Which is the Fastest Blockchain?
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 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.
Non-EVM Blockchains Almost 4X Faster Than EVMs on Average
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.
BSC & Polygon Lead As Fastest 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. 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).
Almost All the Real TPS Records Were Set in Past 12 Months
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.
Top Blockchains’ Highest TPS
The largest blockchains, ranked from fastest to slowest based on all-time highest daily average TPS achieved:
| Rank | Blockchain | Highest TPS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Solana | 1,053.65 |
| 2 | Sui | 854.05 |
| 3 | BSC | 378.27 |
| 4 | Polygon | 190.39 |
| 5 | TON | 175.46 |
| 6 | Tron | 159.61 |
| 7 | Near | 117.84 |
| 8 | Avalanche | 89.16 |
| 9 | Cronos | 72.19 |
| 10 | Gnosis | 65.57 |
| 11 | Fantom | 59.17 |
| 12 | Arbitrum | 58.97 |
| 13 | Linea | 55.70 |
| 14 | Aptos | 49.48 |
| 15 | Base | 37.49 |
| 16 | Mantle | 25.47 |
| 17 | Ethereum | 22.70 |
| 18 | Starknet | 12.30 |
| 19 | Optimism | 11.79 |
| 20 | Bitcoin | 10.73 |
| 21 | Blast | 9.90 |
| 22 | Merlin | 7.48 |
| 23 | Mode | 6.52 |
| 24 | zkLink Nova | 3.69 |
| 25 | Thorchain | 2.05 |
Methodology
The study 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.
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Lim Yu Qian
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