Solana Ranked The World’s Fastest Blockchain, Outshining Ethereum, Polygon

‘Ethereum killer’ Solana has taken the blockchain ecosystem by storm after becoming the fastest blockchain in the world with record transaction speed. Research from CoinGecko shows that the network processed an astounding 95 million transactions in a single day. This achievement is not just a technological feat but also marks a huge milestone in the blockchain and crypto industry. 

Solana Takes The Speed Crown

Solana has emerged as the cheetah of the cryptosphere thanks to its lightning-fast speed.

According to a recent research report by crypto data aggregator CoinGecko, Solana leads with the highest daily average transactions per second (TPS), clocking in at 1,053 TPS. This remarkable achievement in speed solidifies Solana’s status as a so-called “Ethereum killer,” which has long been questioned due to the constant network outages.

Sui comes in second at 854 TPS, followed by Binance Smart Chain (BSC) at 378 TPS, Polygon at 190 TPS, TON at 175 TPS, Tron at 159 TPS, Near at 117 TPS, and Avalanche at 89 TPS.

Meanwhile, established networks like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) have long struggled with transaction speed limitations. Ethereum recorded an average peak TPS of 22.8, while the world’s largest blockchain, Bitcoin, processed just 10.7 transactions per second.

CoinGecko analyzed the processing speed of the top 30 blockchains based on their total value locked (TVL) ranking on DefiLlama as of May 15, 2024, to ascertain the fastest blockchains. Processing speed was calculated using the actual or realized TPS metric, measured as a daily average, to ensure a uniform comparison across multiple blockchains.

Solana’s peak performance was awe-inspiring, attaining 1,504 TPS on April 6, 2023, owing to an upsurge in meme coin transactions. This performance makes Solana approximately 46 times faster than Ethereum and 5 times faster than Polygon — the fastest among Ethereum scaling solutions.

CoinGecko’s study noted that despite ranking as the fastest blockchain, Solana has only achieved 1.6% of its theoretical maximum TPS of 65,000.

Solana isn’t even designed for maximum throughput. It’s designed to synchronize state to as many boxes around the world as fast as physics allow. https://t.co/lTfDJuG6mp

— toly | bip-420 (@aeyakovenko) May 17, 2024

Solana’s exceptional speed has not gone unnoticed in the cryptocurrency market. At press time, SOL changed hands for $173, representing a 2.7% gain on the day and an 18.2% increase on the weekly chart. This performance underscores the market’s confidence in Solana’s potential to revolutionize the digital transaction landscape.

Is Solana Truly An “Ethereum Killer?”

Solana started its mainnet operations in March 2020, with a claimed throughput of 50,000 transactions per second (TPS). The network sought to improve Ethereum’s scalability inefficiencies.

Unlike Ethereum, which relies on layer-2 scaling solutions to enhance scalability, Solana offers scalable solutions for a decentralized ecosystem. But Solana’s technique has been widely criticized following its previous repeated outages. In early April, soaring demand for meme coins caused roughly 76% of Solana transactions to fail.

Prior to that, block production on Solana halted for around five hours before developers and validators could build and test a release that contained remediation.