Solana set a record for throughput among L1 and L2 networks

What’s new? Analysts at the cryptocurrency market data aggregator CoinGecko have named Solana the fastest blockchain. Amid the hype surrounding Solana-based meme tokens, its daily average number of transactions per second (TPS) hit a record of 1054 on April 6. That makes Solana 46 times faster than Ethereum and more than 5 times faster than Polygon, which has the highest TPS among Ethereum’s Layer 2 (L2) scaling solutions.

CoinGecko’s report

What else is known? Despite being considered the fastest blockchain, Solana still only achieved 1,6% of its theoretical maximum speed of 65 000 transactions per second, CoinGecko emphasizes.

In addition, the growing number of transactions has led to network congestion, and “it remains to be seen how quickly Solana can record higher real TPS after its upcoming upgrades,” the analysts note.

On average, blockchains that do not use the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) run nearly four times faster than their EVM-compatible competitors. For example, the eight major blockchains without EVM support have an average maximum throughput of 284 TPS. In comparison, the average of the 17 largest EVM-capable blockchains was only 74 TPS.

The second-fastest overall was Sui blockchain without EVM support with 854 TPS, recorded last July after the release of Sui 8192, a game that caught the attention of many users and increased network activity.

Ava Labs introduces a solution to increase Avalanche throughput to 100 000 transactions per second

Initially, Vryx development will be deployed on the HyperSDK platform

Read more

In third place is BNB Smart Chain (BSC), which is compatible with EVM. It posted a record 378 TPS on December 7, 2023 amid the rising popularity of assets like Inscriptions. In fourth place was Polygon with a record 190 TPS, which was also achieved as the hype around Inscriptions grew on November 16 last year.

Other fast non-EVM blockchains include TON with 175 TPS and Near Protocol with 118 TPS. Lower real throughput was recorded by EVM-incompatible networks Aptos (49 TPS), Starknet (12 TPS), Bitcoin (11 TPS), and Thorchain (2 TPS).

In addition to Polygon, other L2 scaling solutions that have proven to be effective include Arbitrum (59 TPS), Linea (56 TPS), Base (37 TPS), and Mantle (25 TPS). The main Ethereum blockchain only demonstrates 23 TPS.

Earlier this year, the Base developers claimed much higher throughput.

Base throughput has increased to 300-400 transactions per second

Data cited by one of the network’s developers

Read more

The analysts noted that of the 25 blockchains studied, 24 of them have updated their TPS record in the past 12 months, with half of them doing so last year and the other half already in the current year. The only exception is Thorchain, which reached the record in May 2022.

“This points to onchain activity increasing and reaching higher levels in recent months, led by inscriptions and memecoin speculation,” CoinGecko concluded.

Against the backdrop of the report’s publication, the exchange rate of the Solana native token showed an increase of 6% overnight to $169.