25 Fastest Blockchain Networks Revealed, Bitcoin and Ethereum Not in Top 15: CoinGecko (2024)

By examining the processing speed of the largest blockchain networks in terms of total value locked on DeFiLlama, CoinGecko outlined the fastest based on the actual and realized transactions-per-speed (TPS) metric.

The report concluded that Solana leads the way, followed by Sui and the Binance Smart Chain. Interestingly, Ethereum and Bitcoin are not even in the top 15.

Solana’s World

Despite its several outages in the past few years, the Solana blockchain has emerged as the fastest on CoinGecko’s list. The average daily TPS stands at 1,053.7, while the network marked a record on April 6 at just over 1,500.

According to the report, this makes Solana “46 times faster than Ethereum, and more than 5 times faster than Polygon, which has the highest TPS among Ethereum scaling solutions.”

Still, CoinGecko said that Solana’s average TPS is still far away from the theoretical maximum speed claimed by the developers of 65,000 TPS.

1/ Which blockchains are the fastest?

Our study shows that @solana has proven to be the fastest blockchain, with its actual daily average transactions per second (TPS) reaching a record high of 1,504 on April 6.

Read the full study: https://t.co/YNXbOBmsz7 pic.twitter.com/h7HXBbZavu

— CoinGecko (@coingecko) May 17, 2024

Perhaps due to its speed and the relatively low transaction fees, Solana became the home to numerous meme coins that popped up during this cycle, such as WIF, BONK, BOME, POPCAT, MEW, and others.

CoinGecko’s top 3 list is concluded by two other non-EVM networks – Sui and BSC. The paper said non-EVM blockchains are, on average, 4x faster than their EVM counterparts.

Polygon 8x Faster Than Ethereum

Ethereum transitioned from proof of work to proof of stake in late 2022 but it still cannot find a place within the top 15 on CoinGecko’s list. It takes the 17th spot with an average TPS of 22.7. In contrast, Polygon, the largest layer 2 network on Ethereum, posted 190 TPS.

“Polygon is therefore currently the fastest among the largest Ethereum scaling solutions and 8.4 times faster than Ethereum itself, even as Polygon lags further behind the top 3 fastest blockchains.”

Bitcoin, being among the few networks still on proof of work, is expectedly not in the top positions, either. The world’s largest blockchain’s average TPS was at 10.73, according to CoinGecko, which placed it at the 20th spot. Interestingly, though, Blast, Merlin, Mode, zkLink Nova, and Thorchain ranked behind Bitcoin.