Solana News Today: Solana Hits 100K TPS in Stress Test as Critics Question Real-World Relevance

Solana has reached a significant technical milestone, recording 107,540 transactions per second (TPS) on its mainnet during a stress test over the weekend, marking what developers claim is the first time a major blockchain has achieved 100,000 TPS [1]. The test was conducted by developer “dr cavey phd,” with the results announced by Helius co-founder Mert Mumtaz on social media [1]. The achievement involved primarily “noop” program calls—lightweight operations required by the Solana protocol to maintain consensus—rather than actual token transfers or complex smart contract executions [2].

The test occurred in block 360650523, which included 43,016 successful transactions and 50 failures [2]. Mumtaz emphasized that while the test was artificial in nature, it demonstrated Solana’s potential to handle 80,000–100,000 TPS in real-world scenarios, including transfers and oracle updates [2]. However, the blockchain’s typical daily throughput is far lower, with Solscan reporting around 3,600 TPS [3]. Notably, approximately two-thirds of these transactions are validator voting messages necessary for consensus, rather than user-initiated transactions [3]. Real user activity averages between 900 and 1,050 TPS, primarily driven by memecoin trading on platforms like Pump.fun and Let’sBonk [3].

Critics argue that the 100K TPS figure is not reflective of real-world usage, as the test utilized minimal computational work and did not involve meaningful financial activity or smart contract interactions [2]. For instance, traditional payment networks like Visa and Mastercard process 24,000 and 5,000 TPS, respectively, under normal conditions, and these figures represent actual financial transactions rather than stress test metrics [2]. Meanwhile, Layer 2 solutions on Ethereum can achieve tens of thousands of TPS but rely on off-chain aggregation rather than native chain throughput [2]. In comparison, Solana leads in real user TPS over other major blockchains, outperforming Sui (854 TPS), Binance Smart Chain (378 TPS), and Polygon (190 TPS) [2].

The TPS milestone coincided with an ongoing vote by Solana validators on the Alpenglow protocol upgrade, which aims to replace the current TowerBFT consensus mechanism with a system targeting 100–150 millisecond block finality [4]. The upgrade introduces direct voting and signature aggregation to reduce bandwidth usage and eliminate on-chain vote transactions that currently inflate TPS metrics [4]. It also includes a 1.6 SOL per epoch Validator Admission Ticket fee [4]. The upgrade is seen as a response to current performance limitations that cause 12.8-second finality delays and lack formal safety guarantees [4].

At the time of the milestone, the price of SOL was around $180, down 38% from its January high of $293 [4]. The SEC has also extended review periods for Bitwise and 21Shares Solana ETF proposals to October 16, with approval expected by mid-October [4]. Meanwhile, open interest in SOL derivatives has risen to near-record levels of $12 billion, indicating strong long-term positioning [4]. Despite broader market corrections, decentralized finance applications on Solana have approached prior value highs, driven by continued activity in the memecoin space [4].

Source: [1] Solana Achieves Historic 100K TPS Milestone, Developer Claims Blockchain First (https://cryptonews.com/news/solana-achieves-historic-100k-tps-milestone-developer-claims-blockchain-first/)