactions resulted in network congestion, and it remains to be seen how quickly Solana can record higher real TPS after its upcoming upgrades.

The second-fastest blockchain is another non-EVM, Sui, which recorded its highest real TPS of 854 in July 2023 as onchain game Sui 8192 gained popularity. Other fast blockchains among the non-EVMs include TON at 175 TPS and Near Protocol at 118 TPS. Altogether, the 8 non-EVM large blockchains have an average peak TPS of 284, making them 3.9 times faster than the 17 largest EVM and EVM-compatible blockchains, which realized an average of just 74 TPS.

Among the EVM blockchains, BNB Smart Chain (BSC) achieved 378 in real TPS on December 7, 2023, amid the inscriptions-driven surge in onchain activity. This makes BSC the fastest blockchain among EVMs, despite only ranking third overall and reaching less than half of Sui’s realized processing speed.

Similarly, the inscriptions craze allowed Polygon to record 190 in real TPS on November 16, 2023, making it the fastest among the largest Ethereum scaling solutions and 8.4 times faster than Ethereum itself.

Ethereum and its ten largest scaling solutions registered a total real TPS of 500, placing their combined processing speed ahead of BSC but still slower than Solana and Sui.

Almost all of the 25 blockchains experienced their highest real TPS over the last one year, pointing to onchain activity increasing and reaching higher levels in recent months, led by inscriptions and meme coin speculation.

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