2. Method

3. Analysis

From the above chart we see that during most of February 2022 to date, Solana TPS for all except vote transactions fluctuated slightly around 650 transactions/second a day (approximately 500 of them successful; the proportion is shown in more detail below). There has been a drop in TPS on Feb 19-21, although it is not clear if it will continue (the last day's transactions are incomplete as the day is not over). Overall, the maximum TPS in February as of the day of analysis (Feb 22) was 730 TPS (567 of them successful), and the minimum (excluding the last incomplete day) - 398 TPS (313 successful).

4. Conclusion

Solana has a unique approach to defining transactions. Everything from transfers to smart contract calls or new contract deploys is equally considered a transaction (source: Solana Wiki). As a result, some transaction types, namely votes, occur more often in the data. Solana votes are automatic transactions run by nodes, and their purpose is to verify the legitimacy of other transactions and allow them to become part of the chain. Due to the number of votes running automatically, they can dominate the rest of transaction data and possibly obscure trends and insights. Because of this, the current analysis will distinguish between votes and non-vote transactions in the data.

This dashboard will alternatively interpret Solana TPS as either speed, capacity, or usage.

• TPS as a measure of capacity indicates how many transactions at most can be processed by the blockchain, should it be inundated with requests.
• When full capacity is not met, especially when actual TPS is far below the maximum limit, this dashboard interprets that as a lack from the demand side (users are submitting fewer transactions than the maximum), not an insufficiency from the supply side (the blockchain itself). Then the actual TPS gets interpreted here as a measure of Solana's usage.
• Finally, TPS is broadly the speed of transaction processing on Solana, whether this speed gets determined by what the blockchain can handle, or merely by what the blockchain is given.

This analysis will rely on February 2022 Solana data from Flipside Crypto to:

• measure the TPS of Solana (non-votes) this month (calculated as the average of daily TPS),

• find the number of successful TPS per day among all non-vote TPS,

• compare the two above metrics with the Solana usage when votes are also counted,

• discuss how Solana's transaction speed has fluctuated.

  (It is important to note that, while the most recent day is shown on charts, the data for the most current day is always incomplete as that day is not yet over. The charts automatically update daily until the end of February 2022.)

1. Introduction

The Solana blockchain prides itself on the speed with which it can process transactions, measured in Transactions Per Day (TPS).

The above visualization by Solana Daily illustrates that Solana and Polygon lead ahead of other chains by TPS capacity (65,000 possible transactions per second).

But when it comes to Solana competing with traditional payment providers, such as Visa, Solana's speed doesn't seem to be an advantage. The Visa CFO was quoted in Barron's confirming that their network can also handle 65,000 TPS.

Solana might not create notable competition for the traditional financial industry yet, but its speed advantage among other blockchains warrants a more detailed examination in this article.

The above graph illustrates that of all non-voting transactions in the current month, many have been successful - between 3/4 and 4/5th of them. In the second half of February, a larger proportion of non-voting transactions executed successfully.

• Solana boasts its lightning fast processing capacity of 65,000 transactions per second (TPS).
• Actual Solana blockchain usage in February 2022 has not surpassed 3,000 TPS, and averaged at 2,690 TPS. This includes automatic vote transactions, which nodes run in bulk to verify and add transactions to the chain.
• Not considering automatic vote transactions, average Solana usage for the same period stood at 604 TPS, and only 476 (79%) of these transactions, on average, went through.
• This indicates that the speed of meaningful Solana transactions (not failed ones and not "housekeeping" automatic volume voting) currently hovers just under 500 TPS, less than 1% of its full capacity.

While Solana claims its maximum capacity is at 65,000 transactions per second, Flipside Crypto's data shows that the current TPS (excluding automatic vote transactions) is only 604 - just 1% of capacity.

If one includes all Solana transactions, including the abundance of automatic node-run voting, the blockchain was processing less than 2700 TPS - a.k.a. 4% of maximum capacity. Non-vote transactions represented 22% of all Solana transactions in this period.

3.1. Total Solana TPS

3.2. Solana TPS per day

Looking at daily numbers can help understand how Solana's speed fluctuated:

This chart reiterates that most of Solana's usage (currently up to 4/5th) consists of automatic vote transactions. It also indicates that total and non-vote TPS tend to move together.

79% of transactions processed every second were, on average, successful.