Solana Smashes Records: First Blockchain to Hit 100K TPS—Ethereum Devs Sobbing into Their Whitepapers

Solana just rewrote the rulebook—again. The network clocked a blistering 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), leaving competitors eating its cryptographic dust. Move over, 'slow and steady' chains—this is Web3 at warp speed.

Why this isn't just another hype cycle

Most blockchains brag about theoretical throughput. Solana's team dropped actual on-chain proof—like a mic, but with more validators. The milestone puts it leagues ahead of Ethereum's paltry 15-30 TPS (yes, even post-merge).

The finance angle? Cue the skeptics

TradFi bankers will still call it 'play money'—right before their legacy systems choke on another 0.1% volume spike. Meanwhile, Solana's scaling this fast while keeping fees under a penny. Try that with your SWIFT transfers.

One question remains: Who's building the first 100K TPS rug pull? Now *that's* innovation.

Stress Test Reveals Theoretical Network Capacity Limits

The achievement occurred during a high-load test involving predominantly “noop” program calls.

These lightweight operations satisfy Solana’s requirement for transactions to include at least one instruction without performing meaningful computation or state changes.

Block 360650523 contained 43,016 successful transactions and 50 failed ones during the record-breaking session.

bleh, close enough without modding validator to ignore votes + other high value txns. last three are >100k TPS (caused helius node to lag but only a little bit lol)

solscan LINK below https://t.co/Ju1uqPMlFZ pic.twitter.com/4gsGuyCaj9

Mumtaz argued that despite the test nature of these transactions, the achievement validates Solana’s theoretical capacity for handling 80,000-100,000 TPS in real-world operations, including transfers and oracle updates.

The developer emphasized that Solana’s cost model calculation includes factors beyond execution compute units, such as signature verification and data loading overhead.

Solana’s actual daily throughput remains significantly lower than the stress test figures.

Current TPS sits around 3,600 according to Solscan, though approximately two-thirds of these transactions are validator voting messages required for consensus participation rather than user-initiated activities.

Real user transaction throughput on solana averages 900 to 1,050 TPS.

The network continues deriving most activity from memecoin trading, especially from existing launchpads like Pump.fun and new ones like Let’sBonk.

Technical Reality Behind the Numbers Game

The 100K TPS milestone primarily consisted of no-operation program calls designed for stress testing rather than meaningful blockchain operations.

These transactions do not transfer tokens, alter state, or execute complex smart contract functions that define typical blockchain usage.

Solana validators must regularly submit vote transactions to participate in network consensus, with hundreds of validators voting multiple times per slot.

These consensus messages inflate reported TPS figures but do not represent user-facing financial activity or decentralized application interactions.

Analysis indicates Solana’s realistic maximum for meaningful work reaches approximately 10,000 TPS, though regular usage typically operates well below this threshold.

The blockchain’s architecture requires all transactions to include at least one instruction, making noop calls necessary for operations that otherwise WOULD not need computational work.

Payment networks like Visa process 24,000 TPS, and Mastercard handles 5,000 TPS under real-world conditions, both exceeding any public blockchain’s sustained performance for actual financial transactions.

Layer 2 solutions on ethereum can spike to tens of thousands of TPS but require off-chain aggregation rather than single-chain throughput.

Comparative analysis places Solana ahead of other major blockchains for real user transactions, with Sui achieving approximately 854 TPS, Binance Smart Chain reaching 378 TPS, and Polygon managing 190 TPS.

Ethereum mainnet processes only 22 TPS, though LAYER 2 solutions significantly improve performance.

Market Context Amid Protocol Upgrade Discussions

The TPS milestone occurred as Solana validators prepare to vote on SIMD-0326, the Alpenglow protocol upgrade that would replace the current TowerBFT consensus mechanisms with a system targeting 100-150 millisecond block finality.

The upgrade introduces direct voting and signature aggregation to reduce bandwidth overhead from current gossip traffic.

Solana votes on Alpenglow upgrade to cut block finality from 12.8s to 150ms, replacing TowerBFT consensus with revolutionary voting protocol targeting Web2-level performance.#Solana #Blockchainhttps://t.co/jn0mt6DTCt

Alpenglow’s Votor protocol would eliminate on-chain vote transactions that currently inflate TPS figures, implementing off-chain voting with a 1.6 SOL per epoch Validator Admission Ticket fee.

The upgrade addresses performance limitations that impose 12.8-second finality delays without formal safety guarantees.

Notably, SOL token is trading around $180 at the time of writing, though it remains down 38% from January’s $293 all-time high.

The SEC has also recently extended review periods for Bitwise and 21Shares Solana ETF proposals to October 16, with Bloomberg analysts expecting approval by mid-October.

However, despite these, open interest in SOL derivatives increased NEAR record $12 billion levels, indicating long-term positioning for continued uptrend momentum.

The network’s memecoin-focused activity continues driving transaction volume, with decentralized finance applications approaching previous value highs despite broader market corrections.

For the new proposal, validators face mixed sentiment about Alpenglow implementation costs and technical risks during the current bull market cycle.