Solana has cemented its position as the fastest large blockchain, achieving an actual daily average of 1,504 transactions per second (TPS) on April 6, 2024, amid the memecoin craze. This performance makes Solana 46 times faster than Ethereum and over 5 times faster than Polygon, the swiftest among Ethereum scaling solutions.

Despite this impressive feat, Solana's peak performance represents only 1.6% of its theoretical maximum speed of 65,000 TPS. The spike in transactions also led to network congestion, raising questions about how efficiently Solana can handle even higher TPS following its forthcoming upgrades.

Sui, another non-EVM blockchain, ranks as the second fastest, with its highest recorded TPS reaching 854 in July 2023 during the popularity surge of the on-chain game Sui 8192. Other notable non-EVM blockchains include TON at 175 TPS and Near Protocol at 118 TPS. However, some non-EVM blockchains like Aptos (49 TPS), Starknet (12 TPS), Bitcoin (11 TPS), and Thorchain (2 TPS) lag significantly behind.

The eight largest non-EVM blockchains have an average peak TPS of 284, compared to an average of 74 TPS for the 17 largest EVM and EVM-compatible blockchains, making the non-EVMs 3.9 times faster.

Among EVM blockchains, BNB Smart Chain (BSC) stands out with a real TPS of 378 achieved on December 7, 2023, during an inscriptions-driven surge in activity. This performance places BSC third overall but less than half of Sui's processing speed. Polygon, amidst the inscriptions frenzy, recorded 190 TPS on November 16, 2023, making it the fastest Ethereum scaling solution and 8.4 times quicker than Ethereum itself, though still trailing the top three fastest blockchains.

Ethereum and its ten largest scaling solutions collectively registered a total real TPS of 500, surpassing BSC but remaining slower than Solana and Sui. Notably, apart from Polygon, other faster-than-Ethereum scaling solutions include Arbitrum (59 TPS), Linea (56 TPS), Base (37 TPS), and Mantle (25 TPS).

In the past year, 24 out of the top 25 blockchains achieved their highest real TPS, ranging from Tron's peak on June 12, 2023, to zkLink Nova's most recent high on May 13, 2024. This surge in on-chain activity, driven by inscriptions and memecoin speculation, underscores the increasing usage of blockchain networks.

The study focused on the largest blockchains, selecting the top 30 based on total value locked (TVL) rankings from DefiLlama as of May 15, 2024. TPS was measured using actual or realized transactions per second, standardized as daily averages to ensure comparability. The data was sourced from respective blockchain explorers and Dune Analytics, excluding chains with insufficient data such as Hyperliquid, PulseChain, Kava, Cardano, and Rootstock.