The fastest blockchain has reportedly processed 91M transactions in a day, according to an update shared by CoinGecko.
CoinkGecko recently shared a detailed report that examines which network support the fastest blockchain in the fast-evolving Web3 space.
According to the report from CoinGecko, Solana has proven to be “the fastest among large blockchains, with its actual daily average transactions per second (TPS) reaching a record high of 1,504 on April 6 this year amid the memecoin mania.”
This, according to the CoinGeclo report, “makes Solana 46 times faster than Ethereum, and more than 5 times faster than Polygon, which has the highest TPS among Ethereum scaling solutions.”
Despite ranking as the fastest blockchain, Solana has “still only achieved 1.6% of its theoretical maximum speed of 65,000 TPS.”
At the same time, 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. Meanwhile, the non-EVM blockchains that have recorded relatively lower real processing speed are Aptos (49 TPS), Starknet (12 TPS), Bitcoin (11 TPS) and Thorchain (2 TPS).”
Altogether, the 8 non-EVM large blockchains have “an average peak TPS of 284.”
In comparison, the 17 largest EVM and EVM-compatible blockchains “realized an average of just 74 TPS. This makes the non-EVM blockchains 3.9 times faster than the EVM blockchains.”
BNB Smart Chain (BSC) reportedly “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.”
Polygon is therefore currently “the fastest among the largest Ethereum scaling solutions and 8.4 times faster than Ethereum itself, even as Polygon lags further behind the top 3 fastest blockchains.”
In other words, individual Ethereum scaling solutions and layer 2s “have not yet been able to surpass other layer 1s in terms of real processing speed.”
This might partly be due “to the lower number of onchain transactions on Ethereum scaling solutions, resulting in slower realized TPS for these blockchains.”
Altogether, 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. Besides Polygon, the 4 other scaling solutions that have proven to be faster than Ethereum (23 TPS) include Arbitrum (59 TPS), Linea (56 TPS), Base (37 TPS) and Mantle (25 TPS).”
24 out of the 25 blockchains “experienced their highest real TPS over the last one year, ranging from Tron on June 12, 2023 to zkLink Nova most recently on May 13, 2024.”
Specifically, 12 recorded “their highest real TPS in 2023 and another 12 in 2024.”
The only exception is Thorchain, which “achieved its highest real TPS in May 2022.”
This points to onchain activity increasing and “reaching higher levels in recent months, led by inscriptions and memecoin speculation.”
Methodology
The study released by CoinGecko examined the “processing speed of the largest blockchains.”
The top 30 blockchains were “selected based on total value locked (TVL) ranking on DefiLlama on May 15, 2024. Processing speed was measured using actual or realized transactions per second (TPS), and defined in terms of daily average in order to obtain standardized TPS for as many chains as possible.”
As a result, the highest real TPS “calculated here may be higher or lower than other calculations.”
TPS was calculated using publicly “available data from the respective blockchain explorers and Dune Analytics. Chains that lacked sufficient data were excluded from the study, namely Hyperliquid, PulseChain, Kava, Cardano and Rootstock.”
