Coingecko: Which blockchain has the fastest transaction speed?

Author: Lim Yu Qian, Coingecko; Compiler: Wuzhu, Golden Finance

1. Who is the fastest blockchain?

Solana has proven to be the fastest among large blockchains, with its actual daily average transaction volume (TPS) reaching an all-time high of 1,504 on April 6 this year during the memecoin boom. This makes Solana 46 times faster than Ethereum and more than 5 times faster than Polygon, the Ethereum scaling solution with the highest TPS.

Despite being listed as the fastest blockchain in terms of transaction speed, Solana still only achieved 1.6% of its theoretical maximum speed of 65,000 TPS.

At the same time, the surge in transaction volume has led to network congestion, and it remains to be seen how quickly Solana can reach higher real TPS after the upcoming upgrade.

Second, the average speed of non-EVM blockchains is almost 4 times that of EVM

The second fastest blockchain is another non-EVM Sui, which hit a peak real TPS of 854 in July 2023 as the on-chain game Sui 8192 became popular.

Other fast non-EVM blockchains include TON at 175 TPS and Near Protocol at 118 TPS. Meanwhile, non-EVM blockchains with relatively low actual processing speeds are Aptos (49 TPS), Starknet (12 TPS), Bitcoin (11 TPS), and Thorchain (2 TPS).

In total, the average peak TPS of the eight largest non-EVM blockchains is 284. In comparison, the average TPS of the 17 largest EVM and EVM-compatible blockchains is only 74. This makes the non-EVM blockchain 3.9 times faster than the EVM blockchain.

3. BSC and Polygon become the fastest EVM blockchains

Against the backdrop of a surge in on-chain activity driven by inscriptions, BNB Smart Chain (BSC) reached an actual TPS of 378 on December 7, 2023. This makes BSC the fastest blockchain in the EVM, although it ranks only third overall and achieves less than half the processing speed of Sui.

Similarly, the inscription craze allowed Polygon to reach an actual TPS of 190 on November 16, 2023. As a result, Polygon is currently the fastest of the largest Ethereum scaling solutions, 8.4 times faster than Ethereum itself, although 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 actual processing speed. This may be partly due to the lower number of on-chain transactions on Ethereum scaling solutions, resulting in slower TPS achieved by these blockchains.

The total actual TPS of Ethereum and its top ten scaling solutions is 500, and its combined processing speed is ahead of BSC, but still slower than Solana and Sui. In addition to Polygon, the other 4 scaling solutions have been proven to be faster than Ethereum (23 TPS), including Arbitrum (59 TPS), Linea (56 TPS), Base (37 TPS) and Mantle (25 TPS).

Fourth, almost all real TPS records were set in the past 12 months

24 of the 25 blockchains experienced their highest real TPS in the past year, ranging from Tron on June 12, 2023 to the most recent zkLink Nova on May 13, 2024.Specifically, 12 set their highest real TPS in 2023, and another 12 set their highest real TPS in 2024. The only exception was Thorchain, which reached its highest real TPS in May 2022.

This shows that on-chain activity has continued to increase and reach higher levels in recent months, driven by inscription and meme coin speculation.

V. Highest TPS of Top Blockchains

The largest blockchains, ranked from fastest to slowest based on the highest average daily TPS achieved in history: